Erin Kutnick’s Blog

Big news on Friday when a judge dropped two of the three charges against former CUSD Superintendent James Fleming.  While Fleming will still face one of the charges, the misappropriation of public funds, it is the charges that were dropped that make a huge statement here.

The judge said that prosecutors had insufficient evidence for count three of the indictment, conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public, and for count two, urging defeat of the same recall.

Count three is the charge that was related to the creation of the so-called “enemies” list and the subject of a lawsuit against the school district that was settled out of court last year.

That settlement has raised a lot of questions amongst parents and community members as to why the board would have agreed to a pay-off prior to the trial.  Had they waited for this information, the district would have been in a perfect position to deny any wrong-doing and win in court possibly even able to recover the $100,000 spent in legal fees that we so desperately need.

Instead the board approved the large settlement with many of the recipients being the exact same people who funded and supported their campaigns that got them elected.  That has raised questions of a conflict of interest and even more so now that it has been found there was no significant evidence to support their claim.

This is one of the most offensive acts that the board has committed to date and a huge violation of the public’s trust.  For Trustee Winsten and Trustee Maddox to have taken campaign donations from these people and then voted to award the settlement was completely wrong and one of the main reasons that I will be supporting their recall from office.

The chief petitioners and leaders of Capistrano Unified Children First were successful in getting the election date for change on how we elect trustees moved from June to November.

While we really did want to have the opportunity to make that change prior to the November election, the school board was putting all their effort into stopping that.  And also far too much money.  After they continued to post-pone hiring the demographer and filed the lawsuit, we had to sit down and make a very hard decision.

We believe that the county committee would have kept the date in June if that’s what we had wished but we really felt that the chance of it going forward was growing smaller each day.  With legal fees mounting, no hope for a waiver and no real guarantee that a decision would be made by a judge prior to the March 12 filing deadline, we were left with very little options.

So we will now vote in November to decide if we would like to change the way we elect trustees to a by-trustee or district election.  This will open up the democratic process to more candidates and give voters more of a say in who represents them. 

I noticed yesterday that the City of Newport Beach is looking into something very similar.  They currently have 7 city council seats and elect at large but are considering going to a by-district election.  Clearly this is a trend.

One of the most important things that a school board does is to hire (and keep) a good qualified Superintendent.  Great school districts need great leaders.

Last night the school board held a special meeting to set a time line to recruit a new permanent superintendent for CUSD.  The plan to hire a new superintendent is a good one and it is definitely something that needs to be a priority in our district however there are going to be issues that were not addressed last night.

The search firm that has been retained gave an in-depth presentation and worked with trustees to establish the time line.  They appear to be qualified and know what they are doing however, we all must question do they know what is going on in CUSD?  From conversations last night, it doesn’t look like it.

The search firm is not located in Orange County (which is fine) but that means they are not in touch with the climate and issues our district is facing.  For instance, how can you possibly attract the type of candidate that we need and deserve with a strike looming and a recall effort underway?  Not to mention a huge lawsuit pending from the former superintendent.

I can’t imagine that too many top-notch superintendent’s would leave their jobs to come here while all this is going on.  The trustees faced similar issues last year when trying to hire a new superintendent and that is how we ended up with Dr. Mahler.

I commend the trustees for realizing that this needs to be done however I don’t think that we have a snowball’s chance in h*ll of getting the right person on board this year.  I think we are going to have to work with another interim until some of these other issues are resolved.