Taksony fills AADUSD Board vacancy
ACTON — Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District’s Board of Education appointed Brianna Taksony to fill the Board vacancy.
The five-member Board was one member short after former trustee Mike Fox announced his resignation at the Board’s May 13 meeting. The Board previously chose to make a provisional appointment to avoid the expense of a costly special election.
Taksony was one of two people who submitted an application to be considered for the provisional appointment. The other applicant was Lester Mascon.
Taksony was appointed on a 3-1 vote, with Board Clerk Chad Wadsworth dissenting. The provisional appointment required a majority vote to pass.
The Board previously split 2-2 to appoint Taksony, with Wadsworth and trustee Ken Pfalzgraf dissenting. A second motion to appoint Mascon also failed on a 3-1 vote, with Chadsworth, Board President Kelly Jensen and Vice President Tim Jorgensen dissenting.
“We have, as a Board, we’ve elected to appoint rather than to go for a special election,” Jorgensen said. “That was primarily based on spending a substantial amount of money that was going to be taken away from the general fund to go ahead with having a special election in November. We chose not to do that. We chose to appoint, we opened it up for candidates (and) we have two interested parties.”
The Board took a brief break and returned to vote again. Pfalzgraf motioned to vote on Mascon first. But the motion failed after it was
not seconded.
Taksony will serve through November 2022, when the seat will come up for election again as a short-term, twoyear seat.
The Board interviewed Taksony and Mascon for about 10 minutes each. Taksony said her highest priority as a Board member would be to support District staff and bring students back to schools to increase the District’s average daily attendance.
Kim Shaw, assistant superintendent of Human Resources, Pupil Services and Education, administered the oath of office to Taksony.
“Congratulations,” Jensen said after Taksony took her seat.
Taksony is the past president of California School Employees Chapter 473, which represents Acton-Agua Dulce Unified’s classified employees. As CSEA president, Taksony, a former attendance clerk for the district, urged the Board at its Feb. 25 meeting to consider other options to save money when the Board approved layoffs for 12 employees.
Taksony now serves as a pupil services technician for Antelope Valley Union High School District.