Stockton Unified trustees Alicia Rico and Cecilia Mendez are seeking to oust Board President AngelAnn Flores at the school district’s governing board meeting next week.
The two trustees are officially putting a possible change in board leadership up for a vote Tuesday.
Mendez says it was necessary to include the item on the board’s agenda because she and Rico, as well as the community, are concerned with Flores’s behavior as president.
“I have received an overwhelming amount of phone calls from parents and staff,” Mendez told Stocktonia in a statement Friday evening. “Her behavior has an impact on the board and the district. This is an opportunity for the community to voice their concerns and suggestions.”
Mendez did not specify which actions by Flores she was referring.
Flores was elected president by the board in December following the 2022 General Election, taking over the gavel from Mendez and marking a significant shift in school district politics.
On Friday afternoon, Flores described the move by Rico and Mendez as the continuation of a “chaos, distraction and propaganda” campaign leveled against her.
“It’s just another distraction to create the propaganda with their social media allies who continue to harass me as a way to silence me,” Flores told Stocktonia. “They are just not accepting the fact that I am the board president. They are not happy about that.”
Trustee Rico told Stocktonia she was unavailable to comment until Monday.
Flores spent much of her first term on the SUSD Board of Education’s minority of one, while also facing a tough, personal reelection battle. But she won and was sworn in to office for her second term alongside three new members, effectively initiating a changing of the guard and Flores’ rise to the board’s top spot.
She was also often the lone dissenting vote in the passing of myriad controversial legislation over the last few years, including a deal that saw the district purchase air purifiers with federal COVID-19 dollars that state investigators described as fraudulent and the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office is investigating.
The Area 2 trustee now makes up part of what some in the community have referred to as a “reformer’s block” which includes newly-elected trustees Vice President Kennetha Stevens, Board Clerk Sofia Colón and Donald Donaire.
Trustees Mendez, Rico and Ray Zulueta all staunchly opposed Flores’ election in December, with the contention between them often continuing to be on display during board meetings since.
Flores says that Rico and Mendez are not prioritizing the district or students.
“Their priority is to remove me as president, and the question is why do they want to remove me as president?” Flores said, answering that it’s because she holding people to account and running the district in an opposing way compared to that under previous leadership.
This is a developing story.
I want to get upset over this — but it is an indication of just how desperate Rico and Mendez have gotten after the DA/FBI announced they are launching an investigation. This is likely their last opportunity to derail all of this before they are brought up on charges.
BB 9322 indicates that the Board President and Superintendent develop the agenda…in the past, the President withheld certain items they didn’t like. Interesting that the current Board President ok’d the item for the agenda.
I thought Sanchez’s performance last night was quite telling. Regardless of his claim not to care what happen with the recall vote, it’s clear that he and Silva are the ones who initiated it. Sanchez knows that if Zulueta replaced Flores as president, he’d be able to keep the $141k position that he extorted from the last superintendent