Erin Kutnick’s Blog

I know it’s old news now but just wanted to share how excited I am that the recall of Trustees Maddox and Winsten were certified by the Registrar of Voters.

An amazing accomplishment in a district that has already seen two recall attempts and most astounding was the amount of time in which the signatures were gathered.  No one thought it could be done but with hundreds of volunteers on the street, anything is possible.

This November could finally be the end of the turmoil and instability in our school district.  Hopefully a new superintendent, a few new board members, and the community working together will finally push us through the upheaval.

Now is the time to look forward and work together to enhance education and improve programs and schools for the students in our district.

I was at the Registrar of Voters this morning when over 65,000 signatures were submitted in the effort to recall Trustees Winsten and Maddox.  There was no official notice but we are pretty sure that this is the fastest that any recall of this type has been submitted in Orange County.  The ability to gather that many signatures in 60 days just proves how disatisfied people are with the current school board.

This effort, which began in January has been very exciting from the standpoint of how many volunteers came forward to help with the process.  I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful dedicated parents, teachers, and community members during this process as we have all come together to work for a common goal.

We need 22,000 valid signatures in order for the recall to qualify for the November ballot.  The registrar has until June 28 to count and verify the signatures.

The volunteer group, Parents for Local Control, announced late yesterday that they have already collected over 60,000 signatures in their effort to recall Trustees Winsten and Maddox.  That is more than 30,000 per trustee in less than two months! WOW!

This is truly amazing considering it was an all volunteer effort and accomplished in such a short time frame.  The group is now organizing all the petitions while they continue to gather signatures and will then turn them into the Registrar of Voters in a few weeks to be verified.

It seems very encouraging that with this many signatures, the recall should easily qualify for the November ballot.  Some folks suggested that they continue to get signatures and wait for a special election (like Winsten, Maddox, and Beall did in 2008) which would make the recall a guaranteed success but in the end, no one wanted to rob the school district of money the way that Maddox did when he was elected.

I’m very proud to have worked with some of the amazing volunteers who coordinated this effort and look forward to voting for new trustees in November.

Today, teachers in the Capistrano Unified School district participated in a walk-out.  Instead of going to work, they were on street corners all over south county holding up signs to bring awareness to a huge educational crisis in our district.

I’m not happy about this strike.  Students belong in the classroom with their teachers learning and preparing for their future.  The teachers know this, the parents know this, and the students know this.  Apparently though, the trustees are completely unaware or uncaring (or both).

This situation has been looming for months and the Board of Trustees has had ample opportunity to avoid this mess.  At meeting after meeting, parents, students, and teachers begged the board to sit down and negotiate a suitable contract.  They refused.

Last week, it looked like there might be a small chance to avoid the strike when the board president issued a press release stating her willingness to meet with teachers.  That hope was quickly dashed though when another press release followed clarifying that the trustees were not willing to reconsider any part of their imposed contract.

That left teachers very few options and late last week they authorized the strike.  Most of us still wanted to believe that it wouldn’t happen.  We hoped and prayed that the authorization vote would finally be the wake-up call to these trustees.  We hoped that the student sick-out, the phone calls, the letters, something, anything would get through to them and they would step up and do the right thing.

We hoped in vain.  In the end, the trustees have completely failed our children.  They have ignored the will of the constituents, and they have violated our trust.  What is perhaps most disturbing is that they have spent the past 6-7 weeks “preparing” for this strike and yet by all accounts, school today was a disaster.  Only a small number of substitutes showed up, there were no lesson plans, and students watched movies all day.  All that time and money spent and in the end, there really was no plan.  Thank goodness all the students were safe but beyond that, it was a total waste.

If only that time and effort had been put into reaching an agreement, all of this could have been avoided.  True leadership would have placed the priority on avoiding a strike and keeping students in the classroom instead of hiring unqualified subs and renting movies!

We don’t know how long the strike will continue but we do know that this board of trustees does not care about the students in our district.  They do not care about parents, teachers, property values, or the future of our country.  They are enemies to public education and therefore, they must be removed!

They forced the strike and now we need to get them out!

