The Orange Unified School District Board of Education will consider the three applicants for the Trustee Area 1 seat vacancy created when Trustee Diane Singer resigned her seat last month and moved from her Anaheim Hills home to a new house in Mabury Ranch in East Orange, which is outside of Area 1.
The Board has winnowed the applicants down to Chris Nguyen, Gregory Salas and Andrea Yamasaki. I posted last week on the original nine applicants to the vacancy. Two of the DQ’d candidates were Roberto Flores de Apodaca, the psychologist whose findings embattled Judge Marc Kelly relied upon to shave 15 years off the 25-year sentence of Kevin Jonas Rojano-Nieto, the 20-year convicted sexually molesting a 3-year-old female relative; and Kevin Rulon, Mayor Tom Tait’s next-door neighbor and a retired police chief who was fired from last two chief positions he held.
The OUSD Board will hold a special meeting on Monday, September 21 at 6:30 p.m. at which the three finalists will each give a three-minute statement, and then the Board will make nominations and vote until someone gets four votes.
This is from the staff report for the September 21:
On September 15, the Board took action to approve a process to make the provisional appointment of a trustee for Area 1 on the Orange Unified School District’s Board of Education. The process is for each Trustee to paper screen the eligible candidates’ documents and determine the candidate(s) each Trustee wishes to invite to make a three minute statement to the Board and community this evening. Subsequent to the invited candidates’ statements, the Board will nominate and vote on the provisional appointee.
On September 17, candidate Andrew Fisher withdrew himself from the process. The following candidates were screened in by four or more Trustees and are invited to address the Board and community this evening: 1. Christopher Nguyen 2. Gregory Salas 3. Andrea Yamasaki
FISCAL IMPACT: Up to $500,000 if a trustee is not appointed by the deadline
RECOMMENDATION: It is recommended that the Board hear the candidate statements and make a provisional appointment to the vacant seat for Trustee Area 1.
According to California Education Code 5091, citizens who disagree with the Board’s choice or who just want a special election would have 30 days to circulate a petition and gather 1,587 valid signatures. If that happens, according to the Election Code, “the provisional appointment is terminated, and the county superintendent of schools shall order a special election to be conducted no later than the 130th day after the determination.”
According to a recent post on the Greater Orange News Blog (which steadfastly refuses to update its antiquated, user-unfriendly Blogspot design) “Anaheim Hills opponents to one candidate, Chris Nguyen- who is politically connected to the majority of the OUSD Board under Timothy Surridge- are already organizing to circulate petitions if Nguyen is appointed.”
That may be, since one of the other candidates, Andrea Yamasaki, is a PTSA president and founding member of a group pushing for the enactment of a school bond. Conservative OUSD voters have never approved a school bond, although last year’s Measure K came within a whisker of passage. Bond proponents are gearing up for another try.
It should be noted that the Greater Orange News Blog has historically been antagonistic toward the current conservative majority on the OUSD Board of Education, and is already painting Chris Nguyen as a “right-wing political operative.”
Chris Nguyen, a policy advisor to Supervisor Todd Spitzer, is a conservative and provides campaign consulting services in addition to his day job. He is also incredibly smart and well-informed, exhibits a mastery of policy and government arcana, and has the work ethic of a draught horse. Policy difference are fair game, but any attempt to portray him as sinister is 
dishonest and lame.
