A hardline OC school board wages a final battle

The conservative Placentia-Yorba Linda School District board majority voted Tuesday to make it more difficult for the incoming, post-election board, to oust district leaders.

Voters flipped the board on Nov. 5. Now, the outgoing majority wants to lock in some of its controversial changes.

It’s a scenario that’s likely playing out across the country in the lame duck weeks after Election Day. But the battles have become heightened in our polarized political environment, and especially at school boards, where hot-button issues have captured headlines.

Here's the backstory

The district in north Orange County has been a battleground for culture wars and budget debates in recent years. The school board was one of the first in the state to ban the teaching of critical race theory, in 2022.

They passed a parental notification policy last year, though the policy excludes any explicit mention of “gender identity.”

The deeply divided factions on the five-member board — along with their public supporters — have also fought over top-level hirings and firings, and the budgeting for a charter school and an elite sports institute, which opened this fall.

In November, voters returned one conservative candidate to the board and rejected another in favor of a more moderate candidate. The upshot is that the once-powerful conservative majority has lost its firm grip on the board.

But at Tuesday’s board meeting, they made a move that could lock in district leaders. Some parents and community members say it’s an effort to thwart the will of voters.

“This block is just grabbing power that they can wield in the minority to frustrate the will of the community,” said resident Dave Radlauer. Radlauer had filed a legal complaint seeking to block the vote, but was denied by a judge. He told LAist he's still deciding whether to continue to fight the action in court.

The district leaders and their supporters said the outcry over the contracts was overblown.

What happened in the election?

One board member on the conservative side, Shawn Youngblood, decided not to seek re-election this year. He was replaced by Tricia Quintero, who won 63% of the vote. Quintero is an elementary school teacher who campaigned on a platform of fiscal transparency and eliminating “divisiveness and partisan politics.”

Marilyn Anderson, who has repeatedly clashed with the board majority and Superintendent Alex Cherniss in recent years, won re-election.

That leaves the once-powerful majority potentially in the minority, though Quintero has said she'll make her own decisions and has not indicated publicly whether she wants to replace district leaders.

What is the current board proposing?

At their meeting Tuesday, the board discussed amendments to the contracts for Cherniss and three other top administrators that would require a supermajority vote to dismiss them — four out of five board members — rather than a simple majority (or three votes). That means at least one of the two remaining members of the outgoing conservative faction would have to side with the new majority on any leadership changes.

They passed the amendments by a 3-2 vote.

Before the vote, the local teachers’ union sent a cease and desist letter to Cherniss and school board president Leandra Blades, saying the supermajority requirement would violate the state’s education code. In the letter, they called the proposed contract change “a naked attempt to shield the outgoing Board’s preferred administrators from termination once the newly-elected board is installed.”

In an interview with LAist, Blades called the union’s effort to block the contract changes “extremely hypocritical.” She said prior lame duck school boards had made similar supermajority requirements to oust former superintendents.

“I guess a supermajority vote is OK for the superintendents they like but not for the ones they don’t like,” Blades said.

Anderson, though, said there’s a difference: The contract changes require a supermajority to oust the superintendent even if there’s misconduct. “I’m concerned about the power grab,” Anderson said.

Nevertheless, requiring supermajority votes to dismiss superintendents — with and without cause — is not unusual. Cherniss shared with LAist numerous contracts in school districts throughout the state that require supermajority board votes for dismissal. It's unclear whether any were tied to the election cycle.

Cherniss also noted that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill last year intended to curb the sudden firing of superintendents after an election. The bill, SB 494, prohibits school boards from holding a special meeting to fire top district leaders within 30 days of being seated after an election. It was passed shortly after the newly seated Orange Unified School District board abruptly fired its superintendent in 2023 at a special meeting held during winter break.

Other proposed changes

A few other things on tonight’s agenda have caught the attention of critics:

• A proposal to add two additional meetings before the new board is sworn in.
  Blades told LAist it’s in case the proposed contract changes for Cherniss and other top administrators get held up in court. But critics worry the outgoing majority will try to push through more controversial changes.
• A public hearing on proposed changes to the charter petition for the Orange County School of Computer Sciences.
  The proposal would create an independent board to oversee the school, rather than be governed directly by the district school board. It would also absorb the district’s new Universal Sports Institute into the charter school, which some see as another power grab. (Blades said it would make it easier for athletes to access teachers.)
• The portion of the meeting designated for public comment was moved to the end of the meeting — after the vote on administrators’ contracts.
  Not allowing people to comment on agenda items as they come up could be a violation of the state Brown Act, said David Loy, legal director with the First Amendment Coalition. Ultimately, people were given time to comment on the contract changes and the charter school issue before the board's discussion, but comment on other agenda items was held until near the end of the meeting. "Public comment is not necessarily supposed to change board members’ votes,” Blades told LAist.