Another Public Hearing
We attended the meeting last night where the County Committee reviewed our request to move the election date to decide how we elect trustees from June to November.
I think it’s important to clarify the stand that the petitioners took last week when we made this request.
When we first advocated for the June election, it was because we firmly believed that the change should be in effect prior to the November election. We still believe that! Based on the public hearing that was held in our district on September 15 though, we had every hope that the trustees would pursue the waiver and allow that change to happen (due to the overwhelming support) without the costs of the election.
Never in our wildest dreams did we expect this board to initiate litigation using classroom dollars to protect their seats. But we should have. After 4 long months of trying to convince the trustees to do the right thing, we had to accept that it was not going to happen. The deadline to apply for an election waiver at the state was this month and when the agenda was posted for January 12 meeting and the waiver item was not listed for action, we knew it was not going to happen.
At that point, we needed to make a decision. The lawsuit had no merit and was clearly filed in an attempt to hold the issue up in the courts until after the March 12 filing deadline had passed. If only we had known that the county and the school board had agreed to resolve the issue prior to that. But we found that out the day after the county committee meeting.
So we decided to take the high road. We went to the committee to offer them the chance to change the election. We didn’t want to delay it but we could not bear to have more of our limited resources wasted on attorney’s fees. Unfortunately it didn’t work out quite as well as we had hoped.
The committee wanting to be responsive to the public, has called another hearing for February 10 in our district to hear again from the public on this issue prior to making any decision. We hope that you can attend.
The most important thing to understand is this: We have not changed our mind about the election. We still believe that June is the best time so that we can have the change in place by November but not at the cost of our children’s education.
Someone has to put education above politics and since it’s clearly not our school board, it has to be us!
Tags: Capistrano Unified, CUSD, erin kutnick