Recall Targets 3 Members of School Board

A group of parents, former teachers and teachers union officials in the Orange Unified School District have launched a recall campaign against three school board members, claiming that low pay has caused an exodus of experienced teachers from the district over the last few years.

Recall proponents charge that board President Linda Davis and board members Martin Jacobson and Maureen Aschoff have ignored the good of the district by consistently voting against substantial teacher raises.

“The bottom line is that good teachers are leaving, education suffers, and my kids’ futures are hampered,” said recall leader Craig Nance, who left the district last month after 25 years as a teacher at Canyon High School.

Over the last three years, 536 certified employees--teachers, librarians and counselors--have resigned from the district’s force of about 1,500, according to district reports. Also, 102 certified employees retired.

During that same period, 760 certified employees were hired.

Nance, who has two children in district schools, said the high number of resignations can be traced directly to the district’s low teacher salaries, which are among the lowest in the county.

“It’s simple economics,” he said. “I can work for you for $5 per hour or I can go across the street and work for $10 per hour,” he said.

Nance said he believes his group can collect far more than the approximately 14,000 signatures necessary to place the issue on the ballot. The group will have 160 days to gather the signatures once the registrar of voters approves its petition.

Board members said they see the recall attempt as another swipe against their conservative views on spending.

The recall “is just a union ploy to gain financial control of the purse strings of the school district for their own interest and financial greed,” Davis said.

“There has been a continuous effort since 1997 [the year Davis was elected] to get the conservatives out,” she said.

Davis didn’t hesitate to say she would run for a seat on the board again if the recall is successful.

The recall attempt comes after months of deadlocked negotiations between the district and teachers union representatives over teacher salaries. Mediation sessions were scheduled for Tuesday and today.

The issue isn’t new in Orange Unified.

Board members targeted by the effort agreed that salaries are low mainly because the district needs money to pay for an expensive lifetime health benefits package for retiring teachers.

Union officials, however, say the board could pay teachers more if they were willing.

Teachers protested the lack of a contract by striking for a day in April and by staging peaceful demonstrations in March.

Jacobson, who was first elected in 1993, said he believed the recall was in part a retaliation for the board’s unyielding stance against El Modena High’s gay-straight club.

The board members targeted “were three of the strongest opponents of the gay club,” he said. “I don’t think they’re being completely honest about their motivations.”

The school board became the focus of national media coverage last year when they unanimously denied the club’s request to meet on campus.

The recall campaign is the second directed at Orange Unified board members since Aschoff took office in 1991.

In 1992, a group of parents tried to recall five board members, including Aschoff, after the board demoted three principals and an assistant superintendent.

“I always take these things seriously, because it expresses frustration, anger and stress on the part of our teachers and our community,” she said. “It brings us farther apart instead of together, and to me that’s unfortunate.”

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Alex Katz can be reached at (714) 966-5977.