Capistrano schools battle goes to voters

Southern Orange County is suburbia defined, filled with rows of spacious homes, acres of manicured lawns, high-performing schools and every chain store imaginable. It’s also the unlikely breeding ground for a parental revolt that has bitterly divided the community -- and claimed several victories, most notably the felony indictment of a former schools superintendent for creating “enemies lists.”

The next skirmish occurs Tuesday, when voters decide whether to recall two longtime board trustees in the beleaguered Capistrano Unified School District. If district critics -- a collection of parents, politicians and gadflies -- replace them with candidates of their own, they will win majority control of the 50,000-student district, capping a four-year struggle.

Such longevity in volunteer activism is rare.

“These folks are serious,” said Mark Petracca, a political science professor at UC Irvine. “What is unusual is not only have they actually managed to accomplish a lot in terms of getting rid of some of the offending characters . . . these people have been at this for years. It’s like the recall never ends.”

Academic quality in the district’s 56 schools is largely acclaimed. Serving a 195-square-mile swath of southern Orange County, the district is blessed by its demographics -- a high concentration of high-income, involved parents, which often correlates with strong academic achievement.

Parents have the will, time and money to ensure the best for their children’s education: In recent weeks, they raised $1 million to stop teacher layoffs prompted by the state budget shortfall. Those same qualities were evident when parents clashed with the district’s seven longtime trustees, dubbed the “old guard,” who for many years almost always voted unanimously.

The troubles began four years ago, when parents protested the threatened closure of three elementary schools, the conversion of a primary school into a K-8, and the new San Juan Hills High School in San Juan Capistrano, a $130-million campus that opened last fall and drew students both from predominantly white, upper-income neighborhoods and from poorer, mainly Latino areas.

Parents from disparate parts of the district coalesced in 2005 and focused their efforts on recalling the district’s trustees and forcing the departure of its longtime superintendent, James Fleming. At the same time, they grew increasingly critical of board plans for a $35-million administration building, an airy, Mission-style facility, while hundreds of classes were being held in aging trailers.

Within weeks of the center’s opening, Fleming resigned and the complex was raided by investigators for the Orange County district attorney’s office who issued subpoenas and seized documents and computers. The following year, Fleming and another administrator were indicted by a grand jury. They go on trial in August.

Meanwhile, though the recall attempt failed, its organizers ran three candidates known as the “ABC slate” who handily won board seats in the November 2006 election.

When they won such a resounding three-way victory, they thought the public mandate would cause the remaining longtime trustees to change, said Tom Russell, spokesman for the Committee to Reform CUSD. “Instead, it caused them to hunker down almost into bunker mode. . . . They are working to frustrate any new reform move that the [new] trustees try to do.”

Controversy continued, including a scathing October report by the district attorney’s office that the “old guard” trustees routinely violated the state’s open-meetings law. A well-regarded local superintendent signed on to replace Fleming, but the ongoing dispute so unnerved him, he said in a letter, that he resigned before the job started.

Critics mobilized for a new recall effort aimed at trustees Marlene Draper and Sheila Benecke, who have a combined 36 years on the board. Both are up for reelection in November and say they do not plan to run, leading many to question why the reform group forced a special election that will cost the district more than $700,000 at a time of budget crises.

“It is a complete waste of money,” Benecke said. Draper added: “These are zealots. . . . They have not been involved in things that are positive in the community or for our schools. They use threats.”

District critics counter that recent disputes, such as the new superintendent’s retirement package, show that the trustees need to go before November.

“We can’t afford to keep the incumbents in for one more board meeting,” Russell said.

This time around, old allies are enemies. In 2006, the teachers union backed two of the three members of the ABC slate, saying it was time for change. But this year the union is fighting the recall, arguing that the criticisms leveled at the “old guard” trustees -- block voting, little public discussion or dissent, no transparency -- now apply to the reform organization.

“We need new faces on the board,” said Vicki Soderberg, president of the Capistrano Unified Education Assn. “What we want are faces . . . who don’t vote as a bloc and who don’t vote based on a small group of people who tell them how to vote.”

Soderberg and others were troubled to learn that the ABC slate was financially backed in the 2006 election by the Education Alliance, an anti-union and pro-school-voucher group.

The ABC trustees have also been buffeted by criticism that they rarely visit schools, are not involved with much aside from board meetings and have even walked out of a meeting before a crucial vote.

The candidates running to replace Benecke and Draper don’t have the same issues. Termed-out Assemblyman Ken Maddox volunteered in his son’s Malcolm Elementary classroom and his daughter graduated from Dana Hills High; Sue Palazzo, a district substitute teacher for 21 years, has had three children graduate from San Clemente High.

“I have a legislative record that I would invite anybody to take a look at, and I would defy anyone to say I’m a puppet for any group,” Maddox said.

If the candidates are successful, the reform committee will have five votes on the board. All sorts of decisions -- the redrawn attendance boundaries, the new administration center, San Juan Hills High School -- could be revisited, Russell said.

That is exactly what some fear.

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seema.mehta@latimes.com