The Cloverdale Unified School District (CUSD) announced Tuesday that a petition started by community members calling for a special election for a provisional CUSD Board of Trustees seat failed to gain the necessary verified signatures to call for a special election.
In order for the petition to call for an election, it needed to have signatures from 1.5% of the voters eligible to vote in the district. According to the school district, 6,588 registered voters were eligible to participate in the last election and the petition needed signatures from at least 99 people.
According to County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor-Registrar of Voters Deva Marie Proto, the petition had 96 valid signatures of 118 that were submitted.
A press release from the district, using information provided by the Sonoma County Office of Education (SCOE), said that 94 signatures were validated.
When asked about the discrepancy in numbers, SCOE said that an initial update from the county registrar said that 94 signatures had been validated, however they received the updated number of 96 after notice had been sent to the district.
The petition was delivered to SCOE on Jan. 15, at which point it was reviewed by SCOE and moved on to the Registrar’s office for signature verification.
If it had had the required amount of signatures, the petition calling for the special election would unseat provisional appointee Brandon Axell, who was appointed to a vacated board seat in December during a public school board meeting, following a public interview process. A special election would have been held to fill the seat, which is up for election in 2022.
According to Jamie Hansen, director of communications for SCOE, this type of petition doesn’t have an option for an appeal from petitioners.
Four people — Brandon Axell, Jenny Candelaria-Orr, Johannes Hoevertsz and Christina Lepe-Duarte — applied for the district’s vacant trustee seat and were interviewed during a public school board meeting in December. Axell, who was appointed to a different school trustee seat in May 2020, came in fourth in November’s election.
During the December meeting, the board voted 3-0-1 to appoint Axell, with then-President Jacque Garrison, now-President Preston Addison, Trustee Ashley White in favor of the appointment. Trustee Gabriela Mendoza-Torres abstained from the vote.
When it came time to fill the board vacancy left by former trustee and current Cloverdale council member Todd Lands, the district chose to appoint someone to the position because of the cost of holding a special election.
According to a Jan. 11 statement from Addison, this is the first time that a special election has been filed for a school board provisional appointment.
