It was a changing of the guard at the Sweetwater Union High School District Dec. 5 as five newly-elected trustees took their place on the dais for the first time.
About 200 parents, students and community members attended the school board meeting at Southwest High School in San Diego to welcome Arturo Solis, Kevin Pike, Frank Tarantino, Nicholas Segura and Paula Hall to the school board.
“It’s a new day, it’s a new day in Sweetwater,” said Roberto Rodriguez, president of the Sweetwater Education Association. “I’m very enthusiastic about the new board.”
Four of the five school board members — Solis, Tarantino, Segura and Hall — received endorsements by the teachers union during their campaign.
Rodriguez and others shared their excitement that the largest secondary school district in California was turning the page on a tumultuous year.
A year that saw four ex-school board members and a former superintendent sentenced for a pay-to-play scheme as well as the sudden retirement of superintendent Dr. Ed Brand and the appointment of four temporary trustees from the San Diego County Office of Education to the Sweetwater district board.
The newly-elected trustees appointed Tarantino as the board president, with Segura serving as the board’s vice president.
The meeting also included the appointment of each board member to different committees.
Solis, the trustee for area one, which covers National City and northwestern Chula Vista, said his goal is to immediately hire a permanent superintendent.
“My priority for sure is getting a permanent superintendent,” he said. “We want to make sure that we get a superintendent that the community has a voice in” selecting.
Solis is the husband of National City Councilwoman Alejandra Sotelo Solis.
Tarantino, who represents area three, which encompasses the east side of Chula Vista including Eastlake, said he would like to impose term limits.
“I’d like to initiate an investigation into the process to establish term limits for the board members,” Tarantino said.
“This position should not be someone’s career.”
While many in the audience praised the new school board members, parent Aurora Murillo-Clark said she would have liked to see the new trustees better prepared.
“The board seems promising because they’re new faces,” Murillo-Clark said. “But the way they actually appeared was not completely well-informed, confused and unorganized.”
She also said she wished the school board members had better training prior to the meeting, with more information about the different committees they had been appointed to serve on.
Maty Adato and Kathleen Cheers, two outspoken critics of the Sweetwater district, said there is some irony in the fact that the new board’s first day on the job was at a meeting at Southwest High School.
“This gym is where it all happened,” said Adato referring to the first wave of change in the district with the firing of former superintendent Jesus Gandara in 2011.
‘This gym is where Gandara was sent packing,” Cheers said.
“Eighteen indictments later we are back here,” Adato said.
Cheers added that the new board gives the district hope in moving forward.
“It’s going to be nice to have a new board that focuses on a new beginning,” she said.
