Special Election Challenging School Board Appointment Expected to Exacerbate MUSD Budget Woes

After cutting roughly $2.1 million to address budget deficit, district faces likelihood of spending as much as $63,000 to hold election after petition qualifies to try to unseat minority appointee

The Martinez Unified School District Board of Trustees approved roughly $2.1 million in budget cuts earlier this month to address its ongoing budget crisis that shows no signs of abating. Now, it may have to come up with as much as $63,000 in additional money to fund a special election for the Area 3 board seat that it filled in January through a provisional appointment.

Helen Nolan, assistant registrar at the Contra Costa County Elections Office, confirmed Monday afternoon that a sufficient number of signatures have been verified to call a special election for the Area 3 seat, which the district will be required to pay for out of its budget. Nolan put the estimated cost of the election at between $50,000 and $63,000.

A map of Area 3 can be viewed here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1h6T1BsoCruIMW58oHf_93kM4256Odm9E&ll=38.0052120410661%2C-122.11316150000002&z=15

Contra Costa County Office of Education Superintendent Lynn Mackey confirmed Saturday that signatures were submitted to her office on Feb. 18 calling for a special election, and that she delivered the petition to the county Elections Office the same day for verification.

“We have 30 days to complete the verification, at which time, if the signatures are verified, I will call for an election,” Mackey wrote in an email Saturday.

Nolan said Monday that the verification process had been completed, with 126 of the 135 signatures submitted validated, well above the 63 signatures (or 1.5% of the number of registered voters at the time of the last regular board election for the area) required under the election code.

“The special election has not yet been called, but we will be working with Lynn Mackey’s office to ensure that the special election is called no further out than 125 days and no sooner than 88 days from the next scheduled election date of Aug. 26,” Nolan wrote.

Once the special election is called, it will terminate the appointment of the lone ethnic minority member of the Board of Trustees.

Special elections to fill mid-term vacancies in board seats are highly unusual. Typically, boards fill the vacancy through a provisional appointment — which MUSD did with the appointment of Brittany Ayala — and the appointment stands until the next regularly scheduled election, which in this case would be 2026.

“We are not aware of another special election being called in response to an appointment to a school district board,” Nolan said.

Unhappy with the board’s choice of Ayala over retired teacher and former head of the MUSD teachers union (the Martinez Education Association) Brenda Leal, an unidentified group has collected signatures asking for a special election to determine who will hold the seat until the expiration of the term in 2026. MUSD has filled many board vacancies over the years through provisional appointments, with no effort to challenge the board’s selection through a special election.

It wasn’t immediately clear who is behind the petition; Nolan said the names of those who signed the petition cannot be disclosed under election and government code.

A district parent, UC Berkeley community college transfer specialist and a child of Mexican immigrants, Ayala replaced the lone ethnic minority on the board, Yazmin Llamas, who was elected to the Contra Costa County Board of Education in November.

The attempt to unseat Ayala drew a strong rebuke during public comment Monday night from Linda Olvera, an advocate for the local immigrant community and the former chair of the city’s Anti-Racism & Discrimination and Pro-Inclusion & Equity (ARDPIE) Task Force.

“One has to wonder what is going on here?” she said. “Brittany Ayala was unanimously voted by the board. There is going to be an election in November of 2026. You have to wonder at what cost this is to our children.

“I wonder, all those signatures that were turned in to have a special election, how many of those signatures were minorities that compose a large section of district 3? Who is this group? There’s some big force going on here, and let me tell you, it’s not to have a minority on the board, which this board, as you can see, does not have except for Brittany now. Something’s going on here, and I don’t like it.”

District parent Meghan Ketsdever, who has championed diversity and equity efforts in the district, also speculated during public comment that some members of the group behind the petition have also opposed those initiatives. She also decried the cost the special election will incur for the district amid the current budget crisis.

“I do see some of the numbers, and I see how much our district has been cut, and to think that we’d spend $60,000 of our budget when so much has been cut already, and there’s things coming down from the state that are going to force us to spend money in certain places, is absolutely abhorrent.”

