John Mueller recall, Los Banos Unified School District, California (2016)
| Los Banos Unified School District Board of Education recall |
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| Officeholders |
| Recall status |
| Recall election date |
| August 23, 2016 |
| See also |
| Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2016 Recalls in California California recall laws School board recalls Recall reports |
An effort to recall John Mueller from his position on the Los Banos Unified School District Board of Education was on the ballot on August 23, 2016. The recall was successful, ousting Mueller from his seat and electing Ray Martinez in his place.[1][2][3] Mueller's recall notice provided six reasons for the recall effort, including a failure to communicate with constituents in his trustee area, poor test scores across the district, and nepotism.[4]
The recall election was held a month after an argument over hiring a contractor for a construction project highlighted the division between two factions of the board. Mueller, a member of the minority faction, said the board was “very disjointed."[5]
Mueller first joined the board in 2010.[6] He was re-elected to the board on November 4, 2014. He won the Trustee Area 7 seat by defeating challenger Ruben Santos by 22 votes.[7] Ray Martinez, a former firefighter and Los Banos resident, was the only candidate who ran to replace Mueller in the 2016 recall election.[2][8]
Recall vote
| John Mueller, Trustee Area 7 Board Member, Los Banos Unified School District | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Result | Votes | Percentage | ||
 Recall | 182 | 51.85% | ||
| Retain | 169 | 48.15% | ||
| Election results via: Merced County Registrar of Voters, "Official Final Results: Recall of John Mueller," accessed September 1, 2016 | ||||
| Mueller's successor candidate, Trustee Area 7 Board Member, Los Banos Unified School District | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Result | Votes | Percentage | ||
| Ray Martinez | 187 | 96.89% | ||
| 6 | 3.11% | |||
| Election results via: Merced County Registrar of Voters, "Official Final Results: Recall of John Mueller," accessed September 1, 2016 | ||||
Recall supporters
Baldo Salcido, a member of the Los Banos Community Advocacy Coalition, led the recall effort. He signed the recall notice with nine others. The notice gave a total of six reasons for the recall. In addition to accusing Mueller of refusing to communicate with those he represented, recall supporters said he acted disruptively in board meetings. They also blamed him for low test scores in the school district and accused him of condoning nepotism. Additionally, recall supporters disagreed with his approval of a deal to build a new junior high school, and they did not like that he did not favor using local contractors for the building process.[4]
One criticism of the deal to build the new school was that the board voted to use a “lease-leaseback” method to pay for it. The lease-leaseback method avoids the bidding process and puts the cost of the construction on a contractor chosen by the district. The district can then pay back that cost in increments. The Fresno Unified School District was determined to have broken the state's conflict-of-interest laws with its lease-leaseback contract in June 2015.[4]
Salcido and other members of the Los Banos Community Advocacy Coalition said they had tried to set up meetings to talk to Mueller before the recall notice was served, but Mueller had stopped responding to their requests.[4]
| “ | Instead of addressing all of our concerns, he gets up there and has irrational and disruptive behavior that we don’t understand. Why not just address the issues? Why not just talk to us? Why not understand the fact that we have these concerns?[9] | ” |
| —Baldo Salcido (2015)[4] | ||
Recall opponents
In response to the accusation that he failed to communicate with his constituents in Trustee Area 7, Mueller said his personal cellphone number was available at the district office and on the district's website. He said he met with the Los Banos Community Advocacy Coalition, and he disagreed with them. He said that was why they said he refused to communicate.[10]
Mueller also addressed the recall effort's criticism of the lease-leaseback method. He said he was not the only member to vote for that deal—it was a unanimous board decision—and that the lease-leaseback method was legal. He said those with concerns could read the documents of the deal at the district office. Mueller also said that the board chose Oral E. Micham Inc. as its contractor because it had experience building a similar design.[4][10]
Mueller also responded to the accusation that test scores had been poor during his tenure. He said test scores had increased since he took office. He said that was due in part to the board's decision to support more school counselors and tutoring programs.[10]
In response to the accusations that he condoned nepotism, Mueller said he "simply believes in hiring those best qualified for the job," according to the Merced Sun-Star.[10]
The final accusation against Mueller was that he was disruptive in board meetings. He said he was passionate about his position. He said that though he represented the Trustee Area 7 constituents, he also had to vote how he felt.[10]
After the recall was added to the ballot, Mueller said, “If they do vote it down, it is because people that know me in Los Banos know that I’m an upstanding guy that speaks the best for the students, not for interest groups." He said the Los Banos Community Advocacy Coalition was using the recall as a way to circumvent the regular election process in response to Mueller defeating a candidate they supported in 2014.[8]
Mueller's response
Mueller responded to the accusations presented against him in the recall petition with the following editorial, which was published in the Los Banos Enterprise:
| “ | Here is my response to the six items listed in the “notice of intent to recall” submitted by Baldo Salcido and members of the Community Advocacy Coalition to the county elections office:
