School board candidates field questions at Huntington Beach forum
Vote-by-mail ballots were shipped out to more than 1.8 million registered voters in Orange County earlier this week.
Though voters may be in tune with national or even local city council races, they are often less familiar with school board elections.
The Huntington Union Council PTA aimed to help Monday night, as it hosted a school board candidates forum at the Senior Center in Central Park.
All 12 candidates from four school districts in Huntington Beach — Ocean View, Huntington Beach City, Huntington Beach Union High and Fountain Valley — showed up.
After a few warm-up questions which required candidates to flip over “yes” or “no” cards or give written replies, the live question part of the forum began, with candidates given 90 seconds each to respond to questions by moderators Erin Jenks and Vickie Waldo.
California State PTA President Shereen Walter, a Huntington Beach resident, attended the forum and gave a few words.
Here’s a breakdown of each district’s candidates and some of their priorities.
Ocean View School District
The district, which serves portions of Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley, among other cities, has five candidates for two seats.
Gina Clayton-Tarvin is the only current incumbent. John Briscoe, Keith Jorgensen, Keri Gorsage and David Clifford are the other candidates.
Clayton-Tarvin highlighted her 12 years as a trustee, including five as board president, even giving a shout out to her son, Tony, in the audience as she touted experience that she said was “second to none.”
“Most importantly, we want to make sure that we produce students that are positive and respectful in their interactions, and we want to make sure that families are involved,” she said.
Briscoe repeated the phrase “No new taxes” three times before issuing his responses. A former 16-year OVSD board member before Morgan Westmoreland edged him out for the third available seat in 2022, he said meeting state standards were another priority of his.
Jorgensen said he was a stay-at-home dad for his two children, which allowed him to get to know the particulars of school life. He said his real estate background would help him on the board and also said he wanted to make sure the board follows the recent city mandate making Huntington Beach a “Parents’ Right to Know City,” which the conservative City Council majority implemented via an ordinance last month.
Gorsage, like Clayton-Tarvin a longtime teacher, said she got into the race late but has been working at gathering information. She said her son was a victim of cyberbullying while attending Marine View Middle School, and support from teachers and the board changed her life.
“It’s not just about taking care of academics,” she said. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re taking care of our kids, socially and emotionally, making sure that they’re safe. Kids who feel safe, and kids who feel loved, want to learn.”
Clifford, who has two sons at Village View, said he got more involved and did research after that school was one of four that the district was considering potentially closing last year.
“I have studied the budget, read most of the bylaws, studied the education code, consulted with former and current board members,” he said. “I’ve even gone on a call with Washington and Sacramento to advocate for parents’ rights.”
Huntington Beach City School District
Cindy Barrios and Brian Burley are the two candidates running for the vacant seat in Trustee Area 1, which represents Huntington Seacliff Elementary School.
Barrios said she moved to Huntington Beach a few years ago, impressed by the city’s schools. Her two boys go to Seacliff, as the family moved from Washington, D.C. after she spent time there providing intelligence analysis support to special operations forces.
“I want to make sure that our classrooms are protected from the political and social agendas that are dividing our city and our nation today,” she said. “I believe that school boards need to be a nonpartisan mix of parents and educators.”
Burley works at USC, where he administrates learning management systems. He said he has been studying the district’s budget in recent months as he prepared for his run, and at least partially agreed with Barrios’ opinion.
“While we want to keep our school boards nonpartisan, we also want to keep the state and the federal government as far away as we possibly can,” he said.
Huntington Beach Union High School District
The Trustee Area No. 3 seat, which represents Ocean View and Marina high schools, is up for grabs. Incumbent Susan Henry is opposed by LeeAnn Corral.
Henry, a retired registered nurse, has been a board member for 24 years, and her three children all graduated from Fountain Valley High School.
She agreed with some of her colleagues that parental control is the No. 1 issue for school boards to be cognizant of, also touting her roles that have included president of the O.C. School Boards Assn. and California School Boards Assn.
“At the state level, being able to get on the phone and call someone and say, ‘Why is this happening?,’ I think that’s a strength of mine,” Henry said.
Corral is a longtime teacher whose two boys were both Huntington Beach High School graduates. She said the PTA has long been important in her family, noting that her brother-in-law, Jim Accomando, was recently the national PTA president.
“I’m not as thoroughly prepared as someone who’s been on for 20 years, but I really do think our board needs a fresh perspective, from a teacher’s point of view, from a parent’s point of view who has been through drama,” she said.
Fountain Valley School District
Three candidates, Huy Tran, Ashley Ramirez and Steve Schultz, are running for two available seats in the at-large district.
Tran said he started his career as a high school school counselor. He’s worked his way up to an assistant principal role at Santiago High School in Garden Grove, while being involved at his children’s elementary school and serving as PTO president.
“For me, the biggest issue is preparing our students for this unknown future and making sure our curriculum and training for our teachers meet these new changes in society,” he said.
Ramirez has a daughter in the district and has spent years working at colleges, including in her current role as a program lead responsible for recruitment and admissions for the Master of Innovation & Entrepreneurship program at UC Irvine.
“There’s a lot of noise out there trying to seep into education,” she said. “I want to keep it just on education and our kids, developing lifelong learners … I work in higher ed, so I see what happens when we don’t get early development right.”
Schultz is the incumbent in the race, the current school board president and a teacher at Fountain Valley High School.
He said he’s the first-ever former student of the district on the board, and he also has two nieces in the district.
“It’s personal to me,” he said. “I know the phenomenal education that I received in my time, and I want to make sure that continues to grow.”
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