(Reader note: I also criticized the special election drive during public comment Monday; my comments and those of the other speakers can be viewed on the meeting video starting at around the 1-hour, 27-minute mark).

Speculation also has centered on any role that the teachers union may be playing in the petition drive after its former leader was passed over for the appointment. While the MEA didn’t issue an endorsement during the 2024 election, it raised eyebrows in 2022 when it backed a candidate who had contributed regularly to WinRed, the primary fundraising platform of Donald Trump and the Republican Party; the union’s endorsement came at a time when diversity and equity efforts had become a major focus of the district amid a reckoning over racist incidents on school campuses. The candidate, longtime Alhambra High cheerleading coach Marcy LeBoeuf, was soundly defeated by Llamas after the MAGA contributions emerged as a major campaign issue, but MEA stuck with the endorsement after the contributions were revealed, despite the MAGA movement’s open hostility toward diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Trustee Anne Horack Martin was the lone board member to address the special election issue in comments at the end of the meeting, saying the board stood by the appointment of Ayala. “I think she’s a qualified candidate who’s an asset to this board, and I think we could see that tonight,” she said, apparently referencing the questions asked and comments made by Ayala during agenda items. But Horack Martin also said she respected the right of voters to call for a special election. “What is happening with the special election is a legal, democratic process that is the right of the citizens of Area 3.”

Ayala used her own comments at the end of the meeting to focus on a “Know Your Rights” webinar planned March 1. “There’s an opportunity for more to be done to reaffirm our commitment to our families and students that they know they are being protected. …. Especially at a time when public education is under threat, more so than ever, it’s super important to be there for our immigrant students and our families, for special education, for (special needs) students with IEP, 504 plans, for our LGBTQIA students.”

Noting the “technology gap” that exists for many Latino families, she asked that the district also consider an in-person workshop to ensure that families have the tools and resources they need “and also have legal aid on the side so that they know that they are being supported by the community that they come from and by the community that they reside in.”

If and when a special election is called, Ayala’s provisional appointment will be terminated and the seat will become vacant again pending the results of the election. Monday’s meeting was Ayala’s second since being appointed to the seat (excluding a special board workshop on Feb. 1); it’s uncertain whether she will be on the board when the next meeting is held March 10.

This marks the second consecutive board vacancy that has become a subject of dispute. When incumbent Jonathan Wright resigned in 2021, less than a year after being re-elected in 2020, the board initially selected former trustee Bobbi Horack, who had resigned her own seat in 2019 shortly into her new term, to fill the vacancy. The choice raised eyebrows because Horack’s daughter, Horack Martin, was also on the board, but it was ultimately challenged and withdrawn for legal reasons — a majority of the board hadn’t agreed to Bobbi Horack’s appointment, though she received the most votes among the candidates who applied.

Any board appointment requires the assent of at least three members. After failing to agree on two other candidates for the open 2021 seat, the board ultimately appointed Carlos Melendez, the final candidate in the running (Horack Martin recused herself from the process because of her mother’s candidacy). Melendez held the seat until losing it to Logan Campbell in November.

The budget cuts approved at the Feb. 10 meeting included $655,000 in certificated employee costs, $276,800 in classified costs and $1,145,000 in non-staff expenses.

Chief Business Official Andy Cannon made clear that even after the recent cuts, the district is far from out of the woods with its budget challenges.

“Ultimately, we will be back here and talking about future reductions if we don’t see increased revenue,” Cannon said.

In other news, the district and teachers union have reached a tentative agreement on a 1% salary increase for the 2024-25 year, avoiding the prospect of another contentious dispute that dragged on for much of the 2023-24 school year and included a strike threat from the Martinez Education Association. The union — and other district employees — were granted cumulative raises totaling 25 percentage points over the past three years. With the district facing a chronic budget deficit, it was widely anticipated that this year’s salary increase would be much reduced.