As mentioned here and elsewhere, LBUSD recently held a Special Election to fill a seat on its elected Board of Trustees that was vacated under curious, if inevitable, circumstances last August by Michael Shane Ellis.

Ellis may well go down in City history as the worst School Board member ever elected to that post but I won’t list here all of the reasons why I believe that to be the case. Simply Google: “michael shane ellis long beach” if you care to review all of the controversy and consternation he created for himself, for our School District and for our entire community throughout his troubled tenure.

By all accounts, Ellis’ duly elected replacement, former Cerritos College Library Dean John McGinnis, is well qualified and a consummate educational professional, the sort of Board Trustee that LBUSD’s 3rd District has been sorely lacking since Dr. Suja Lowenthal left that seat in 2006. I sincerely wish Board Member McGinnis well in his efforts on behalf of our School District and all of the students and parents it serves.

But was this Special Election really necessary in the first place? It has been estimated that it cost Long Beach taxpayers about $225,000 to elect Mr. McGinnis to our School Board. This in a time of a City Council-declared “fiscal emergency” in our city and when the School District itself has been faced with persistent and continuous budget shortfalls and deep cuts of its own.

Many of you may have read previous columns and comments of mine, both here and elsewhere, concerning Michael Shane Ellis and the damage I believe he did to our School District and the thousands of students and parents he swore an oath to serve. I believe that Ellis’ personal and professional malfeasance cost our District and our community a very great deal, not only monetarily but in undermined public confidence as well.

So last August when the School District announced their intention to call for the election, the thought that still another consequence of Ellis’ deplorable service to us was going to be a taxpayer-funded $225,000 Special Election frustrated me no end.

So much so that at the time I wrote to each of the remaining Board members as well as Superintendent Steinhauser, urging them in the strongest possible terms to try to find another way. I urged patience and requested that they not take any official action on Ellis’ dubious resignation until they could confirm that he had, in fact, written the note left tacked to a door overnight in a most cowardly fashion at our School District offices and until Ellis himself could actually be located and his physical well-being confirmed.

To my mind, Ellis’s seat had been effectively vacant since at least May 2009 and the remainder of the School Board had managed to conduct the business of our District without him during all that time. This was not as it should have been but neither did there seem any urgency to replace Ellis and certainly not at a cost of $225,000. I think the Board could, and should, have waited just a few months longer, until the next General Election, and I told them so. Not that it ultimately did any good.

I am admittedly no lawyer but according to my reading of our state’s Education Code, in the event of a local School Board vacancy, the remaining members of that School Board can either appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of the term of a Trustee that has resigned or they can hold a Special Election to replace that person.

So I asked myself: “Why didn’t the remainder of our Board simply appoint a replacement to serve out the balance of Ellis’ term rather than call for an expensive Special Election?”

The answer…you guessed it… “It’s in the Charter”.

Our State’s Education Code stipulates that where a local School Board is addressed in a City Charter, that Charter, rather than applicable Education Code sections, dictates the terms of how that School District operates.

Our City Charter does indeed address our School District in Article XXII and is, unfortunately, unequivocal concerning School Board vacancies in Section 2207 which states, in part:

“Vacancies in the Board of Education *shall* be filled for the remaining portion of the term of the vacant office at a special election to be called for that purpose.” (Emphasis added).

The manner in which we chose to word this section of our Charter made a Special Election mandatory in this case and in all such cases, rather than simply optional, as I believe would be a far better approach.

“Well, heck!” I said to myself, “Why in the world did we do that? And when?”

According to a most excellent staff member in our City Clerk’s office, it seems we first enacted what, today, is City Charter Section 2207 in 1976. Back then it was Section 123. Later, in 1980, we changed it to Section 2203 and later still, in 1987, we renumbered it one last time to Section 2207. The text of the Section, however, has not been changed in any way since the day we originally enacted it back in 1976. Perhaps that’s the problem.

As to why we worded this Section of our City Charter the way we did, I can’t really say. Perhaps someone who was involved in City Government back then or knows someone who was might offer some insight on this.

Article XXII created the Long Beach *Unified* School District from the former non-unified version and lays out all of our local rules for its operation. Perhaps we may have wanted to have more local control over our School District but when we wrote Section 123 as we did, we made it mandatory to hold costly Special Elections to fill School Board vacancies caused by resignations when even our State’s Education Code allows another alternative.

This can and, I think, should be changed.

Mr. Danny Villanueva, in the L.A. County Office of Education feels we could simply choose to separate our School District from our City Charter. In doing so, applicable State Education Code Sections would then come into play and, as demonstrated, would offer some options in situations like this that our own City Charter, as currently written, does not.

I’m not convinced that we need to go that far, though. I think all we need to do is amend Charter Section 2207 to more closely resemble State Education Code Section 5091(a). Just a few changes in wording would afford us reasonable options in cases like these, rather than mandatory and very costly actions. Here’s the wording I suggest:

“Vacancies in the Board of Education *may* be filled for the remaining portion of the term of the vacancy *either* through a unanimous and provisional appointment made by the remaining duly elected School Board members *or* at a Special Election to be called for that purpose…” (Emphasis added)

With these few simple changes in wording in just one section of our City Charter we can prevent the costly and mandatory Special Elections like the one just concluded. Special Elections are sometimes unavoidable and, in truth, might still have proved to be the best option in this case, but during these times of fiscal emergencies and deepening budget deficits, we can and should have more than one option.

As with so many public policy challenges, the solution can be found in the same place as the problem. And in this case…

“It’s in the Charter”.

I very much welcome your questions and your comments!