Editorial:

The Chula Vista Elementary School Board is once again going to pick the next school board member to fill the seat being vacated by board member Russell Coronado. This will be the third appointment to this board in recent history, sadly denying the voters the opportunity to elect their representative. The sad part about this is that it didn’t have to be this way.

In 2009 Douglas E. Luffborough was appointed to the board, in 2007 David Bejarano appointed to the board, and prior to that Larry Cunningham was appointed in 1998, and he has sat on this board for 14 years and counting. This new appointment for Russell Coronado’s seat will bring the total number of initially appointed, hand-picked board members to four of the five board seats. The sad part about the CVESD appointment process is that once appointed, these new “officials” achieve incumbent status and rarely, if ever, lose an election. The financial backing of incumbents by contractors and other financially interested parties is just too great to overcome. Current board members are the only people who get to pick and choose who will be allowed into the exclusive CVESD club.

The appointment process could have been avoided if Coronado had resigned his seat much earlier. A more considerate resignation may have allowed for an election to have taken place within the normal cycle of elections. Instead, Coronado’s delayed resignation falls into the sweet spot of the usual appointment process that we have seen too often: there is too little term left to financially justify a special election, yet too much term left to leave the seat vacant until the next election. This is the district’s modus operandi.

In 2010 when Coronado moved out of his home in Chula Vista to the North County, no longer a member of the city or the district for which he served, Coronado knew that he was a lame duck board member. While the question was asked it was never disclosed how long a board member could serve when not living in the city or district to which he was elected.

For all intents and purposes this whole appointment process feels as though it was predetermined to come out this way, with the next board member selected by a few instead of by an election. It’s like the movie, “GroundHog Day,” where the same thing keeps happening over and over. There are more questions out there then answers as to why now instead of sooner? Or even later? Why not just serve out the remaining 9 months allowing for the election process to work? Why not leave the seat vacant for 9 months, and let the election process work?

We are disappointed that the voters of Chula Vista Elementary school district are once again left out of the process of selecting their representative to the board. Not knowing what the family emergency that precipitated the Coronado resignation, we are disappointed that Coronado didn’t act in a more timely fashion to resign his position years ago when he moved out of the area allowing for a timely election to take place.

With all that said, for those interested in exploring an opportunity to be appointed to the CVESD board, applications are available at the superintendent’s office, 84 E. J St. or on the district’s website at cvesd.org.