School board:No term limits

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District board doesn’t appear to have term limits in its near future, as the trustees turned back a proposal by school board member Karen Yelsey to hold officials to 12 years of service or less.

Yelsey, who scored an upset victory over incumbent Serene Stokes in November, proposed a system in which trustees could serve no more than three consecutive four-year terms. Yelsey’s plan would have started in January 2009. On Tuesday, however, her motion died without a second.

Yelsey said she was disappointed but admitted that the district had many other issues to consider. In her motion, she asked the board to vote to put the item on the 2008 primary election ballot.

For the time being, Yelsey said, she didn’t plan to pursue the issue further.

“It was a campaign issue I had run on, and I felt I owed it to the public to bring it up,” she said. “It’s not something to die on for me, for sure.”

Two of Newport-Mesa’s trustees, Judy Franco and Martha Fluor, have served longer than three terms; Franco, if she completes her latest term, will set a Newport-Mesa record by serving 30 consecutive years. Both trustees are active in the California School Boards Assn. — Franco as a delegate to Sacramento and Fluor as a regional director.

Board member David Brooks, who opposes term limits, said longevity was important for trustees to forge relationships around the state. Moreover, he said, most trustees opted for one or two terms anyway — and some in recent years, including Stokes and Wendy Leece, had been voted out of office.

“It seems to be working quite well because of the turnover that we have,” Brooks said. “Yes, it is a lot of work to unseat an incumbent, but it seems that we’ve unseated a lot of incumbents. We’re not having a problem with turnover.”