Leaving high school for college

Andrew Edwards

After nearly two decades working with local high schools, Bonnie

Castrey decided it was time for a change.

Castrey has been a school board member with Huntington Beach Union

High School District since 1985 -- before this year’s senior class

was born. But this year, she is looking for a new job as a trustee

with the Coast Community College District, which includes Surf City’s

Golden West College.

Castrey is looking for a new post with the specific intention of

ousting the incumbent, Armando Ruiz. Ruiz has been a trustee since

1983 and is expected to formally retire from his day job as a

counselor in the South Orange County Community College District on

Oct. 31. Ruiz’s upcoming retirement has been clouded in controversy

because a loophole in the state’s retirement system would allow him

to boost his pension by thousands of dollars if he also retires from

his trustee position that day, even though he could be elected back

into the job on Nov. 2.

“It’s an ethical issue for me,” Castrey said. “A trustee has to be

trusted by the public.”

Ruiz has declined to announce whether he will or will not retire

from his trustee’s post, and described his retirement as a private

financial matter with no bearing on educational policy.

“I like to talk about policy issues, and there’s no policy issues

involved, and it’s all personal,” he said.

Castrey is a professional mediator, and was appointed to the

Federal Service Impasses Panel in 1995 by President Bill Clinton. The

body mediates disputes between federal agencies and their employees.

She was selected as chairwoman in 2000.

She left the seven-member panel in 2002 when all of its members

were summarily fired by the current administration, she said.

Castrey traces her mediation skills to her childhood in the snowy

environs of Buffalo, New York, where as a child, she helped her blind

and diabetic grandmother with money and insulin shots.

“I learned at a very early age to work with people and solve

problems,” Castrey said, adding that she believes listening to audio

books with her grandmother honed her listening skills.

Aided by a scholarship, Castrey studied nursing at the University

of Buffalo’s Edward J. Meyer Memorial Hospital. While a student, she

made the decision to head out west while shoveling snow at 4 a.m. so

she could get in her car and get to class.

“I went into my house and went to mother and said, ‘When I get out

and get my license, I’m moving to California,’” she said.

She made the move in 1964 and earned her nursing degree at Cal

State, Long Beach. Her activities with the nurses’ union eventually

led her to find a new line of work in 1975 the Federal Mediation and

Conciliation Service. While on assignment in Hawaii, she met Robert

Castrey, another mediator who would become her husband. Their

marriage began as a long-distance affair, with her in California

while he stayed in Hawaii.

“It was telephone bills and flying back and forth,” she said. “It

was wild, but it’s been a great marriage.”

They already have 10 great-grandchildren, but she considers all of

her district’s high school students as part of her family. She said

her proudest achievement with the high school district was working to

help create the Academy for the Performing Arts, which opened on the

Huntington Beach High School Campus in 1993.

The academy was created to consolidate existing art programs for

talented students while the district was in the throes of budget

cuts, recalled former board member Bonnie Bruce. Bruce described

Bonnie Castrey as a “consummate board member” who dedicated many

hours to the job and was focused on students.

“It was always keeping cuts away from the classrooms,” Bruce said.

“Kids were always first.”