Group said it will look to ‘field a candidate’ to fill a vacant seat
Published in the March 2-15, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Bob Benevento
No petition was filed Feb. 19 by Parents For Positive Change to call for a special election to take Morgan Hill Unified School District Board President Bob Benevento off the board, meaning “the recall process is officially over,” according to Shui Ling Chu, election division coordinator with the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.
The parents activist group served Benevento legal papers in September to begin the recall process. The recall campaign was initiated when several parents were angered when the board voted Aug. 4 for the district to move sixth-graders into middle schools. Parents For Positive Change had until Feb. 19, or a period of 120 days, to collect 6,289 valid signatures from registered voters living in the MHUSD boundary. If they had collected enough signatures verified by the Registrar of Voters, the district would have had to call an election, possibly to be set in May or June.
“It was a waste of several hours of my time the first week, but there after, I didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it because there was very little I could do to control the situation and I felt as though my record would speak for itself,” Benevento said. “I also felt the content of the petition had no merit and I stated that. If anyone read it, they would not sign the petition. And if indeed it got to a vote, it would not pass because it had no merit.”
Parents For Positive Change started the recall campaign because they were upset that Benevento, along with fellow trustees Ron Woolf, Donna Ruebusch and Amy Porter Jensen, approved to move sixth-graders to middle school. Trustees David Gerrard, Gino Borgioli and Rick Badillo voted against the change. The reconfiguration was recommended to the board after a year-long committee of parents, teachers and staff studied the change.
San Jose-based attorney Armando Benevides, a spokesperson for Parents For Positive Change, said the group has suspended its recall campaign.
“Our parent-driven group still opposes the district’s decision to move our sixth-graders from their local elementary schools to middle schools,” he said in an email. “We also oppose the hard tactics displayed by board president Benevento against those parents who appeared at the board meetings in opposition to the sixth-grade removal policy.”
Parents For Positive Change will now turn its attention to “field a candidate” to fill the vacant trustee seat for the June 7 election, he said. The seat of former Trustee Amy Porter Jensen came open when she resigned Oct. 28 after receiving what she considered “harassing” emails and phone calls from a member of Parents For Positive Change. Porter Jensen’s term would have ended in December so the winner of the June 7 election is filling an interim seat until the end of the year.
“The main factor that led to the recall suspension was unexpected interposition of a special June election that will be required to fill the vacant trustee seat,” Benevides said. “A June special election, followed by the recall election, followed by the November general election did not appear practical nor cost effective. With voters facing three elections in close proximity and the recall election costing close to one million dollars, it made practical sense to suspend the recall campaign and save the money.”
Identities of voters who signed the recall petition will be kept confidential, he said.
“We will continue to advocate for our firm conviction that sixth-graders should remain in their neighborhood schools and work with progressive trustees to reverse that decision,” Benevides said.