1. I have at all times been available to my constituents. My private cell home number is available at the district office and on the online district directory. I have met with petitioners and since we do not share a common viewpoint, they choose to state that I don’t communicate. 2. The board approved the lease-lease back contract on a 5-2 vote in February. I was one of those board members that supported the construction of the new junior high. Lease-lease back is a legal method of constructing schools and the records show that all subcontractors working on the project had to submit a competitive bid. The general contractor was selected to run the project in 2010. The project was advertised in trade journals across the state and local contractors did have an opportunity to submit bids. 3. Micham Construction was awarded the school construction contract based on the fact that they have employees that were involved in building the same school design previously in Tulare County. This is the same approach the district used to build Pacheco High School. The successful completion of the Pacheco High School was based on using a contractor who had built the project three previous times in Manteca/Lodi area (San Joaquin County). 4. During my tenure as a board member, the record shows that our school district went from having two elementary schools with 800-plus API scores to four elementary schools that had 800-plus API scores. We also have had amazing success in making sure our high school students graduate career- and college-ready. We have improved our A-G competition rate from 16 percent in 2008 to 41 percent in 2015. 5. Los Banos has always been a community that prides itself in sending its best and brightest off to college and then bringing them back home to work as leaders and teachers in our schools. I don’t consider hiring the most qualified candidates nepotism. 6. I am passionate about what I believe is right and insist on holding myself and others accountable for the way we spend taxpayers’ dollars. I listen to my constituents, but I reserve the right to vote my conscience, as I was elected to do by the voters of the school district. I value the voters’ confidence and will continue to do my job as a trustee of the Los Banos Unified School District.[9] |
” |
| —John Mueller (December 18, 2015)[11] | ||
Background
Fighting within school board
In July 2016, an argument over the hiring of a contractor to build an addition on the district's Mercey Springs Elementary School highlighted the division between two factions on the Los Banos Unified Board of Trustees. The board majority, who voted in favor of hiring Greg Opinski as the contractor of the addition, featured Board Vice President Marlene Smith, Clerk Tommy Jones, and members Carol Duffy and Dominic Falasco. The minority included Mueller, fellow member Dennis Areias, and Board President Anthony Parreira.[12]
The three members of the minority faction voted against hiring Opinski due to the fact that he sued the school district in 2008 over a former construction project at Pacheco High School. A number of community members who attended the board meeting on July 26, 2016, including former school board members, cautioned against hiring Opinski. Smith, Jones, and Falasco, however, said hiring Opinski was better than using another lease-leaseback contract.[12]
During the discussion of hiring Opinski, Smith, who was first elected to the board in 2014, said she was "sick of the bickering," according to the Los Banos Enterprise. “This is a bunch of mess. … We have not done one productive thing for one kid in this school district," said Smith.[12]
Areias blamed the bickering on Jones. He said the board had not had problems until Jones joined the board in 2012.[12] Areias also said that Jones "can’t speak the truth and he continues to get away with it.”[5]
Jones, however, blamed Areias, calling him a "bully." Jones said, "It’s not with me, Mr. Areias has an attitude."[5]
“We do have a divided board,” Duffy said. “But there are deep-seated things that have happened between some of the board members. I think it’s hard to get over.”[5]
Mueller agreed that the board was “very disjointed.” He said that the members of the board's majority faction were putting personal agendas over the students. “The day Tommy Jones got elected to the board, the climate changed instantly,” Mueller said. “The same exact troubles that were happening on the City Council when he was the mayor have followed him onto our board.”[5]
Jones, Duffy, and Falasco were up for election on November 8, 2016.[5]
Lease-leaseback contract
In February 2015, the Los Banos Unified board of trustees approved a $25.2 million lease-leaseback contract with Oral E. Micham Inc. The contract was to build a new Creekside Junior High. The lease-leaseback contract allowed the district to pick Oral E. Micham Inc. without going through the normal bidding process. Oral E. Micham Inc. fronted the cost of the construction, and the district agreed to pay the company back incrementally, according to the contract.[13]
The lease-leaseback contract is meant to allow school districts to build new buildings when they do not have cash to front the construction costs. The Fresno Unified School District was put under federal investigation after it was alleged that the district did have the money to front the costs to build its new middle school. In June 2015, the California Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled that Fresno Unified had broken the state's conflict-of-interest laws with its lease-leaseback contract.[13]
After the court ruling, the Los Banos Unified board of trustees spoke with an attorney who also represented Fresno Unified. The attorney advised that school districts not pay contractors back immediately after a new school was built through a lease-leaseback contract. Paying back the contractors immediately could make it appear that the district had the money to front the costs to begin with, and if that was the case, the district should not have used a lease-leaseback contract, according to Los Banos Trustee Tommy Jones.[13]
