Rally Aims to Enlist Foes of Orange Board

In a push to gather 4,500 more signatures on recall petitions, a group hoping to oust three Orange Unified School District trustees staged a parking-lot rally Saturday that featured speeches, placards and music in support of their cause.

About 30 minutes into the 1 p.m. event, two supporters of the targeted board members called police to complain they had been shoved and harassed. Officers responded to the site on East Katella Avenue in Orange and stayed until the end of the rally. No arrests were made.

One of the pro-recall speakers, Vice President Paul Pruss of the Orange Unified Education Assn., acknowledged that the two were not welcomed.

“If you throw a mouse in a room full of cats, what do you think is going to happen?” the union leader asked. “They were asked to leave politely.”

The school board has been at odds with the union for years over benefits and salaries. Since March 1998, the district’s 1,400 teachers have picketed board meetings, staged sickouts and demonstrations--sometimes accompanied by students--and waged an often-angry fight against their status as the lowest-paid teachers in Orange County.

In October, ending one of the most contentious teacher-contract negotiations in the state, 76% of the district’s teachers voted to accept a package that gives raises ranging from 1% for new faculty to 21% for the most experienced.

Board members say they have been forced to tighten the district’s purse strings to compensate for poor financial decisions in the past.

The recall is aimed at board President Linda Davis and members Martin Jacobson and Maureen Aschoff, who rally participants said have failed over the years to support teacher raises and are responsible for an exodus of 600 faculty members from the district since 1997.

Recall committee members have gathered 10,000 signatures since launching the rancorous recall campaign in July. They have until Jan. 11 to collect the rest but said they hope to finish the campaign before Christmas.

Saturday’s rally, which lasted about two hours, featured testimonials from former and current teachers in the district, and parents whose children attend its schools.

Teacher Bob Gunther told the group of about 100 parents and educators that he left the district after 23 years because he “felt like a piece of meat in the classroom.”

“It was really hard to leave,” Gunther said. “I kept hoping things would change . . . but the board didn’t seem to care too much about me. So I left and went to Anaheim, and I’m making more money, and I have a teacher’s assistant.”

The three targeted board members say the teachers union wants to control the district and is behind the recall campaign.

Davis said she and her colleagues have in mind only the best interests of the district and its 29,000 students.

“No one has worked harder than we have to fix the problems that were created in the past by bad decisions,” Davis said Saturday in a telephone interview from her home.

“I live here. These are my schools. My daughter graduated in ‘97, and there are 11 children and grandchildren of our board members who attend these schools. We want the very best for these schools,” she said.