4 on Moorpark School Board Face Recall Bid

Four members of the Moorpark Unified School District board have been served with recall notices by members of a citizens’ group angry about delays in contract negotiations with teachers and plans to dispose of a 69-year-old high school.

Tom Baldwin, Patty Waters, Lynda Kira and Carla Robertson said they were given the recall notices at their homes Tuesday night by members of the Committee to Save Moorpark High School.

The board’s fifth member, Cynthia Hubbard-Dow, who is a member of the citizens’ committee, was not served with recall papers.

The recall notices list a variety of charges against the four members, including neglect of leadership, disdain for public involvement and fiscal irresponsibility. The four said the charges are vague and untrue.

Representatives of the citizens’ committee could not be reached for comment.

Kira, the board’s president, said what is behind the recall is the board’s decision earlier this year to advertise for developers interested in buying or leasing the 29-acre high school site.

“The people who want to save the high school had threatened to recall us if we didn’t preserve their memories by saving the school,” Kira said. “But my charge is to educate students, not preserve . . . memories.”

The board members who received the notices said the district cannot afford to keep the school open. The district is completing construction of a new high school across town using $15 million in state money, district officials said. That school is scheduled to open in September.

Members of the school preservation committee told the City Council last month that residents oppose large-scale development of the downtown high school site because it would increase traffic and cause other problems. The city, which must rezone the site before it can be developed, plans to include the property in a comprehensive study of local development that is expected to take several months.

Committee members also said the site should be saved because it is of historical significance. Moorpark Memorial High School was the first high school in eastern Ventura County, at one time serving students who lived as far away as Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks.

Steady Growth

The district, with about 4,200 students in kindergarten through 12th grades, has been growing at a rate of between 10% and 15% a year, district officials said. Most of that growth has been in new housing tracts outside the downtown area.

Hubbard-Dow said teachers in the district support the recall because of the prolonged contract talks over the past 10 months.

The district’s 166 teachers have been working since July without a contract. They are asking for a 10.5% salary increase over two years; the district has offered a 6% increase plus a 1.5% bonus during that period.

The district has asked that the new contract require teachers to work beyond their seven-hour days so that they can meet with parents, which the teachers have rejected.

Negotiations between the district and the Moorpark Educators Assn., which represents the teachers, are scheduled to resume Friday.

To initiate a recall election, the citizens’ committee has 90 days to collect the signatures of about 2,400 registered Moorpark voters for each of the four board members, said a spokeswoman for the county clerk’s office. It is unlikely that the signatures could be verified in time for the November election.