2 candidates are fighting for seat on Paso Robles school board. Here’s who they are

The race for a seat on the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District’s embattled Board of Education is heating up, with two candidates vying for votes.

Ballots for the special election are set to be mailed out beginning March 20 from the San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder’s Office.

The election will be held on April 18.

The election comes after a petition by community members gathered enough valid signatures to oust former board member Kenney Enney in December.

Enney was appointed to the board in October. He attended only three school board meetings before organizers including school district staffers, a Cal Poly instructor and a San Luis Obispo County social worker gathered about 800 signatures for the petition to remove him.

The petition organizers described Enney as an “extremist candidate” who held viewpoints that could result in discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, and said his social media posts motivated them to conduct the petition.

The district’s board of education has seen a seismic shift in membership in recent months as the November election unseated incumbent members Chris Arend and Frank Triggs.

Arend and Triggs, who often courted controversy with their conservative viewpoints, were replaced by two board members that many in the community consider progressive: Jim Cogan and Sondra Williams.

Laurene McCoy was also voted onto the board in November, beating out more progressive candidate Adelita Hiteshew. Meanwhile, former member Joel Peterson was elected by default in an uncontested seat.

Enney is still vying for a seat on the Paso Robles school board, saying he has unfinished business to address.

Running against him is Angela Hollander. The two stand on very different campaign platforms.

Paso Robles school board candidate faces controversy

Enney moved to the San Miguel area in 2012 to retire and establish Enney Ranch, which grows grain. He formerly served as a U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1989 to 2012.

Enney originally threw his hat in the ring for appointment to the board because, as he told the board on Oct. 4, he is “as concerned about the future of their children as they are in many cases.”

Enney told The Tribune on March 13 that he wants to focus on finding ways to bring student test scores up and keeping the district accountable.

His campaign hasn’t come without controversy, however.

In a scandal Enney has dubbed Logogate, the district has threatened to sue him over his use of the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District logo on his campaign posters and advertisements.

Enney told The Tribune that he thinks the logo isn’t copyrighted and falls under so-called federal and state “fair use doctrines.”

In cease-and-desist letters to Enney, school district officials note that use of the logo without permission is unlawful. They’re requested that Enney remove it from his posters and advertisements.

“Until removed or modified, the use of the district’s logo can only be interpreted as an intentional violation of the district’s rights under the law and should not be misinterpreted as any kind of district endorsement whatsoever,” Paso Robles Joint Unified said in a news release on March 2.

Apart from the logo issues, Enney filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that the petitioners who orchestrated his removal from the board used public funds because they corresponded with county elections officials during school hours.

The FPPC dismissed Enney’s complaint on March 2.

However, Enney told the Tribune he intends to refile the complaint.

School board candidate wants ‘all children’ to feel safe

Enney’s opponent, Hollander, told the Tribune on Monday that she isn’t “running against” Enney but rather “running for the position on the school board.”

Hollander has lived in San Luis Obispo County for more than two decades.

She’s had a long career working with children, including coordinating the early childhood literacy program with the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education, managing scholarships for the Community Foundation of San Luis Obispo County and serving on various community advisory councils for Paso Robles school district initiatives.

Her two children attended schools in the district, with one graduating from Paso Robles High School and the other graduating from Mission Prep in San Luis Obispo.

Hollander said she chose to run in the special election after watching school board meetings during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and feeling unhappy the board was fighting over what she called political matters instead of how to best educate children.

“Our job is to educate our children — give them the best education possible,” she said. “Part of this is about ensuring we have safe schools for all children. Our children need to feel safe no matter who they are.

“It’s the whole child we need to take care of, and sometimes the whole family.”

“I’m not a disrupter,” Hollander continued. “I want to work with our school district, not against it.”

Hollander noted she fully supports the community school concept at Georgia Brown Elementary School. Enney opposes the plan, saying in past Tribune interviews he believes it perpetuates a socialist agenda.

Community schools in California are specially designated campuses, often in low-income or disadvantaged areas, that can receive extra funding from the government to provide public school educational services along with free meals, health care, mental health counseling and other services for students and their families.

Endorsements by teachers union, former board president

Paso Robles Public Educators, the district’s teachers union, has endorsed Hollander.

Enney vehemently refused to participate in the union’s endorsement process, writing in a Jan. 24 email to the union’s executive director, Jim Lynett, that PRPE has “wildly radical anti-American and anti-family beliefs.”

“I look forward to working with PRPE when their primary focus is on student achievement of basics skills as opposed to the divisive social justice agenda they are currently pushing,” Enney wrote in his email.

Hollander has also received an endorsement from Arend, who previously endorsed Enney.

In a letter explaining his endorsement of Hollander, Arend noted that he found Enney’s FPPC complaint “superficial” and encouraged the Paso Robles school district to “take all reasonable action to assert its rights,” including going to court.

Additionally, Arend wrote, “It is simply absurd (for Enney) to argue that a ‘community school’ in Paso Robles would be some sort of socialist indoctrination center.

Arend said that his “own vision is that the new community school can soon become a center of academic excellence.”

The special election for the school board seat is for an at-large seat, meaning all community members eligible to vote within the school district’s boundaries can vote. Whoever wins will serve for two years.