Two Orange Unified School District board members are facing a potential recall after having been the focus of district controversy since January.
The effort to recall Board President Rick Ledesma and Trustee Madison Miner began after the board called a special meeting in January to fire Superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen and place an assistant superintendent on paid leave. Ledesma and Miner voted in favor of the superintendent’s firing along with Trustees John Ortega and Angie Schlueter-Rumsey.
A notice of intent to recall Miner was filed with the Orange County Registrar of Voters on May 3, and soon after, one targeting Ledesma was filed on May 11. Both petitions were approved for circulation on June 5 by the Registrar.
To get the recall on the upcoming March ballot, supporters must file 13,046 signatures per board member, according to the Registrar. The signatures related to Miner are due on Nov. 9, and the signatures for Ledesma are due on Nov. 13.
Ledesma has been elected to the OUSD board three times since 2014; he was most recently re-elected to a four-year term in November 2022. Then, Miner was elected for the first time to the OUSD board, barely defeating incumbent Kathryn Moffat with 50.2% of the vote, according to results given by the Registrar.
During the 2022 election, Ledesma and Miner ran as part of a candidate slate that pledged to support charter school parents and be independent of teachers unions.
“I am a mother of four children under 10 years of age, three of whom attend a local public school,” Miner said in a lengthy statement regarding the recall effort. “I ran for a position on the school board with a platform that emphasized the need for a change in leadership. It’s disheartening to see that the radical recall campaign has hired signature gatherers from Los Angeles and other cities who have been trained to spread lies about Trustee Ledesma and myself.”
A local group, OUSD Recall, has been the leader in the fight for a recall,…
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