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Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Board elections and plans after K
ORANGE Unified Schools INSIDE
Independent
insight into OUSD
a news service of
Orange
Net News
/O/N/N/
OUSD Board members to remain the same-officer
elections to take place at December 11th meeting
After the November 11th election were voters re-elected all
the Orange Unified Trustees who had terms expiring this year, the trustees will
vote for Board officers for 2015 at the December 11, 2014 OUSD Board of
Trustees Meeting ( Agenda Item 10 A page 4).
While Trustees Timothy Surridge (53.7%) and Rick Ledesma
(56.6%) won their races easily, it should be noted that Kathy Moffat garnered
more votes than any candidate in OUSD (or Measure K) with 61.3% of the vote.
Trustee Diane Singer had no opponents. Former OUSD Trustee and perennial
candidate Steve Rocco received 10% of the vote in the 3-way race in Ledesma's
Area 7 contest. Rocco has now pulled papers for the Orange County First
Supervisor's Special Election Race joining
six other potential candidates: Lou Correa, Chris Phan, Andrew Do, Mark
Lopez, Lupe Morfin-Moreno, and Chuyen Nguyen.
The November election results keep the OUSD Board in the
hands of a majority made up of the male members- John Ortega, Mark Wayland,
Rick Ledesma and Timothy Surridge.
Trustee John Ortega was the OUSD Board President for 2014
becoming one of the most successful Board President's since the Orange
Recall. Ortega for the most part brought
civility and order back to the board, despite its polarized membership. Taking the Board on a widely praised, highly
successful and well attended road trip
meetings to the 4 high schools, Ortega was also able to help steer OUSD the
closest it had ever come to passing a Facilities Bond. In addition, he averted
a fight over the Peralta Property even as the Board sold off other OUSD surplus
properties without major difficulties and kept popular OUSD Superintendent
Michael Christensen despite an extended review of the superintendent that had
stakeholders all over Greater Orange rallying to Christensen's side on rumors of a potential ousting.
With the main four Board antagonists all re-elected for
another four years, it would seem fitting for Ortega to be the statesman-like
leader to work to further ease the tensions on the OUSD Board. By pushing the
Board majority to elect the popular Trustee Kathy Moffat ( who received a
higher percentage of votes than any trustee or Measure K ) to at least one of
the Board offices as a token of continuing Ortega's inclusive leadership style to
bringing the OUSD Board together would go a long way in healing a bruised board
and community. Will Ortega again rise to meet the current challenge?
Measure K results to be presented as
VP's Pauly is quoted as supporting special School Facility Improvement Districts
for local school improvements
Agenda Item 8A (page 1) on the December 11th OUSD Agenda
will report the final election results for the trustee races and for Measure K.
Needing a super-majority of 55% to pass, the measure received 54.6% of the
vote-coming up under 200 votes short of passing.
The third defeat for an OUSD Bond measure once again by
less than a few hundred votes has many in Greater Orange looking for creative
solutions to repair the aging schools. On November 9th Orange Net News reported
that school facilities improvement districts were being discussed as a possible
solution to addressing critical update needs for some of OUSD schools. On
November 11th, an article in The Orange County Register reported OUSD
Superintendent Michael Christensen as saying :
"he was asked after the
election by some community members about school facilities improvement
districts, which he said he is looking into".
In a November 24th Orange
County Register story, former Villa Park Councilwomen Deborah Pauly (who
wrote the ballot language against Measure K and lead the effort to defeat the
measure) was quoted as saying that she would support the idea of school facilities improvement districts. The
article states (see link below):
Pauly said she’d be
in support of school-facilities-improvement districts, because the districts
would make construction and debt more manageable.
“I think that’s a very smart idea,” she said. “Because once again, the larger the bureaucracy, the harder it is to control what’s happening.”
“I think that’s a very smart idea,” she said. “Because once again, the larger the bureaucracy, the harder it is to control what’s happening.”
(link Click on: Pauly)
Of course with other sections of Orange Unified outside of
Villa Park included in school facilities improvement districts and approving bonds
the four Villa Park schools would be
surrounded by modern facilities. This scenario would result in the choice of Villa Park residents to have schools that could
eventually look like third world facilities. That scenario could see the very
real possibility of student flight into better the OUSD and private school facilities
with numerous consequences to the city's school's academic and sports programs.
With that doomsday scenario for Villa Park comes plummeting property values and possible
school closings- just like almost happened in 1985.
Another possible scenario is that a Villa Park centered
school facilities improvement district could
pass a bond for the four OUSD school's in Villa Park
and include money for the mothballed and chained -off historic Villa Park
Elementary buildings being restored. Built in 1919 and 1924 as the original Mountain View School (Villa
Park 's original name) the historic main building features Spanish
tiles and a bell tower. Restoration has
long been a goal of Villa Park residents in
saving the buildings from being demolished.
 |
| Villa Park Elementary, 1922 |
The first attempt to demolish the buildings was in 1998. Saved
from demolition, the Villa Park
Elementary School Restoration Corp was formed in 1999 to raise money for a restoration-but
failed. In 2003 the site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places
and in 2008- the site was again barely saved from demolition as supporters
tried to drum-up support for a bond to restore the buildings. That effort was
never followed-up. Including those historic buildings in a Villa Park
facilities district bond maybe the final hope to save the residents of Orange County
INSIDE the December 11 OUSD Board Agenda
14 A Prop 39 Clean Energy Funds (page 7) -approve 3 firms for
spending $1.5 million yearly for five years from Prop 39 monies for OUSD clean
energy projects
14 B Increase OUSD Maintenance Budget (page 8) - add one custodian
to the four comprehensive high schools and establish a new administrator- the Executive Director of Facilities
and Planning
14 D Contract Agreements (page 10) - new contract agreements between
OUSD and its employee groups
NEXT OUSD BOARD MEETING December
11, 2014
Next OUSD Board Meeting -OUSD BOARD ROOM
CLOSED SESSION- 6:00 pm
OUSD Regular Session: 7:00 pm
For AGENDA-CLICK ON
For more information call the OUSD
Superintendent’s office at 714-628-4040
For budgeting questions call Business Services at
714-628-4015
ARCHIVAL Information and direct news can be found
at:
the Greater Orange News Service
http://greaterorange.blogspot.com/
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