Despite missing a deadline last month, community members are
still determined to recall three board members in the Aromas-San
Juan Unified School District.
Despite missing a deadline last month, community members are still determined to recall three board members in the Aromas-San Juan Unified School District.
After filing notices of intent to circulate a recall petition with county election offices last month, a group of parents, teachers and community members now calling itself Community for Better Schools had until April 28 to turn in blank petition forms and a proof of publication of the notice.
Notices of intent to circulate a recall petition were delivered – for the second time in a month – to Trustees Rachel Ponce and Sylvia Rios-Metcalf at the district’s May board meeting Wednesday night. Trustee Andy Hsia-Coron was not at the meeting because of illness. He will be served later at his home.
“We missed the deadline,” said Julie Conrad, a parent of a student in the district and the group’s leader.
“We’re going to regroup. We need to reformulate our goals beyond the Mary-Ann Tucker issue,” Conrad said. “We want to be less vague and more accurate.”
Four trustees were originally served notices of intent to recall April 9, but John Ferreira was removed from the recall effort a week later.
Although the group missed the deadline, Conrad said members have not lost their motivation to recall Hsia-Coron, Ponce and Metcalf.
“We have to start over again. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again,” she said. “It was a blooper. It doesn’t mean we weren’t committed.”
As before, there was no reaction from the trustees upon being handed the envelopes.
Last month’s meeting was marked with rowdy behavior by community members upset over the board’s March 5 decision to not renew the contract of Aromas School Principal Mary-Ann Tucker and over what some in the group called trustees’ lack of interest in their concerns.
The board requested and got two Monterey County Sheriff’s deputies to maintain order at Wednesday’s meeting, said district superintendent Jackie Munoz.
If anything, Conrad said, the setback over the missed deadline has helped. More people have come forward to help the cause, and a lawyer from Aromas has donated services at no cost, she said.
The second attempt also allows the group to refine its statement of intent to recall to include issues the district has been dealing with for awhile, Conrad said.
The recent statement reads, “The grounds for the recall are as follows: Your persistent, conscious, and willful disregard for the parents, teachers and school staff. Your failure to address funding due to loss of students in the district, monitoring and evaluating programs district wide, and abandonment of open communication with the Aromas-San Juan community.”
The old statement said the grounds for recall were “… persistent, conscious and willful disregard for the expressed wishes of parents, teachers and school staff in the Aromas-San Juan (Unified) School District.”
While continuing its effort, CSB will have to look at the state elections code more carefully and keep up with deadlines. The group is also looking at recouping all or some of the district’s cost of holding a special election in November for the recall, Conrad said.
Because the school district is in three counties, all three would have to hold special elections, which the district will have to pay for. Estimated amounts have exceeded $40,000 for San Benito and Monterey counties, Conrad said.
As the school year winds down, CSB will hurry to gather signatures before schools let out for the summer, Conrad said. The group is still planning on a November election.
Trustees have stated sadness over the group’s decision to hold a recall effort, even saying that the action would be divisive.
As stated in the state elections code, trustees have seven days to respond to the notice of intent and proponents have seven days to send in a response. Ten days after those being recalled submit their answers, proponents must submit a proof of publication of the notice and two blank copies of the petition with the elections office. This is the deadline CSB missed.
Within 10 days of receiving the copies of the petition, the elections office official must OK the wording of the petition. Proponents of the recall have 10 days to make corrections and then have 60 days to collect the signatures of 25 percent of the registered voters in the school district – 1,114 total (2,937 in San Benito County, 1,473 in Monterey County and 45 in Santa Cruz County, according to the San Benito County Elections Office). The elections office then verifies the signatures and notifies the school district that has to order an election.
The election “shall be held not less then 88 nor more than 125 days after the issuance of the order…” according to election code.
For more information, call Jodi Price at 726-1625.
