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At Emergency SBE Meeting, Board Appoints Trustee to Oversee Alisal Union Elementary School District
The State Board of Education (SBE) convened via teleconference for a special meeting on Tuesday, and moved swiftly to appoint Monterey County Superintendent of Schools Nancy Kotowski as the interim trustee of the Alisal Union Elementary School District, based on the facts presented to the SBE regarding the district’s actions since March 11. The SBE determined that immediate action was necessary in order to preserve the district’s resources and protect the public interest. In terms of specific actions: The SBE moved to apply Corrective Action 3 under section 52055.57 of the California Education Code and appoint the Monterey County Superintendent of Schools as the immediate interim temporary state trustee for the Alisal Union Elementary School District. The county superintendent will have stay and rescind authority over the Alisal Union Board of Trustees decisions, until the SBE appoints a permanent trustee at its May 2010 board meeting. “The action taken today is an extension of the Board's March decision, and was called for by increasing instability in Alisal,” said State Board President Ted Mitchell. “Our aim is to stabilize the situation in Alisal in the short run and, in the long run, to help the community build the kind of district that its students deserve.” Mitchell also described the situation in Alisal as “dysfunctional.” At the March 11 State Board meeting, the SBE voted unanimously to assign state trustees for the Alisal Union Elementary School District and Greenfield Union Elementary School District. Upon selection of the specific trustee for each district, the trustee would be responsible for determining appropriate actions aimed at increasing student achievement. The State Board instructed the California Department of Education (CDE) and State Board staff to immediately begin a process of consultation with the Alisal and Greenfield communities to determine the recommendations to the SBE for trustees, the communities desires for its schools, and gather insight into particular qualities that the community views as important for the trustee to possess. The Board directed President Mitchell, SBE, and CDE staff to identify a pool of qualified candidates and develop milestones and a timeline for the trustees to exit the district. The trustee is scheduled to be announced at the May 2010 board meeting. According to reports in the Monterey County Herald and the Salinas Californian, the Alisal school board has taken several actions since the SBE decided on March 11 to appoint a trustee. Those actions reportedly included since March 11, when the state decided to place the district under an outside trustee, an Alisal board decision to give all principals precautionary layoff notices; a March 24 special meeting of the Alisal board where candidates were interviewed to replace then-Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas; the approval, at the same meeting, of two contracts for data analysis and program improvement for $80,000; and a decision on March 26 to buy out the contract of Superintendent Zendejas (who will continue as a consultant) and replace her with Interim Superintendent John Ramirez Jr. Tuesday’s special meeting via teleconference is presumably a harbinger of the future. In recent months, several SBE members have remarked that the board now handles too much business to complete during the SBE’s traditional two-day meetings, held every other month. But getting a quorum of SBE members together in Sacramento for additional meetings has proven difficult. For Tuesday’s special meeting, SBE members were physically located in Woodland Hills, Northridge, Pasadena and Los Angeles, as well as in San Jose and Sacramento. Since “eye contact” was not possible for everyone involved, President Ted Mitchell asked each location if anyone present wanted to offer public comment, etc. Source: State Board of Education, EdBrief staff |
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