In the March 5 election, Orange County voters will choose three of five trustees on the Orange County Board of Education.
In District 1, incumbent Jorge Valdes is being challenged by Beatriz Mendoza. Mendoza describes herself on her campaign website as “a non-profit executive, longtime community volunteer, education policy expert, former city commissioner, and mother of three.”
In District 3, incumbent Ken Williams Jr. faces Nancy Watkins, a lifelong educator.
In District 4, incumbent Tim Shaw goes against David Johnson, a management consultant and current trustee on the board of the Westminster School District.
Although the posts are nonpartisan, the races are similar with generally conservative incumbents opposed by generally liberal challengers endorsed by the powerful California Teachers Association. Interviews with the six candidates revealed virtually identical talking points among the two sides. The incumbents emphasized school choice and the rights of parents, while the opponents emphasized district control over charter schools and criticized the board for wasting money on lawsuits and obsessing over culture wars.
We have two main issues we’re watching. First is fiscal responsibility, especially with the state budget deficit projected to be at least $38 billion. We look for a government body’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, which is an audit, not a speculative budget proposal; specifically, the Unrestricted Net Position number. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023, the Orange County Department of Education’s UNP was an impressive $167,327,724 in the positive. By contrast, the ACFR for the equivalent Los Angeles County Office of Education, the UNP was in the negative: -$34,277,810. And for Johnson’s Westminster SD, it also was in the negative: -$124,586,452.
On that front, then, the Orange County Department of Education is on solid financial footing.
The second issue is the matter of school choice. Allowing competition among different schools gives parents options. Charters also often specialize, stressing arts, science or other fields more tailored to individual interests and needs of students. While both major parties once championed charter schools, Democrats have increasingly succumbed to the oppositional rhetoric of teachers unions which view them as threats to their power.
The board incumbents – Valdes, Williams and Shaw – have been strong backers of charters. If an application to a new charter is denied by one of OC’s 28 school districts, the OCBE can take up an appeal. Sometimes they approve it, and sometimes they don’t.
The challengers in this case want the board to mostly defer to the decisions of local school boards. But we question the wisdom of doing so, given the influence of teachers unions over local school boards.
Typical is a Jan. 10 letter sent to members of the CTA-affiliated Orange Unified Education Association by President Greg Goodlander, encouraging a vote for Watkins. He complained about recent charter approvals and how “this affects public schools’ enrollment, funding, and sometimes even our campuses! They take valuable resources from our students, jobs from our educators, and they are not bound by the same rigor and standards that we are.”
Actually, charters also are public schools, paid for by tax dollars. Some are so popular they have long waiting lists. As to “rigor and standards,” a main value of charters is they work mostly outside the “California Education Code, 2023 Edition,” which runs to a labyrinthine 2,000 pages.
Moreover, several new laws in recent years tightened charter regulations, such as Assembly Bill 1505 from 2019, which mandated charter teachers must have state credentials. And in OC charters are just 5% of total enrollment, compared to 11% statewide. We hope OC’s number goes higher.
In our interviews, incumbents Valdes, Williams and Shaw impressed us with their fiscal prudence and backing of more charter schools. We don’t dispute the qualifications of the challengers, but we fear what an Orange County Board of Education with outsized teachers union influence would look like.
To be sure, we don’t agree with everything the board does. They’ve spent, for example, too much time on culture war spats. When they focus on their core functions, they’re at their best. The OC Department of Education is fiscally sound and the board members are champions of school choice. That merits our endorsement. Accordingly, we endorse them for re-election.
