Parents announce effort to replace newly-appointed Chula Vista school board member

A parent group is working to remove a newly-appointed member of the Chula Vista School Board, alleging the board was playing favorites when it selected him.

The small group of parents said they are concerned that the new board pick — Cesar Fernandez, a Sweetwater Union High School District teacher on special assignment — has donated money to the campaign of Chula Vista board member Lucy Ugarte. Fernandez and Ugarte are both officers in the Sweetwater teachers union, but she did not disclose their association at a recent board meeting, they said.

Ugarte, who vouched for Fernandez, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Fernandez did not answer questions but sent a written statement Tuesday night.

“It is unfortunate that there are a few in the community that will not give me a chance to show my leadership skills for the students of this district,” he wrote in an email. “I put my heart into a transparent and grueling interview process. I was honest, clear, and authentic. A special election will cost $1.5M to $2.5M. Those that seek this as a remedy cannot claim that students are their priority.”

There were 12 candidates seeking the board seat, including several members of the parents group, some of whom said they heard rumors more than a month prior to the selection that Fernandez’ appointment was a done deal.

“This was the worst-kept secret,” said Armando Farias, a candidate and a former Chula Vista board member who lost re-election last year.

Chula Vista Board President Kate Bishop, who was elected last fall on a slate with Ugarte, said her main concern was to make the selection process transparent. That included designing candidate interview questions based on community survey feedback and using a candidate scoring system “to make something as subjective as interviews into something as objective as possible,” she said.

Each board member assigned scores to each candidate based on how well they thought the candidate answered the board’s questions.

“We interviewed in public, we deliberated in public, and we announced scores in public,” Bishop said. “I cannot speak on the inner thoughts of my fellow board members, but the system that we used was set up to make every attempt to create a fair and open process.”

Bishop has said there were a lot of things in the board’s scoring rubric that Fernandez failed to address, and he didn’t perform well in his interview. And board member Leslie Ray Bunker said Fernandez has strong qualities but community members had said they don’t want someone from Sweetwater.

Nevertheless, Bishop and Bunker gave him moderate scores.

Ugarte and board member Francisco Tamayo, who used to work for Sweetwater, gave Fernandez top scores and ranked Fernandez highest, to advance him to the finalist round.

The parents group pointed out that last fall, Fernandez donated $300 to Ugarte’s campaign, and he used social media to encourage people to vote for Ugarte. Fernandez also chairs the Sweetwater teachers union’s political action committee, which donated $20,000 to the Chula Vista’s teachers union on the same day that union forwarded $20,000 to Ugarte’s school board campaign.

Several parents said that in the community survey, respondents overwhelmingly indicated they did not want another board member from Sweetwater, a district that has been investigated in recent years for alleged financial mismanagement and a pay-to-play scandal. Parents also said in the survey that they did not want someone who is aligned with special interests, like a teachers union.

“This was totally ignored by a group of elected officials who are elected, by the way, by the citizens of Chula Vista to represent them,” Farias said.

When each Chula Vista board member disclosed which candidates they knew personally or professionally, Ugarte did not disclose Fernandez’s contributions or that she works with him in the Sweetwater teachers union, parents group members said.

“That conflict of interest was never disclosed, and that was extremely concerning to us,” said Robert Cochran, a Chula Vista parent, former principal, and applicant for the board position.

District officials released a statement Tuesday night saying it stands by the board’s decision.

“The Board of Education engaged in a process to fill its vacant seat that was transparent and accessible to the community,” the statement said. “The appointment took place during a public meeting that was well advertised in advance. The interview process was exhaustive and transparent.”

The board picked Fernandez to replace former board member Eduardo Reyes, Sweetwater’s director of human resources, who resigned in July to apply to become Chula Vista’s new superintendent.

In order to remove Fernandez from the board and launch a special election for the seat, the parent group must first collect at least 2,824 petition signatures within 30 days.