Embattled School District Faces Election : Education: Scandal and accusations of political maneuvering by the Orange Unified board have drawn 19 candidates hoping to fill four seats and one unexpired term of office.

ORANGE —  The lingering effects of a years-old kickback scandal and divisive labor disputes have made the Orange Unified School District board race the most crowded and controversial of the eight school contests on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Plagued by the scandal and a seven-day teachers’ strike last spring, the first in the county in three years, the district also has had more recent problems. Board members were accused of making a controversial school-boundary change out of the public eye by traveling to Palm Springs in August and making the decision there.

This tumultuous atmosphere has resulted in 19 candidates vying for four single-district seats and an unexpired term in a fifth area.

The three incumbents seeking reelection to the seven-member board have struggled to get out from under the shadow of Orange County’s biggest school scandal in a decade. One of them, county General Services Agency supervisor Joe J. Cherry, could face a new trial on charges in connection with the kickback scandal that rocked the district more than three years ago.

Critics say that by running again, Cherry is prolonging the district’s inability to move beyond its infamy. Cherry, however, says he’s running partly to vindicate himself.

Six candidates have filed to run against him in Area 5, the highest number of challengers in any of the Orange Unified races.

“The shadow is not only over the board, but it’s all over the whole district,” said Kevin Rice, a businessman who is seeking election to another vacant seat.

The other two trustees implicated in the matter, Ruth C. Evans, who has served 20 years on the board, and Robert James Elliott, who has served for 25 years, are not seeking reelection.

The three were accused by the 1986-87 Orange County Grand Jury of “willful misconduct in office” for allegedly not minding the store while thousands of dollars in kickback contracts were negotiated from the district’s headquarters.

The other two incumbents seeking reelection besides Cherry, board President Sandy Englander and trustee Jane McCracken, have consistently reminded voters that they were not on the board when the alleged incidents of mismanagement occurred.

McCracken was named to the board in February to fill a vacancy when member William Steiner was appointed to the Orange City Council. By law, the district must put his position on the ballot even though there are only two years left in Steiner’s four-year term.

The district has more than 25,000 students and includes the cities of Orange and Villa Park, and portions of Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana.

The campaign has been marked by high spending--some candidates say they are spending as much as $20,000--political consultants advising the candidates and a variety of forums in which district employees have tried to challenge incumbents on the issues.

Earlier this month, about 80% of the district’s 1,200 non-teaching employees staged a sickout to protest a breakdown in wage negotiations. An agreement has yet to be reached in that matter. On Thursday about 200 chanting non-classified employees demonstrated outside the district’s offices as board members were meeting.

Also this month, parents criticized the board for making a controversial change in school attendance boundaries while they were at a retreat in Palm Springs, with no members of the public present.

Several representatives of the teacher’s union, wearing buttons that said, “Kids, not Politics,” presented a “State of the Schools” report to the board Thursday night, citing overcrowded classrooms and lack of support for the district’s bilingual education program.

Last year, the district’s teachers staged a seven-day strike over wage negotiations, and relations between them and the district are still less than cordial.

The unions for both employee groups have jointly endorsed a field of candidates, but did not support any incumbents.

They endorsed Nancy Moore, a former teacher who is now an administrator for the Azusa Unified School District, for Area 3, the seat now held by McCracken; Lila Beavans, a consultant to the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, in Area 4, Elliott’s seat; Barry Resnick, a department chairman at Rancho Santiago College for Area 5, who is running against Cherry; and James Preston, a medical doctor, for Area 7, Evans’ old seat.

The teachers did not endorse in the Area 1 race, the seat held by Englander.

“We feel it’s time for a change,” Stover said in a recent interview. “We feel there’s got to be a change in the direction of the school board. We’re tired of politics being the major motivator in this district.

“Teachers are very frustrated because we know this is a good district in spite of everything around us,” she said. “Yet it’s getting more and more difficult to stay here and fight the good fight when you really don’t have the support, when downtown has other priorities.”

But the biggest issue facing incumbents during this election is the ghost of the past few years’ troubles.

Bob Bennyhoff, who delivers sharp barbs to the board every chance he gets or in Common Talk, a community newspaper partly owned by his wife, says the board has not overcome the taint of the bid-rigging scandal.

