Bad bully boards on the march

Roughly speaking, the SOCCCD saga is the sad story of a great district thwarted and diminished by an incompetent and dishonest right-wing board.

Lately, that's the Capistrano Unifed School District (CUSD) story too.

Our own initial trouble-making “board majority” emerged in 1996 and was supported by the faculty union, then ruthlessly controlled by a small group of dishonorable schemers.

The Capo district’s “board majority” emerged ten years later. It too had been supported by the faculty union. In that case, the support reflected ignorance more than base realpolitik.

I think.

The initial SOCCCD majority flouted the Brown Act (the Open Meetings law) and got into hot water. Ten years later, so did CUSD’s majority: floutage, then boilage.

The SOCCCD board was clueless and seemingly answerable to no one. They heedlessly invited Holocaust deniers to a forum. They glared through windows at visiting state auditors who were trying to make sense of the district's shaky finances. (See OC Register, 6/13/98.)

A decade later, CUSD trustees were caught rifling through the Superintendent’s desk. Nowadays, they endlessly micromanage and second guess administrators’ decisions. (See below.)

Both boards have made their districts a laughingstock.

And both have the support of Education Alliance (EA), Tustin’s right-wing, union-hating, kid-spanking “back to basics” organization. (For SOCCCD, that started in 1998.)

SOCCCD board President Don Wagner is on EA’s board.


When the CUSD faculty union got wise to the EA connection, they ceased supporting the new “reform” trustees.

At SOCCCD, faculty actually had to fight for two years to wrest control of their union from its corrupt leadership. (As Interim President of IVC, Raghu Mathur secretly addressed the CTA investigative team to defend union leadership, of which, months earlier, he had been an integral part. Remember?)

* * * * *

Well, here’s the latest. It concerns the CUSD crew. The OC Register (Was Capo superintendent supposed to be fired?) reports that

A contentious, 4-1/2-hour Capistrano Unified school board meeting that focused solely on whether Superintendent A. Woodrow Carter was to be fired Thursday has cast an even darker cloud of uncertainty over the beleaguered school district and starkly illuminated the tension among trustees increasingly at odds with their schools chief.
…
But the emotionally charged meeting also provided a candid snapshot of just how badly interpersonal relations have deteriorated among teachers, administrators, trustees and parents in the 52,000-student district – and offers a compelling explanation for why nearly all 250 people at the meeting, including Carter himself, truly seemed convinced the board intended to fire him.

"With a sense of regret and bewilderment, I stand before this audience awaiting my fate in closed session, which almost assuredly spells my removal from this district," Carter said at the start of a 10-minute speech, setting the tone for the rest of the protracted meeting.
…
"No matter what the vote is today, you have created a hostile work environment that no single administrator in this district can endure," he said. "The unbearable stress that you create in the daily course of our duties is unlawful, and I have repeatedly reminded Trustee Addonizio that these actions deteriorate working conditions and ruin morale of this entire 4,500-person [sic] district, but to no avail."

One of Capistrano's senior district administrators, in an unusual and candid speech defending Carter to the school board, echoed those sentiments.

"Morale is terribly low," said Sherine Smith, deputy superintendent for education. "Now is not the time to add more instability to our district. … He is competent, capable and a proven leader."