The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees will appoint a new member to replace outgoing Trustee Kim De Serpa, rather than hold a costly special election.
The trustees made the 6–0 vote Wednesday night after a discussion that turned contentious as the board bickered with trustee-elect Gabe Medina, who was in the audience.
De Serpa has held the Trustee Area 1 seat since 2010. She resigned Thursday.
The district now has 60 days to fill the position, a timeline even more constrained due to the upcoming holiday closures, PVUSD Superintendent Heather Contreras told the board.
A special election would cost the district $80,000.
Medina suggested the district should be more transparent in the process of bringing in a new trustee. The district should also update the applications to identify when people applying for the position have made campaign donations to current members, he said.
He pointed out that Trustee Misty Navarro, who was appointed in October, made two separate $250 donations—one on Sept. 10 and the other on Sept. 16—to Kim De Serpa in her campaign for Santa Cruz County supervisor.
“It doesn’t seem like there was good play involved in making that decision,” he said.
In a text message on Thursday, Medina wrote, “the process lacked transparency, and raised concerns about public confidence in decision-making.”
“Overall, it felt like a rushed process, and we missed an opportunity to involve the voices of those most impacted,” he added.
Creating a survey for the people living in Trustee Area I, Medina asserted, would help assure that they have a say in the process.
“We have a recurring issue of “friends hiring friends, and this decision appeared to be another clear example of that dynamic,” Medina concluded. “Addressing such practices is crucial to rebuilding trust and ensuring that appointments are based on merit and community input rather than personal connections.”
Medina also said during the meeting that a poll of his 1,700 constituents showed that many wished they could have had more input in the process when Navarro was appointed to replace Jennifer Holm.
Medina also said that Navarro’s title should be changed to “interim trustee,” since she was appointed and not elected.
In her comments, Navarro defended both her contribution to De Serpa’s campaign and her position on the board.
She also decried the “contentious” nature of the meeting.
“I hope that when we’re on the board together we can do so in a more kind and respectful manner,” she said.
Navarro said that she has known De Serpa professionally for five years.
“I made a campaign contribution to her because I know who she is, and I know all the hard work that she does and I support her being on the (Board of Supervisors). (That) has nothing to do with being on this board,” she said.
“The reason I am on this board is that I have children in the district who go to these schools. I care about these students, I work with these students every single day, and frankly your comments are incredibly insulting.”
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The trustees also heard reports on a potential teacher housing complex for the district, and the dual project of a performing arts center and a pool at Pajaro Valley High School.
All three projects, still in the conceptual stage, will be funded by Measure M, the $315 million bond approved in the November election.
The district is considering seven school sites for the teacher housing project: Aptos and Renaissance high schools, Rolling Hills Middle School, Diamond Tech and Freedom, H.A. Hyde and Amesti elementary schools.
District officials see this project as a way to attract and retain teachers, by giving them affordable places to live close to where they work.
A project in Santa Cruz City School District is charging 65% of the market rate, said Ralph Le Roux, principal architect of 19six Architects, which has been chosen for that project.
It is estimated to cost between $60 and $91 million, but Le Roux warned that the estimates are a “moving target,” and are likely to change.
The performing arts center and pool at PV High—estimated at $25 million—will be the final pieces of the puzzle created when the school was built in 2004. At that time, it also lacked an athletic field; that project, completed in 2019, was one of the final tasks funded by Measure L, the $150 million bond approved in 2012.
The topics of teacher housing and the work at PV High were for discussion only, and no action was taken.
Le Roux said it will be at least five years before the project takes shape.
