NEWSMAKER OF THE YEAR:

The Huntington Beach City School District board has drawn crowds many times this year. But many who showed came in anger, and activists have been watching them closely ever since the summer.

The board made up of Celia Jaffe, Shirley Carey, Cathy McGough, Brian Rechsteiner and Rosemary Saylor has drawn community ire for considering whether to sell or lease four closed public school sites, two of which house private Christian schools and all of which have fields used for youth sports programs. But trustees say looking at their options is the right thing to do.

The controversy has had a wider effect on the city. More than 2,000 signatures are on the www.savehbcommunity.com website’s petition not to sell school sites, and some individual comments there call out the board members by name as unfit to govern — though the group has shied away from any recall effort so far. The issue even affected neighboring school districts. Incoming Ocean View School District Supt. Alan Rasmussen was careful to say in interviews that he wanted to look at leasing, not selling, that district’s closed school sites.

It wasn’t the only issue this year in which the trustees faced a hostile room. Teachers packed meetings in April after some extra money found in the budget went to raises for principals and Supt. Roberta DeLuca, as well as adding another assistant superintendent position. Because contract negotiations were finished for that year, they could only register frustration, not ask for action. At the time, board members countered that administrators were paid below those in comparable districts and needed a boost. In the current controversy, the board doesn’t vote in lock step. Carey voted against the request for proposals on the sites, and she was joined by Rechsteiner in October in a closed-session vote to reinstate the leases of Huntington Christian School and Brethren Christian Junior/Senior High School — which expire in summer of 2009.

But those votes were defeated, and even those board members have said they found some residents’ rhetoric on the issue excessive. The key issue is making sure the district is using its assets best for students, Rechsteiner said.

“We are doing our due diligence as board members,” Rechsteiner said. “If you were a homeowner and you owned a second home, wouldn’t you go out every five years and look at the market and see if you were getting a fair rental? And if something had changed in your life, and you were thinking of maybe selling that house to cover other expenses, wouldn’t you go out and look out and see what the property was worth?”

Still up for grabs is what that money would pay for; selling property can only fund building or repairing other property, while leasing it can pay directly for programs and salaries. Board members offer a number of needs that selling a site could fill: moving or rebuilding a crumbling district office, landscaping Dwyer Elementary School, fixing roofs, and getting a bus maintenance facility off land meant for school use. But there isn’t a set answer yet, and it may not come till the sites are dealt with.

Residents have legitimate concerns that should be listened to, Saylor said. It wasn’t hard to predict people would get upset.

“I don’t blame them,” she said. “If I were one of the neighbors I’d probably be coming forward too.”

But she did complain about “misconceptions” thrown in with the factual concerns: the idea that the private schools’ leases are irrevocably canceled, or that the board has already decided to sell the sites to developers. Ultimately, though, she says those concerns are only a part of the picture.

“Our first responsibility is to students in our district and their academic education,” she said. “It’s not our obligation to provide the open space for youth sports. We are happy to do it when we can, but that’s not our obligation; it’s the city’s obligation.”