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5 apply for vacant school board seat

Five candidates applied for the seat on the Sonoma Valley Unified School District board vacated by El Verano area trustee Camerino Hawing.

The deadline to apply for the seat was 5 p.m. Thursday.

The applicants include Stephen Cederborg, a retired educator; Sal Chavez, a business owner; Sivani Lloyd, a retired teacher; Jose Saldana, an entrepreneur and John Van Dyke, a retired banker and business executive.

School Superintendent Louann Carlomagno said that two trustees will meet sometime next week to review the paperwork to be sure that each candidate is eligible, meaning they must be at least 18 years old, a registered voter and living in the El Verano attendance area.

After reviewing the applications, the entire board will question each of the candidates in public at its Tuesday, Sept. 11 meeting.

Hawing, who served on the school board since the death of Jeep Kuhn in 2005, resigned so that his wife, Kathleen, could be considered for a vice-principal’s position at Sonoma Valley High School. Hawing was the first Hispanic to sit on the board and was the first Hispanic board president.

At a meeting earlier this month, the board debated whether or not to go ahead with the proposed application and decided to kill at least two of the questions, they considered needlessly detailed, in the four-question application.

At the Sept. 11 meeting, the board, in public, will make a provisional appointment for the seat.

But, according to the state’s education code, “If the voters in the district are unhappy with the provisional appointment, they have 30 days from the date of the appointment to file a petition to conduct a special election to fill the vacancy. The petition must comply with specific requirements, including the County Clerk’s estimate of the cost of an election. The petition must be signed by a designated percentage of the district’s voters, depending upon the number of registered voters in the district. The petition is submitted to the County Superintendent of Schools, who has 30 days to verify the signatures. If the County Superintendent determines that the petition is legally sufficient, the provisional appointment is terminated, the appointed Board member is automatically removed from the board and the County Superintendent must call a special election to fill the vacancy.”

The person chosen would hold the seat until November 2014.