CUSD Update
Is old-regime trustee switching sides?

What happened during the Aug. 13 closed-session process of selecting a new interim superintendent? Some Capistrano school district constituents allege Brown Act violations occurred after one of the old-regime trustees voted with the three new trustees on a critical vote.

Did holdover Trustee Duane Stiff side with the new reform trio who wanted to hire Woodrow Carter? If speculation about this is correct, the vote to hire Carter was 4-3 (Marlene Draper, Sheila Benecke and Mike Darnold dissenting). A second vote, 7-0, may have been taken to give an appearance the old regime is still in control.

Benecke evidently told some CUSD constituents before the Aug. 13 meeting that she favored rehiring Charles McCulley, who served as interim superintendent following the resignation of former superintendent James Fleming. The word spread that McCulley, known for his “let’s move on” attitude, would likely get the job. CUSD residents who have read the grand jury transcripts remarked that McCulley came across during his testimony as uninformed about district finances and overly reliant on Fleming’s old lieutenants to make decisions. According to insiders, Stiff supported Carter for the new interim post.

Stiff, who rarely comments during board meetings, was assessed by a Mission Viejo activist: “When Stiff spoke up during the Aug. 13 open session, he sounded hoarse. I’d never heard him speak before, so maybe that’s just the way he sounds. Partly because he’s quiet, he doesn’t have a bull’s-eye painted on his forehead in the current CUSD recall effort, which targets only Draper and Benecke. If Stiff had any political smarts, he would realize how much power he’d have as the swing vote. Both sides would end up courting him instead of one or the other trying to bury him.”

When the board came out of the Aug. 13 closed session, President Benecke didn’t report the vote tally, nor did she say the board had decided on Carter. The reform trustees made a motion to hold a meeting on Aug. 17 to finalize the contract. Is it true that old-guard trustees (Draper, Benecke and/or Darnold) spent the next three days trying to derail the hiring of Carter?

As another topic, last week’s opening of the district’s new $152-million high school in San Juan Capistrano emphasized a number of questions that haven’t been answered. The underlying real-estate deal smells about the same as the methane-belching landfill next to the school. The land belonged to the state (U.C. Regents) until it was purchased in 1999 by developer Dennis Gage. He bought 256 acres for around $3 million and then offered to give a portion of it to the city of San Juan Capistrano for a park. After the city turned it down, the developer sold the portion – 52 acres – to the school district in 2003 for approximately $53 million, and CUSD also paid the developer to grade his property for a housing development. Is the D.A. not curious about the price going from $11,000-plus per acre to zero when it was offered to the city and from zero to more than $1 million per acre when the district bought it? Another question that hasn’t been answered is how or why the developer received an offer of $53 million for property that wasn’t on the market.

With the developer making a fortune on the school site alone – and millions more to come from his housing development – did he share the wealth with any of the deal-makers at CUSD? Perhaps this was a point of reference when the D.A. in May said more charges are possible.