Erin Kutnick’s Blog

For Immediate Release

Word came Friday from the Orange County Department of Education that the Orange County Registrar of Voters positively certified the signatures on the petition that was submitted by myself, Marilyn Amato, and Kevin Kirwan on July 1, 2009.  This positive certification means that this issue will be brought forward to the Orange County Committee for School Board Organization for consideration in a meeting and public hearing that is tentatively scheduled for September 30, 2009.  The meeting will be held at the Capistrano Unified Education Center.

All of the many dedicated volunteers who worked on this issue were very excited to receive the news that the signatures were valid.  The support for this change has only continued to grow over the past several weeks as concerned parents, teachers, and community members are committed to bringing real and positive reforms to our district over the next year.

We look forward to the public hearing with the county committee and are still looking for ways to effectively and efficiently bring about this much needed change to our district.

In another attempt to involve the trustees in the process to change voting by trustee area, we pushed pretty hard last week to make sure the item was on last nights agenda.  Well, it was added at the last minute and the trustees did actually discuss it but I’m really not sure they understand what is going on here.  Of course, they pushed it out a month.

They want to make the change of voting by trustee areas all about actually changing the trustee boundaries and those are two completely separate issues.  When I first moved here I lived in area 2, now I live in area 1.  For all I know I may end up in another one next go around.  The area you live in is not that important.  Having proper balance throughout the district definitely is and that is why those areas must be adjusted every 7-10 years.  Each trustee should represent the same number of voters.  The current trustees seem to have issues with the boundaries (which I agree are funky) but they want to totally gerrymander them by city, feeder pattern and all kinds of other criteria that I can’t imagine will lend itself well to actually balancing the number of voters.

They are just simply two separate issues.  After the 2010 census, the board will have to look at the new data and adjust the boundaries.  It needs to be done.  And regardless of where you live, if we change to voting by trustee area, you will always live in a trustee area and get to vote for your trustee.

There was another concern that a constituent would like in area “x” but the schools their children attend might be in area “y” and they would have no control over that trustee.

Let’s try to get all together here for the benefit of the children.  Even if we vote by trustee area don’t we want to elect trustees that represent and care about all children?  I do.  It’s actually better to over-lap the boundaries in many ways so that the trustee in area “x” will care about the schools in area “y” since that’s where their constituents children go.  We do not want to create divide or fiefdoms.  We have enough of that.  We want a balanced district with seven qualified and capable trustees making decisions in the best interest of the children.

Hopefully we will find out this week if we have enough qualified signatures to move forward.

We have gathered approximately 1,200 signatures that are in the process of being verified at the Registrar of Voters. There was tremendous support over the few short weeks that we gathered these signatures and we are preparing to go to the county committee but we are now concerned with our trustees.

When this item was brought to their attention in May, they all seemed very interested in this change and promised to put it on the June 22 agenda. Then at the last minute, the item was pulled. Trustee Lopez-Maddox commented on this blog that it would be on the July 13 agenda instead yet the agenda was just posted and the item is not there.

The time to discuss this is now and we would like to have the support of the trustees especially since several of them promised this change during their campaigns. Please contact the trustees and ask them to put this item back on the agenda for Monday night.

eaddonizio@capousd.org

mwinsten@capousd.org

ljchristensen@capousd.org

jbrick@capousd.org

anna@annabryson.com

kmaddox@capousd.org

spalazzo@capousd.org

Just before noon today, we turned in about 1,200 signatures to the Orange County Department of Education.  Those people all signed in support of changing the way we elect trustees in Capistrano Unified.  About 30 people collected those signatures in 2 weeks.

The signatures will now be sent to the Registrar of Voters where they will verify them.  We need 750 valid signatures to go before the County Committee for School Board Organization.  After the signatures are verified, we hope to convince the committee to put this issue on the ballot next year for voters to decide. 

We hope to have an answer on the signatures in about two weeks and we don’t yet know when the committee meets next.

Thank you to everyone who signed the petition and especially to all the volunteers who gathered signatures!