Bell hasn’t rung for school board veterans

Despite a difficult road ahead due to the state’s budget crunch on education, all three incumbent Newport-Mesa Unified School District school board members pulled papers for reelection recently and are looking forward to their campaigns.

Dana Black, David Brooks and Martha Fluor are the members whose terms are up this year and will seek reelection. And while the budget will be a difficult obstacle for schools in the coming years, the board members see the challenge more as reason to come back than a deterrent.

“We know where our dollars need to go, instead of having someone in Washington, D.C. or Sacramento tell us,” Black said.

The decision regarding how money is used should be more local, Black argued. Government programs, such as No Child Left Behind, force schools to spend money on mandated programs and teaching for tests, which doesn’t allow a school district to meet its unique needs, Black said. She would like to try, as she has done before, to change that at Newport-Mesa.

“It is a little archaic, and we are ready to change that,” she said.

Black said she approached about six individuals — just as she did in 2004 — to see if they would be interested in running if she decided to retire. All of them encouraged her to seek reelection, she said, so she decided to give it another run.

Fluor has similar goals as Black. The budget crisis, the aquatic center at Costa Mesa High School, and theaters at all the high schools are some of the top issues, Fluor said. The last two are dependent on selling bonds, which have previously been held off due to the state of the economy.

Fluor, the present school board president, is also going through the nomination process to be the president of the California School Board Assn. She has already been nominated by fellow school board members from other districts and counties, and she hopes to be considered for election. She will learn later this year if she will be up for election in December.

Brooks is also trying to stay on the school board, as he believes progress has been made and the best way to keep that going is to keep the same players on the field.

“One of the good things is that in the past, there have been a lot of problems with the district itself [and] we have solved many of them,” Brooks said. “We have a pretty good team.”

Brooks mentioned the projects he has been a part of, such as creating more after-school programs through Costa Mesa Cares and pushing for athletic facilities by helping with Costa Mesa United.

“The whole role of being on the school board is doing what is best for the students,” Brooks said. “They are the clientele that we serve, and there is a lot of personal satisfaction in seeing that.”

DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at [email protected].