Last week, without any discussion or explanation to the public, the Orange Unified School District Board of Education voted to raise their maximum monthly pay from $400 to $2,000 – an increase of 400%.
OUSD includes the communities of Orange, Villa Park, Anaheim Hills and parts of Garden Grove..
The massive pay hike was buried near the bottom of the Board agenda as a “consent” item – meaning it would not be presented by staff nor discussed by Board members unless at least one Trustee requested it.
The consent item came up a few minutes before the end of the more than 5 hour Board meeting. Not a single member of the Board of Education did so, and they all voted unanimously and wordlessly to award themselves a massive pay increase.
The pay increases comes amidst ongoing fiscal difficulties in the district precipitated by the current Board approving a large pay increase for the teachers union combined with declining enrollment.
Board members also received generous, taxpayer-funded medical, dental and vision insurance coverage.
The staff report portrayed the pay hike as a way to avoid being “forced to treat the role [of Board member] as an “exclusive” volunteer position only for those with economic freedom or more free time.”
It’s unknown if anyone has ever declined to run for or seek appointment to the OUSD Board of Education because it doesn’t pay enough. The district provided no examples to justify their rationale.
Villa Park Councilmember Crystal Miles had planned to speak on the matter, but had to leave before the vote due to an unforeseen family emergency. Miles later called out the OUSD Board of Education members for the sneaky manner in which they gave themselves a massive pay increase.
“The board had a choice: to handle trustee compensation openly, or to bury it. They chose to bury it. And regardless of intent, the effect is the same—it creates the appearance of self-dealing and secrecy with public funds. Transparency is not an option when it comes to elected officials compensation in my opinion,” wrote Miles.
All seven OUSD Board members are political progressive aligned with the OUSD’s powerful teachers union. In early 2024, the union powered a recall campaign against two of the Board’s four conservatives – Madison Miner and Rick Ledesma – by taking advantage of public dissatisfaction with the sudden and ham-handed firing of the superintendent.
The removal of those two trustees created two Board vacancies that three union-friendly trustees – Ana Page, Kris Erickson and Andrea Yamasaki, now in the majority – then filled with two political allies, Stephen Glass and Sara Pelly, in May of 2024.
The two remaining conservative trustees were so demoralized that they declined to seek re-election in November 2024. Conservatives activists and organizations were in disarray and lacked time and focus to recruit school board candidates. Glass and Pelly, along with two additional union-backed candidates, were elected against token opposition in November 2024.
READ: Union-Led Campaign To Recall Two Conservative OUSD Trustees Leads In Vote Count
READ: OUSD Board Will Fill Recall-Created Vacancies By Appointment
READ: OUSD Voters Face Choice Between BLM Supporter And A Lunatic In Trustee Area 7
Soon after, the new Board of Education approved a generous contract with the teachers union that far exceeded anything the union could have secured under the previous Board of Education.
In effect, the Orange Unified Education Association (OUEA) picked itself a new boss and then negotiated a new contract.
Afterward, it emerged that Trustee Ana Page had been carrying on an affair with then-OUEA President Grant Goodlander. Both were married to other people at the time. They have since divorced their spouses and married each other.
Four Board of Education members are up for re-election in November 2026: Stephen Glass, Kris Erickson, Andrea Yamasaki and Sara Pelly.
