The Trustee Area 5 seat on the Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Education in California is up for special election on May 7. Five candidates are running for the seat. The filing deadline was February 8. None of the other four seats on the board are scheduled to hold an election in 2019.
The Trustee Area 5 seat was originally vacated in August 2018 when Evan Morgan resigned his position following criminal charges that Morgan said he feared would distract from his work on the board. The Board of Education appointed Darrell Peeden to the seat in October 2018, but the community had 30 days following Peeden’s appointment to gather 231 signatures from Trustee Area 5 voters for a special election to be held in lieu of the appointment. A total of 318 valid signatures were turned in, and the appointment was overturned in December 2018. Peeden filed to run for the seat in the special election.
This is the second such special election to be called in Moreno Valley USD this decade. In May 2013, the school district appointed Gary Baugh to a vacant at-large seat on the board. Following a similar petition drive, Baugh vacated the seat in June of that year and stood for election in November. He won the special election and served until 2018.
The Moreno Valley Unified School District served 33,408 students during the 2016-2017 school year.
Additional reading:
https://ballotpedia.org/Moreno_Valley_Unified_School_District,_California
https://ballotpedia.org/California_school_board_elections,_2019
https://ballotpedia.org/Public_education_in_California
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