School board stages second leadership coup

Move comes just 3 months after Herrera installed as president

SAN JOSE >> Staging its second leadership change in three months, the Alum Rock school board has replaced President Esau Ruiz Herrera with trustee Andres Quintero, his political foe.

Though Quintero has been at odds with the board majority, the board made the switch at a special Thursday evening meeting on a 3-1 vote with Herrera dissenting and trustee Dolores Marquez absent. The vote ending Herrera’s leadership of the board came with just four weeks remaining in his term. The board selected Quintero ally Karen Martinez as vice president.

“Esau is just not the direction this district wants to go,” said trustee Khanh Tran, whom the board in August had replaced as president with Herrera. “Also his recent character and actions to mislead the board in attempt to se-

cure his presidency is dishonorable.”

The leadership change comes as the district is under investigation by the SEC and DA for its bond spending. Herrera has been a staunch supporter of the company that manages the district’s bond program, Del Terra, which Quintero wants to oust.

Herrera was quick to lash back at Tran, questioning Tran’s communications in seeking to set up the meeting that

ousted him. On Wednesday, Tran emailed his colleagues that he wanted to meet Thursday “to remove current president and vote in Andres Quintero as president and Karen Martinez as vice president.”

The exchange, Herrera wrote after the board’s action, may violate California’s open-meeting laws.

The email “does not inspire confidence in the board’s understanding to the Brown Act, and may be deemed a violation of that law,” Herrera wrote. The leadership switch was “unfortunate,” he wrote, “in the absence of any compelling reason.”

Tran explained that he would have to miss the board’s planned Dec. 14 meeting to select new leadership because of a business trip followed by vacation, announcing at an earlier meeting that “Santa is coming early this year.” Marquez also said she could not make the Dec. 14 meeting

The board considered changing its reorganization meeting to Dec. 7, but that doesn’t follow state law. So Quintero’s tenure as board chief remains, for now, up in the air.