A coalition of teachers and parents in Atascadero on California's Central Coast is looking for qualified people with an interest in the schools to run as candidates for school trustee seats - now that they have successfully overturned an outmoded method of electing the board by geographic areas.
Teachers in the Atascadero District Teachers Association joined with parents March 7 to mobilize the community behind Measure B-00, a local ballot measure that effectively abolishes the district's skewed geographic trustee areas and establishes a system whereby the seven trustees can live anywhere in the widespread district.
"This will mean that the board of trustees will be accountable to the people," says Sue O'Bryn, a high school math teacher who serves as president of the 320-member ADTA.
"This is a good thing for democracy, for our school district and for our kids," elementary school teacher Dona Robertson told the San Luis Obispo Tribune during a post-election victory party.
Voters overturned a 35-year-old system that started when the district unified to include the four outlying areas of Pozo, Santa Margarita, Carissa Plain and Creston.
In those pre-Proposition 13 years, when taxpayers had more say over the local education dollar, residents of each of the four areas were promised they would have representation on the board.
But the system made for a board that wasn't exactly reflective of the community and Prop. 13 eliminated the need to provide that type of geographic representation.
For a long time, the school board was "dominated by ranchers from these smaller communities who had their own little fiefdoms," says one Measure B-00 supporter.
As Atascadero has grown in population, the smaller communities have decreased in size.
"One of the trustees is from a district that has 40 registered voters," says O'Bryn. "He has never actually run for election and has never had anyone run against him. Now, under Measure B-00, all the trustees will have to be voted in by the community."
Parents - who had mounted a similar proposition previously - joined teachers in staffing phone banks and walking precincts to drum up support for the measure. They also received support from CTA in exchange for phone-banking on behalf of Prop. 26, the measure that would have lowered the percentage of voters needed to pass school bonds.
"We had a lot of support from teachers, but we also had a lot of community support, as well," says O'Bryn.
Now that the measure has passed, chapter members expect to get involved in the election of four new board members in November.
"Our relations with the board were not good," says O'Bryn. "We're looking for people with an interest in working together."
Dale Martin
