FARMERSVILLE, Calif. — This is a school district in upheaval: The superintendent has been fired. The interim superintendent was asked not to return next fall. Its schools rank among the lowest in the state. One board member never went to school.
Now, all five board members are facing recall attempts amid allegations of racism, incompetence and vendettas.
All this in a town of just two square miles.
Though Farmersville has seen its share of divisive politics in the past, residents say nothing compares to this.
"This is the dirtiest I've ever seen it," said City Councilman Derek Ferguson. "This has had a terrible effect on the town. Everything positive that has been achieved in this town has been negated."
The dispute focuses on a new Latino school board majority, elected on a platform that they are the best representation of the district's ethnic makeup. They say that low-income students are being ignored and that little is being done to boost test scores.
Opponents say, however, that those school board members are using their positions to place more Latinos in powerful jobs while removing other longtime district employees.
It all started in November, when candidates challenged two incumbents in bitter campaigns to oversee the district's four schools and $20-million budget. In the end, voters deposed two longtime white school board trustees and replaced them with Latinos.
But that was just schoolyard antics compared to what came next. The tumultuous events that have erupted over the past six months in Farmersville -- population 8,737 -- are far from simple.
Days after the election, opponents said the newly elected members were out to form a destructive cabal. Their theory was that the new members would join with two fellow Latino officials already on the five-member volunteer board and vote as a bloc. These trustees had a hit list against all those who campaigned against them, the opponents said, and they were out to sweep away their opposition.
"They call me the puppet master," said recently elected board President Martin Macareno, who is at the center of the controversy. "It's ridiculous what has been said out there. There is no vendetta; there's never been a vendetta. Everything has been created."
Macareno and his colleagues have fired back with charges of racism, saying the established white community refuses to accept that it has lost the reins to the first predominantly Latino school board in the town's history.
