LAMONT, Calif. (KERO) — Petition organizers are going door-to-door asking community members for their signatures to recall Gilberto Lopez Jr., Pablo Trevino, Ernesto Garay, and Evelyn Velasquez.
- The first effort failed in January after the Kern County Elections Division verified that the petitions did not have the required number of valid signatures.
- Petition organizers say the goal of the recall is to create change when it comes to school maintenance, parent rights, board leadership and the special education program.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
It's been two months since the petition to recall 4 LESD board members failed and now, organizers are back, collecting signatures for a second attempt.
Petition organizers are going door-to-door asking community members for their signatures to recall Gilberto Lopez Jr., Pablo Trevino, Ernesto Garay, and Evelyn Velasquez.
This effort began last fall, and was later revoked by the Kern County Elections Division for not having at least 1150 valid signatures.
According to petition organizer, Juan Sandoval, they were about 70 signatures short during their first attempt. This time around, he says they are trying to reach that goal.
"We didn't want to let them down," said Sandoval. "When you talk to about 1,350 parents and they tell you their stories, it's worse than what you think it is when you go to the meetings and you experience the mistreatment of the board to the parents."
Sandoval told me that the goal of the recall is to create change when it comes to school maintenance, parent rights, board leadership and the special education program.
Mirna Elbir is a mother at LESD whose son is in the special education classes. She says the program is offered on Zoom and is not effective in helping her son communicate. She also says that when she's brought it up to the board she's been ignored.
"I've also witnessed several parents attend board meetings to ask for help for their children and sometimes they'll have police officers there which intimidates us parents," said Elbir.
However, not all community members are for the recall and claim it's misleading parents. Joel Colón says Sandoval is trying to turn the community against the district.
"The recall, from my understanding, is kind of misleading in ways," said Colón. "Some of the stuff they have on their petition is--one of them being the speech program. My daughter is actually in that program and within the two weeks of her being in there I've seen dramatic improvement."
23ABC also spoke to LESD board member Pablo Trevino who said all LESD schools have fully credited speech pathologists. Trevino also highlighted how the recall is impacting the district financially.
"It's going to affect our children right now with the deficit cuts per California," explained Trevino. "When it comes to education, we're going to need every penny for our children, for computers, for events, for anything that we need and for something like this, just for their agenda—it's just appalling I believe."
If passed, Sandoval said the recall will bring in new leadership to address parent concerns.
"The board is not in control. The board members, even though the one that's president—Garay is probably the most senior—does not know what's going on and the Superintendent is constantly telling him what to do," said Sandoval.
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