Transition and Upcoming Election for CUSD
by CUSD Trustee Mike Winsten

Since you first elected me to serve on the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees in the November 2008 election, my Board colleagues and I have embarked on the important work of reforming and improving CUSD.

Among our biggest achievements was the successful hiring of Dr. Joseph M. Farley as our new permanent superintendent starting July 1, 2010. Dr. Farley most recently served for five years as superintendent of nearby Anaheim Union High School District. He brings an impressive body of experience in all aspects of public education, including instruction, curriculum and facilities maintenance, improvement and construction, as well as a fresh, common-sense perspective. His hiring has been praised by all the major CUSD stakeholders – even the public employee unions that continue to disagree with us on so many other important issues.

Dr. Farley’s arrival and reception is a promising sign the future of CUSD remains bright - despite drastic funding cutbacks imposed by the State and continuing opposition from the leaders of CUSD’s public employee unions.

Of course, bringing reform and transition to a large organization like CUSD is never easy. Change is made more difficult in our current fiscal conditions. Bringing reform and positive change is especially difficult in our public school district, which spends approximately 85 percent of its entire budget on salaries and benefits for our employees – most of whom are represented by powerful union leaders.

We saw how hard this can be in April when union leaders called a strike, rejecting our school board’s offers of a balanced package of labor expense reforms. Ultimately, your school board members showed great courage and leadership by successfully modifying the unsustainable union contract in a manner that reduced labor expenses by 10.1 percent annually and imposed a cap on future health insurance contribution increases. This decision, while very unpopular with powerful union leaders and their activists, has been hailed throughout the State of California as a necessary measure to ensure the financial sustainability of our school district for the foreseeable future.

This past June, in the face of severe funding cutbacks from the State, our school board members approved a new budget for the next school year – and we kept our promise to voters by keeping our focus on our core mission of educating children. Union leaders urged us to increase class sizes as a way to balance the budget. We refused to do so – we would not agree to balance the budget on the backs of our students.

Instead, we successfully protected most music, sports and numerous secondary school electives. We were able to do so, in large measure, because we had successfully reduced the school district’s annual administrative overhead expenses and the cost of our contracts with the unions. In fact, as a result of the reforms we’ve implemented, CUSD’s annual administrative expenses are now among the lowest in the state for comparably sized districts. We accomplished this by upgrading the talent levels, efficiency and capabilities of our central administration and school site administrators.

Nonetheless, union leaders and their activists who never voted for our current school board members remain steadfastly opposed to our reform efforts. They complain in one breath that we brought too much reform in a short period of time – and in the next they complain we have not brought enough change quickly enough. The truth is, the critics of our current reform Board of Trustees have opposed us since the day we were sworn into office. They are a coalition of union leaders and activists who are still fighting to preserve an unsustainable status quo. In various ways, these critics have benefited from favors extended to them by the previous administration that controlled CUSD for 15 years. They are furious that voters rejected their union-backed candidates in the past elections – and now they are gearing up for another attempt to unwind all the positive reforms voters in CUSD elected us to accomplish.

In the November 2, 2010, General Election, control of our school district will be at stake (as five of the seven reform trustees will be on the ballot). Reform Trustees Ellen Addonizio, Anna Bryson and Larry Christenson (the “ABC Reform Trustees”) will face reelection. In addition, reform trustee Ken Lopez Maddox and myself are facing an early recall election that was promoted and supported by the public employee unions in CUSD.

Voters will have a clear choice in the November election – reelect the current conservative trustees who are dedicated to bringing positive change and reform to our school district, or replace them with candidates who are supported by the powerful public employee unions that want to preserve an unsustainable status quo.

In my view, the upcoming CUSD Board election will be a referendum on public education in South Orange County. Both sides of this debate will be airing out a lot of information during the upcoming election season. I urge you to do your own research and make up your own mind. 

Visit http://www.CUSDfacts.com to learn more.