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The provisional appointment of Carolina Martinez to the Dublin Unified School District Board of Trustees has been challenged by a petition calling for a special election instead to fill the Area 3 seat.
Filed on Jan. 16, the petition is currently being evaluated for statutory criteria by the Alameda County Office of Education, the agency responsible for reviewing such petitions, according to ACOE spokesperson Neetu Balram.
If deemed “legally adequate”, the district’s provisional appointment will be terminated and the ACOE will call for a special election, Balram said. Its approval would mark the second time in the past six years a provisional appointment to the DUSD board was nullified in favor of a special election.
A special election would be required to occur between 88 days and 125 days following the ACOE’s order.
In effect, the board would be short one representative as it makes a critical budget cut vote in February, according to a statement DUSD Superintendent Chris Funk sent to the community in December.
Of the petition, Funk said, “I will have plenty of comments once the ACOE makes a determination.”
The board selected parent-volunteer Carolina Martinez with a 3-2 vote to represent Area 3 for two years at a regular meeting Dec. 17, amid infighting over the appointment process.
She was chosen to fill the position originally slated for Jeff Clark, the sole candidate to come forward for the role during regular election season. His resignation letter, sent before taking office, threw the board into lengthy procedural debates.
Martinez did not respond to a request for comment, as of Wednesday morning.
At the meeting on Dec. 17, President Kristin Speck, Trustee Kristian Reyes and outgoing Trustee William Kuo — who remained at the dais representing Area 3 until Martinez was seated — supported her provisional appointment.
Meanwhile, Trustee Dan Cherrier and Vice President Gabi Blackman took on procedural arguments against a provisional appointment. Cherrier said there was no vacancy to fill given Kuo’s continued presence and Blackman argued the board acted in advance of a vacancy at a November meeting, when they decided to fill the spot via a provisional appointment.
Funk assured the trustees they had the right to make a provisional appointment, supported by legal counsel.
The appointment on Dec. 17 initiated a 30-day period where registered voters of Area 3 could file a petition to call for a special election.
Essentially, a successful petition would oust Martinez and create a vacancy until a trustee was selected via special election.
In recent DUSD history, a successful petition nullified the appointment of Nini Natarajan to the board. Natarajan took over the Area 4 seat in December 2018 after the resignation of trustee Joe Giannini, but was replaced by Blackman through a special election.
For the current petition to pass muster, it requires sufficient signatures from registered voters living in Area 3, according to education code.
The exact number of required signatures depends on the number of registered voters living in Area 3, though DUSD spokesperson Chip Dehnert did not know the population size of registered voters in that district.
A valid petition also requires an election official’s cost estimate for conducting a special election and its expression on a per-pupil or per-student basis, the name and address of one to five proponents of the petition who lives in the district, font size no smaller than six-point type as well as preparation and circulation abiding by the Elections Code. If these requirements are not met, the county superintendent of schools will not verify the signatures nor take any further action regarding the petition, according to the code.
As of Wednesday morning, ACOE did not respond regarding the expected processing time of the petition.