Tension was high last night at the special board meeting where the trustees voted 6-1 to impose a contract on the teachers.  At issue was some language in the contract that made permanent cuts to teachers compensation and also the fact that the contract had not been negotiated between the two parties.

The entire process has been very frustrating as both sides have maintained that they want to work together yet an agreement could not be reached.  Many of us were hopeful that after the independent Fact Finder’s report was released, both parties would sit down and craft a deal based on those recommendations.

The teacher’s said they agreed with the report and were willing to negotiate.  The district claims the teacher’s refused.

At this point though the possibility of a strike seems very real and is very concerning for all parents in the district.  What do we do with our children if the teacher’s strike?  I personally don’t have a lot of confidence in the ability of any substitutes to adequately fill the void of the permanent teachers.  I also have grave concerns over the safety of students on campus as I cannot imagine they can find 2,200 temporary employees to replace the teachers leaving the supervision less than adequate.

It is quite disappointing that it has come to this and we have no one to blame except for the trustees.  They can point fingers at Sacramento, the teachers’ union, the economy, or anyone else but in the end, they are the ones with the position of authority.  It is their responsibility to educate the 52,000 students in our district and it looks like they are going to fail.

Late last week, Trustee Ken Maddox commented on the Beyond the Blackboard Blog basically calling me a member or supporter of the KKK.   This malicious and untrue comment is a thinly-veiled attempt to try to divert the attention away from his failed record as a trustee.  His personal and public attacks just further demonstrate why he is the target of a recall. 

Here are the real issues:

1. Maddox forced a special election just a few months before a regular election that cost our district $800,000. That money came directly out of the classroom.

2. Maddox voted to award out-of-court settlements to his friends and campaign supporters, again, taking more money out of the classroom and raising serious questions regarding a conflict of interest.

3. Maddox made disparaging remarks about PTA volunteers on a blog and has still not apologized.

4. Maddox voted to fire Superintendent Carter, a move that has resulted in over $360,000 in legal fees and climbing.

5. Maddox voted to initiate a lawsuit against three separate government agencies to fight an election change that was initiated by his constituents to the tune of $32,000+.  This is on top of the $60,000 that was spent on attorneys to fight the petitioners during the public hearing.

6. Maddox has made derogatory comments to parents and community members during board meetings including calling the audience the “peanut gallery”, refusing to speak into the microphone, and cutting speakers off while they were talking.

7. Maddox is supposed to represent Trustee Area 5 which is in Aliso Viejo however no one seems to know where he lives raising questions as to his true residency.

This is what we should all be concerned about.  He and Trustee Winsten have lost the confidence of the public and they need to be removed from office.  Digging up a 1999 memo that has nothing to do with what is going on today is just a political ploy to try to escape the tough issues and questions that are relevant.

These types of comments from Maddox show exactly why the public has not been able to work with the board.  His attitude and insults speak volumes as to how he views his constituency and the parents who support this district. Maddox is fostering hate and intolerance in our district and it does not benefit anyone, least of all the students.

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.

In a not too surprising but really desperate attempt to intimidate and thwart local citizens from actively participating in government and exercising their rights under the constitution of the state, Trustees Winsten and Maddox sent a very threatening letter earlier this week to the ten proponents who signed the recall petition.

The letter demands that they immediately abandon their efforts or face civil and criminal charges.  Pretty intense.  One of the claims as to why they must cease is because the two claim they were not personally served the recall notices.  Now of course, I along with about 300 other people watched frank try to hand the notices to the trustees but he was intercepted and told to hand it to the board secretary instead.  Of course we know that they were properly served because they each filed 200 word responses within the 7 days that they were required to specifically answering those charges.

How can you in one letter answer to the charges against you and then in another say that you were not served?  Doesn’t quite add up to me.

Bottom line of course is that it’s not about whether they were served, it’s about them trying to scare people into backing down.  It’s all political for them and since they obviously don’t have a good track record to stand on, they resort to intimidation and bullying.

i think it’s a gross abuse of power to try to prevent citizens from exercising their rights.  It only confirms why these two need to be removed from office.