Jones expressed concern with the risk of litigation for Los Banos Unified, as the district paid off its debt to Oral E. Micham Inc. before the contract ended. “When they finish building the school we paid them all of the money, that’s not a leaseback. They didn’t finance it, we did,” said Jones.[13]
According to the district's attorney, however, a preconstruction agreement helped influence the Fresno Unified lawsuit. Because Los Banos Unified did not have a preconstruction agreement with Oral E. Micham Inc., the district was not at risk of a lawsuit. The statute of limitations on suing the district over its lease-leaseback contract had also passed by September 2015.[13]
District test scores
One reason listed for Mueller's recall was poor test scores in the district. Mueller responded to that accusation by saying test scores had increased since he took office in 2010. Below are the district's results for the California High School Exit Exam, the ACT, the SAT, and Advanced Placement Tests since the 2010-2011 school year.[14]
From the 2010-2011 school year to the 2013-2014 school year, a lower percentage of students in the district passed the state's high school exit exam in English and mathematics, which is taken in 10th grade. The district's average SAT score also went down from the 2010-2011 school year to the 2012-2013 school year. During the same time, scores for the ACT remained relatively constant. The district did see higher results on the Advanced Placement (AP) Tests. More students received scores of 3, 4, or 5 in the 2012-2013 school year than they did in the 2010-2011 school year.[14]
California High School Exit Exam
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SAT scores
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ACT scores
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Advanced Placement Test results
| Advanced Placement (AP) Test Results[14] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School year | Number of exams by score | ||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 2010-2011 | 95 | 102 | 68 | 42 | 18 |
| 2011-2012 | 215 | 147 | 79 | 40 | 18 |
| 2012-2013 | 176 | 154 | 103 | 44 | 21 |
Path to the ballot
- See also: Laws governing recall in California
Mueller was served a recall notice by Salcido on December 7, 2015. In order to get the recall on the ballot, the Los Banos Community Advocacy Coalition had to collect signatures from 25 percent of registered voters in Trustee Area 7, which equaled approximately 400 signatures, according to the Merced County Registrar of Voters.[4] The recall was on the ballot on August 23, 2016.[2]
About the district
The Los Banos Unified School District is located in Merced County in central California. The county seat is Merced. Merced County was home to 268,455 residents in 2015, according to the United States Census Bureau.[15] The district was the 162nd-largest school district in the state in the 2013–2014 school year and served 10,065 students.[16]
Demographics
Merced County underperformed compared to California as a whole in terms of higher education achievement from 2010 to 2014. The United States Census Bureau found that 13 percent of county residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree, compared to 31 percent of state residents. The median household income for Merced County was $43,066, compared to $61,489 for the entire state. The percentage of people in poverty in the county was 24.8 percent, compared to 16.4 percent statewide.[15]
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Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'John Mueller' 'Los Banos Unified School District' recall. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
- Los Banos Unified School District, California
- Los Banos Unified School District elections (2016)
- Los Banos Unified School District elections (2014)
- Dennis Areias recall, Los Banos Unified School District, California (2013)
- Recall campaigns in California
- Political recall efforts, 2016
- School board recalls
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Merced Sun-Star, "Second Los Banos school trustee facing citizen recall," June 15, 2016
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Merced County Registrar of Voters, "Official Final Results: Recall of John Mueller," accessed September 1, 2016
- ↑ Abbey Smith, “Email communication with Assistant Registrar of Voters David Sullivan," August 29, 2016
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Merced Sun-Star, "Recall notice served to Los Banos Unified trustee," December 10, 2015
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Los Banos Enterprise, "Name-calling, fighting frequent on ‘divided’ Los Banos school board," August 4, 2016
- ↑ City of Merced, "Federal and State Officials Listing," accessed January 14, 2016
- ↑ Merced County Registrar of Voters, "Official Results for Election," accessed December 22, 2014
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Merced Sun-Star, "Los Banos school board member fights against recall," July 19, 2016
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Merced Sun-Star, "Mueller responds to recall notice," December 17, 2015
- ↑ Los Banos Enterprise, "Mueller responds to recall effort," December 18, 2015
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Los Banos Enterprise, "Los Banos school board members argue over hiring of contractor," July 28, 2016
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Los Banos Enterprise, "District consults with attorney on junior high construction contract," September 25, 2015
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 Education Data Partnership, "District Summary: Los Banos Unified," accessed January 14, 2016
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 United States Census Bureau, "Merced County, California," accessed July 25, 2016
- ↑ National Center for Education Statistics, "ELSI Table Generator," accessed November 16, 2015
- ↑ Merced County Registrar of Voters, "November 6, 2012 Election Results," accessed July 24, 2014
- ↑ Merced County Registrar of Voters, "November 8, 2008," accessed July 24, 2014
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