r has ended. The 2010-11 school year will begin this fall on Wednesday, September 8.

We see school students at the gym, playing sports, at the beach enjoying great South Orange County weather.

Quite a few students are working in temporary jobs, and a few are still looking for jobs. The past school year was full of activities including a three-day teachers strike.

On July 1, Mr. Joe Farley will join as the permanent superintendent of the District. My June column has provided a snap shot of Mr Farley through an over the telephone interview. I will meet him in person and update the readers on him.

At the June 15 Board meeting the temporary superintendent gave farewell speech to the Board and the public. She spoke highly of everything going on, including her effort in improving the inter departmental communication.

There were about seven speakers at the June 15 Board meeting. The majority spoke against the Board and, one in particular, pointed out the exaggeration of facts by the Board President Bryson.

The recall of two Trustees, Michael Winsten and Ken Lopez-Maddox, has qualified for the November ballot. The effort needed 21,641 signatures, but recall proponents submitted 32,774 for Lopez-Maddox and 32,929 for Winsten.

The Orange County Registrar of Voters used a random sampling method to verify the signatures and determined that the proponents have submitted enough signatures. This is the third recall election in the last five years.

Laderians, the November election will be a very important one for us as there will be three key CUSD related issues to be decided by the voters.

As I see it, the first one is the voting method. At present the voting is at large – that is the entire single District votes for all candidates. This becomes a big burden to the individual citizen who wants to serve the community as it requires a huge fund to campaign.

Voting by the District which the candidate represents makes lot more sense, and the voters can decide this issue in November.

The second important one is the recall election involving the two previously mentioned Trustees. The third is the re-election of three Board members. Trustees Anna Bryson, Larry Christenson and Ellen Addonizzio's are up for reelection. In essence, the November election is a referendum of five members of the seven-member Board. Hence the November election will decide the make up of the Board.

There will be about 40 teachers, and 30 classified employees retiring at the end of this school year. The exact number will be known by June 29. For each retiring employee one pink slip can be revoked.

I happen to walk into a retirement party at Infusion Restaurant in Ladera Ranch. Office Manager Nancy Lamperis of Wagon Wheel's retirement party was entertaining specially when the past Principle Dick Campbell was telling how Nancy handled the bat hanging on the wall, mountain lion in the school yard or mold in the wall situations. The Ladera Times wishes all retirees a very happy future years.

At the June 15 Board meeting, Ron Lebs, Deputy Principle Business Services announced that there will be a budget short fall of $2.4 Million. He stated that the CUEA (teachers) has already agreed to a 10% salary reduction. The negotiation is on going with the CSEA (classified), CUMA (management) and Teamsters unions.

Mind you the CUSD Board can reduce CUMA salary without their agreement.

However in the interim, the staff recommended as a temporary measure tapping into the 2% reserve to run the District. Otherwise there will be a cash flow problem in paying September salaries.

As a former Trustee of a tri-city school district I am alarmed, as if the District at the end of the school year does not have the 2% reserve, the management of the District can be taken over by the state! May be there is no other alternatives as all the cuts have been made and there is no other place to cut from. I am sure the staff has done it's due diligence with the state officials.

In it's June 29 meeting, the Board will adopt the 2010–11 budget.

(Ram Mukherji is a former Trustee of Tri-City L.A. County Unified School District and Past President of Ladera Ranch Maintenance Corporation.)