“There is a general sense of unease, a general sense of mistrust dating back to the early ‘80s,” he said recently. “I don’t believe the people of this district have confidence in this board. . . . People still believe things are just not right down there, and they will not support any of the current board members.”

Several candidates running for public office for the first time say that it was those events that prompted them to enter the campaign.

In his campaign literature, candidate Al Irish, an accountant running for the Area 7 seat, talks about “the lack of trust and confidence the public, parents and school employees have here in Orange.” Candidate Beavans says in a flyer: “The lack of leadership at the board level has caused serious problems in poor morale among parents and employees.”

Other candidates say that the current board has spent so much time keeping itself out of legal hot water that it hasn’t had time to deal with the business of educating children.

“Our district has declined into a private club that is concerned less with our children or schools and more with politics,” said James Preston, another Area 7 candidate. “I honestly believe the Orange Unified school board has let our children down.”

Terri Sargent, a part-time land-use planner with the county, said she is challenging Cherry “because I want to put the focus back on the needs of children.”

A two-year investigation by the Orange Police Department and the district attorney’s office resulted in the 1987 indictments of former district maintenance supervisor Steven L. Presson, his wife and two contractors. They were charged with misappropriation of public funds, but the complex case has been stalled by delays and has yet to go to trial.

While no criminal action was taken against three members who were on the board at the time of the alleged bid-rigging, the civil charges against them could lead to a loss of office. A fourth board member, Eleanore Pleines, was also accused by the grand jury, but she resigned her seat in 1987.

Cherry continues to fight the charges because he believes he should not be penalized for the criminal actions of someone else.

“It’s just beyond me to know how I’m supposed to know what happens in the heart of an organization when I come in part time and only as a policy-maker,” he said. “We (the trustees) are actually policy-setters. We set policy and give direction to the superintendent.”

He added that he would not be spending so much money to defend himself if he was not innocent. The three board members have been told that if they do not seek reelection, the charges will be dropped, because the only penalty is removal from office.

“If I don’t run, I still have an obligation for a good deal of money to a legal firm, and if I don’t run, . . . it’s all over, I’ll have been smeared and I’ll never have an opportunity to defend myself. The decision to run was not difficult. The decision not to run would have been extremely difficult for me.”

The incumbents say they realize that the baggage they bring from the past few years could weigh them down during this campaign.

“I guess right now I think we’ve been through a very hard last four years,” Englander said. The investigations and charges “really put most of us back a while,” she said. “A lot of effort went into not so much defending (the three board members), but we did file our own lawsuit against Presson and that took up a lot our time. . . . It really has been a drain on our energies.”

ORANGE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT CANDIDATES

On Tuesday, Nov. 7, voters in the Orange Unified School District will choose candidates for five seats on the seven-member board of trustees. The 25,000-student district includes the cities of Orange and Villa Park, and parts of Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana.

Seats for areas 1, 4, 5 and 7 are 4-year terms; in area 3, voters will choose a candidate to serve the remaining two years of William G. Steiner’s term. Jane McCracken was appointed to the seat in February after Steiner resigned to accept appointment to the Orange City Council.

Area 1

John Hurley College instructor Anaheim

Area 4

Lila Beavans Training and development consultant Villa Park

James H. Fearns Deputy probation officer Orange

Area 5

Joe Cherry Incumbent Silverado

Bob King Contract administrator Anaheim

Barry P. Resnick Businessman/educator Orange

Terri H. Sargeant Land-use planner Orange

Ron Yocom Manufacturing engineer Silverado

Area 7

Wendell Handy Businessman Orange

Alan E. Irish Certified public accountant Orange

James B. Preston Podiatrist Orange

Kevin Rice Small businessman Orange

Area 3 (Unexpired)

Nancy L. Moore Administrator for instructional services Orange

Photographs of the following candidates were not available at press time: Area 1--Sandy Gilbert Englander, incumbent, Orange Area 3 (unexpired term)--Kenneth F. Morick, engineer, Orange; Jane McCracken, incumbent, Orange Area 4--Mel Ross, educational administrator, Orange Area 5--Keith Lynn, school book distributor, Silverado; John Michael Covas, attorney, Silverado