Too many appointees on the board at Chula Vista Elementary School District?

See more about new trustee Glendora Tremper below. See more about CVESD HERE.

Too many appointees
Peter Watry
UT San Diego
May 2, 2012

In response to “School board selects new trustee” (South County, utsandiego.com, April 24): I arrived in Chula Vista in 1961 for the opening of Southwestern Community College. For the first five years, we had the same superintendent (Joe Rindone) and governing board as the high school. At their monthly meetings they would end the high school meeting and then start the college one.

Chula Vista was not very large then, and education was not very political. It was thought that all areas of the district ought to be represented, and so there were two Board members from National City, two from Chula Vista and one from Imperial Beach.

How did they arrange that? I do not know how it got started, but once it did they kept it going by a “gentlemen’s agreement” that if one of them wanted to leave the board, he would resign before the end of his term. The others would then appoint someone from that same city, and he would run as the incumbent and get elected.

As people became more interested in what was happening in their schools, and more “political,” that system finally came apart.

But now the Chula Vista Elementary School District seems to be copying it. Of the five members of its governing board, four of them got there by being appointed – not by being elected. And they apparently all knew each other before being appointed.

As Churchill once said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government – except all the others that have been tried.” Do I hope in vain that the Chula Vista Elementary School District will give democracy a try once again? But meanwhile, we are not voting for any more bond measures until they arrange to only have elected people on the board.

The city of Chula Vista has changed its charter so that anyone appointed to a temporary vacancy on the council cannot run in the next election. So you can depend that the leadership of our city is being managed by people we elected to do so. Sad to say, that is not true of the Chula Vista Elementary School [District] board.



Chula Vista school district selects new trustee
Caroline Dipping
UTSD
April 24, 2012

The Chula Vista Elementary School District has appointed longtime educator Glendora M. Tremper as its newest trustee. Tremper, a bilingual language-speech and hearing specialist and former student services coordinator at South Bay Union School District, was sworn in by Superintendent Francisco Escobedo at a special board meeting Monday night at the Education Service and Support Center.

Board members, minus Douglas Luffborough who was absent, unanimously approved Tremper, 57, to replace Russell Coronado who resigned in March, citing “personal reasons.” Tremper will serve out the remainder of his term which ends in December.

The board decided not to fill the vacancy through a special election because of its estimated cost of $770,000 to $800,000. Casting its net throughout the community, the district received 12 applications and winnowed the field down to two candidates, Tremper and John Mendez, a local businessman with four children who are current or former school district students.

Tremper and Mendez made brief presentations and answered questions posed by trustees at Monday’s special meeting.

“We can’t go wrong with either candidate,” said board member Larry Cunningham during discussions. “The easiest way out is to expand the board.”

Board President Pamela Smith said in her 18 years on the board, she has been through the process of choosing a new member four times, but “this is the toughest in terms of neck and neck candidates.”

This is third time since 2007 the board has appointed a new member. Trustee David Bejarano was chosen out of a pool of 39 candidates in 2007 after Cheryl Cox stepped down following her election as mayor of Chula Vista. Luffborough was selected out of 23 applicants in 2009 after Bertha Lopez resigned to serve on the Sweetwater Union High School District board.

Born in Cincinnati, Tremper is currently a lead language-speech and hearing specialist at River Springs Charter School in Temecula. She was coordinator of student services for South Bay Union School District for nine years, and a bilingual language-speech and hearing specialist for that district for seven years. Tremper has a master’s degree in speech-language pathology from San Diego State University and a bachelor’s degree in speech-language pathology from the University of Texas at El Paso. She lives in Chula Vista with her family and has a 6th grade son in the Chula Vista Elementary School District.