Oakley school trustees will discuss replacements on Thursday
Temporary board must decide whether to appoint trustees or hold an election.
A week after the entire Oakley Union Elementary School board resigned after making disparaging remarks during a virtual meeting, county officials who have temporarily filled the vacant seats are deciding how to replace them.
The fill-in trustees will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday to discuss the process on whether to appoint new trustees or hold an election. The meeting is open to the pubic.
The fallout began on Feb. 17 after three school trustees bad-mouthed parents who were eager to have their children return to in-person classes, saying they just “wanted their babysitters back,” or prefered to be home alone so they could smoke pot, while another used profanity to describe a parent who had criticized her. It all happened during a virtual session, which had inadvertently gone live early, as parents were logging in for a regular meeting to discuss a return to school.
After board Preisdent Liza Brizendine resigned on Feb. 18 and trustees Kim Beede, Erica Ippolito and Richie Masadas a day later, Contra Costa County Board of Education President Annette Lewis appointed herself and fellow county board member Mike Maxwell and Consuelo Lara as interim OUESD trustees.
Alaina Villeda had been chosen by the previous board to fill a vacant seat, but declined to accept it following the fallout.
Now, Lewis and others must decide whether to appoint a new board or hold a special election, the board president said.
On Thursday, the board will discuss the process of completing the appointment to fill Area 2 trustee position and also announce fture plans on how it could fill the remaining vacant positions.
The next regular school board meeting on March 10 conflicts with the county board meeting, though, so trustees had to move the meeting to accommodate schedules.
“The first thing is looking at the way we will fill the board positions — that is the top priority right now to get a local board set up,” Lewis, an Oakley resident, said. “But first we have to determine the process that is going to be followed.”
Education code gives the board two options — holding and election or appointing new trustees.
“We need to identify which is going to be used after getting public input at a public meeting,” Lewis said, noting there is little precedence because having an entire school board resign is rare. So rare, that no one can recall when it has happened though San Diego Union School District suffered a resignation of a majority of trustees in 2014.
If the board opts to let the voters decide, Contra Costa County Superintendent of Schools Lynn Mackey would have to first call for an election. The election could be held as early as 130 days after that call, according to California Education Code.
That puts a special election out until the fall, Lewis said.
If instead, the board decides to appoint new trustees, the procedure would be similar to how the Oakley school board handled it in the past with a call for applications followed by interviews and appointments, she said.
“We are going to do our best to ensure that good people are seated and they can move forward with local control,” Lewis said.
In the meantime, some parents questioned whether the reopening of schools might be delayed so the new board could deal with the openings and get up to speed on the hybrid reopening model that Superintendent Greg Hetrick revealed last week. The board originally was set to revisit the plans on March 10.
Lewis on Tuesday said new board members did not have all the information they needed and had not yet had time to examine the reopening plans. As such, she said she didn’t know what effect losing the entire board would have on such plans.
“I don’t know for sure if it’s going to slow anything down,” she said. “There’s only so many hours in a day and having a meeting go into the wee dark hours as you are trying to figure out replacing people and school reopenings, there’s only so much time.”
Lewis added that both county school board members newly appointed to temporarily serve Oakley have a lot of experience in education matters and both were former teachers.
“It’s difficult position even if nobody was doing anything else,” she said referring to the county education board duties they all still have. “We are hoping we can get things working for Oakley as soon as possible.”