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Wednesday, August 12, 2015
How to fill OUSD vacancy?
ORANGE Unified Schools INSIDE
Independent
insight into OUSD
a news service of
Orange
Net News
/O/N/N/
OUSD Trustees to discuss how to fill Diane Singer's
open seat after resignation
After selling her Anaheim Hills
home and moving to Orange ,
Orange Unified School Board Trustee Diane Singer resigned her seat as Trustee
for OUSD Trustee Area 1 effective July 31, 2015. Trustees are required to live in the Trustee
Area they represent.
How to fill her now open seat
will be discussed at the Thursday August 13 OUSD Board Meeting as Agenda Item
12A.
Lobby of Aston at Maui Bayan in the Alhoa Tower |
For Thursday's meeting, Board President
John Ortega will be teleconferencing from the lobby at the condominium community
of Aston at the Maui Bayan in Hawaii . The California Brown Act requires that the teleconferencing
site be legally posted as having a meeting, the teleconference be held in a
public place and all votes taken be by roll call.
Agenda Item 12A (page 2) lays out
the legal scenarios on filling midterm
trustee vacancy. The Agenda item notes
the Education Code in this case allows either a special election or make a
provisional appointment-until the next regularly scheduled election within 60
days of the vacancy. The Agenda cites
the County of Orange Registrar of Votes estimating the cost of a special
election will cost the district between $441,120 and $499,162.
The Agenda item also outlines the requirements of OUSD
Board Bylaw 9223 for making a provisional appointment. It also notes that if the OUSD Board makes a
provisional appointment- district voters have 30 days to file a petition for special
election. California Education Code 5091
outlines the process for a petition:
(c) (1) If a
provisional appointment is made within the 60-day
period, the registered
voters of the district may, within 30 days
from the date of the
appointment, petition for the conduct of a
special election to
fill the vacancy. A petition shall be deemed to
bear a sufficient
number of signatures if signed by at least the
number of registered
voters of the district equal to 1 1/2 percent of
the number of
registered voters of the district at the time of the
last regular election
for governing board members, or 25 registered
voters, whichever is
greater. However, in districts with less than
2,000 registered
voters, a petition shall be deemed to bear a
sufficient number of
signatures if signed by at least 5 percent of
the number of
registered voters of the district at the time of the
last regular election
for governing board members.
(2) The petition shall be submitted to the
county superintendent
of schools having
jurisdiction who shall have 30 days to verify the
signatures. If the
petition is determined to be legally sufficient by
the county
superintendent of schools, the provisional appointment is
terminated, and the
county superintendent of schools shall order a
special election to be
conducted no later than the 130th day after
the determination.
However, if an established election date, as
defined in Section
1000 of the Elections Code, occurs between the
130th day and the
150th day following the order of the election, the
county superintendent
of schools may order the special election to be
conducted on the
established election date.
(For the full CEC Section 5091 CLICK ON
:TRUSTEE VACANCY )
Staff recommendation is to begin
the process for a provisional appointment. The item also includes a Candidate
Information Sheet. The Item's "Proposed Action" includes the names of
eligible candidates being announced at the September 10th OUSD Board Meeting,
interviews conducted the week of September 14th and the provisional appointment made by the
September 29- which will require a Special Session.
In an OUSD Press Release dated August 6, 2015- the
"application/nomination" period to applying for the provisional
appointment ends on August 28th.
Click on: Vacancy Information
In 1987 OUSD Trustee Eleanore Pleines
resigned her position. Pleines was one of four OUSD Trustees accused of
"willful misconduct" by the Orange County Grand Jury in connection
with a bid rigging scandal. The Grand Jury indictment was under a rarely used California law that
allows a judge to remove elected officials for misconduct. The other three Trustees- Robert James Elliot,
Ruth C. Evans and Joe C. Cherry never appeared before a judge to answer the
"willful misconduct" charges because their terms expired before a
court date was ever set.
Agenda Item 13A
(page 43) on the August 13 OUSD Agenda
will be a staff report on the growing shortage of Substitute teachers across California . Numerous phenomena are contributing to the
current shortage.
The California
State Board of Education has reported that in the last five years it has issued
30% fewer teaching credentials.
Education Economists point to the years of economic uncertainty from the
Great Recession resulted in widespread cuts to teachers. Those cuts, coupled
with attacks on teacher benefits and ongoing yearly layoffs of "temporary"
teachers resulted in major reconsideration of teaching as an economic viable
profession for college students.
In addition, as
the Great Recession ended displaced teachers who went into substituting found
full time classroom positions or positions outside the teaching
profession. State retirement laws
requiring retired teachers to wait 6 months before substituting have many
retired teachers moving on to other endeavors.
Technology and
Common Core training and widespread use of non-classroom "teacher
experts" (Teachers on Special Assignment) have also impacted the
substitute pool.
The shortage has
widespread effects on school productivity. Often, principals and school
secretaries spend valuable time trying to arrange coverage for classes needing substitutes.
Often, school counselors, administrators and other teachers are used to cover
classes-or teachers that are at trainings are called back because of the
schools needs.
The results have
been that school districts across the state are now competing for substitutes by
increasing substitute pay.
While most
districts deal with the shortage by trying to make their pay attractive few
districts are trying outside--the-box solutions in dealing with the
shortage. Those include: using Teachers
on Special Assignment to augment a district's sub pool; expanding the candidate
field to approach the district's retired teachers, student teachers, applicants
who have applied for jobs in the district; incentives for substitutes in
partnership with local businesses; improving two way substitute communication
to integrate them into the school district; using new technologies developed
for substitute management like Jobulator
; a coordinated approach to manage a
school district's trainings widespread trainings.
NEXT OUSD BOARD MEETING Thursday
August 13, 2015
Next OUSD Board Meeting -OUSD BOARD ROOM
CLOSED SESSION- 6:00 pm
OUSD Regular Session: 7:00 pm
For AGENDA-CLICK ON : OUSD AGENDA
For more information call the OUSD
Superintendent’s office at 714-628-4040
For budgeting questions call Business Services at
714-628-4015
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