Local voters will decide on something its board of education failed to do before the end of 2015 as residents will take to the polls for the June 7 presidential primary election to select a seventh school board trustee.
Taxpayers are footing the more than $58,000 bill, which will come out of the district’s general fund, to elect a trustee who will serve out the remaining six months of former board member Amy Porter-Jensen’s four-year term.
Porter-Jensen resigned from the board in October 2015 and the remaining six members had until Dec. 29, 2015 to appoint her replacement. In December, they were split 3-3 on two finalists (retired Ravenswood School District assistant superintendent Adam Escoto and City of San Jose Vice Mayor’s Chief of Staff Anne Groen) with neither side budging to avoid the cost of an election. Board President Bob Benevento, Board VP Ron Woolf and Trustee Donna Ruebusch supported Groen; Trustees David Gerard, Rick Badillo and Gino Borgioli supported Escoto.
However, at the Jan. 12 school board meeting, Morgan Hill Unified School District’s governing body voted 6-0 to go ahead with the consolidating election.
By doing so, the district escaped the larger $450,000 expense of holding its own standalone special election, according to MHUSD officials.
“You have to take action to adopt the resolution for the election cost consolidation….That will save us a nice chunk of change,” said Superintendent Steve Betando prior to the board’s vote.
Benevento did not read the resolution, which is attached to the Jan. 12 agenda, and none of the six board members commented before its unanimous approval.
The nomination period for the special election opens Feb. 16 and closes March 11, according to Anita Torres with the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters’ office. When asked, Torres added that no candidate had submitted an application to their office as of Jan. 13.
Having a seventh member on the school board will eliminate the 3-3 split votes that have prevented MHUSD’s school board from appointing a president and vice president for the current year. Presently, Trustee Bob Benevento is the acting president since he served in the same capacity last year.
The vacant seat is one of three up for election in the November 2016 general election—at which time the district’s trustee elections will change from an at-large format to a trustee-area system.
