ORANGE : School Board Criticized for Anti-Measure R Resolution

Despite scathing criticism from union leaders, Orange Unified School District trustees this week passed a resolution opposing the half-cent sales tax increase proposed to help Orange County out of its financial crisis.

Measure R, the sales tax initiative to go before voters on June 27, would raise $130 million annually for 10 years to compensate for $1.7 billion lost when the county’s investment pool collapsed Dec. 6.

Trustee Martin Jacobson had asked that his school board colleagues vote on a resolution Thursday saying, in part, that the school board “is an advocate of lower taxes and . . . hereby declares its opposition to Measure R.”

County government, acting “as a business would,” should cut services and make efforts to privatize and sell assets before raising taxes, the resolution said.

Two union leaders, however, called the board’s 6-1 vote for the resolution an “outrage.”

“What on earth does this have to do with education?” asked David Reger, president of the Orange Unified Education Assn. “Where is it stated that [the district] is against taxes?”

Reger later issued a statement saying that the board members are “an embarrassment” whose only “agenda is politics, pure and simple, not the well-being of the district.”

Hazel Stover, past OUEA president who now works for the California Teachers Assn., said that, if board members are willing to give up the millions of dollars the tax could be expected to bring in, then they should be able to afford to raise teachers’ salaries and reduce class size.

An Orange resident, William Hoey, said he too was angered by the vote. “Shame on you, Mr. Jacobson, for wasting time putting this on paper,” he said. “I resent it deeply.”

Jacobson responded that Measure R is a hot issue and that residents deserve to know where elected officials stand.

Trustee James Fearns cast the one vote against the resolution. “I do not feel a decision is necessary for me on this issue until June 27,” he said.