For Pajaro Valley district’s Area 2 seat, incumbent faces challenger who led recall bid against her

Newcomer Carol Turley and incumbent Georgia Acosta are competing for the Area 2 trustee seat on the Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board in the Nov. 5 election.

Acosta was first elected to the board in 2016 and was reelected in 2020 to the Area 2 district, which includes the eastern portion of Watsonville stretching up to Salsipuedes. Turley managed an unsuccessful recall campaign against her in 2021.

For PVUSD’s seven-member board, two other seats are also up for election this November: Newcomer Gabriel Medina is facing incumbent Oscar Soto for trustee Area 3, and incumbent Adam Bolaños Scow is facing newcomer Jessica Carrasco for trustee Area 6. Lookout sought in-person interviews with all the candidates, and this story is the third of the three races to be published. 

Carol Turley, 62, has been the general manager of the Pajaro Dunes Association since 1999. She describes herself as the person who, in the midst of an emergency, checks to see if anyone will run to provide aid, and if no one shows up, she’ll step in. That’s how she said she felt in this election when she saw no one running against Acosta. 

“There’s usually a person who will not even think and just do, and there are people who are like, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this,’ and they leave,” she said. “And then – this is kind of where I typically am – I look around, I will do something if nobody else is, but I’m not running into the fire. I’m ready to help, but should I? I’m a little bit more cautious, but I don’t run away.”

Georgia Acosta, 54, a Cal State University Monterey Bay adjunct professor, said she’s driven to continue her work on the board and feels trustees on the board currently are a good team. 

“I believe that my strong track record is proven for itself of who I am, I’m not a politician,” she said. “If you watch any meetings and you see the seven of us, we’re all different. We have different political, personal, social, philosophical views and backgrounds – that’s great. That’s where diversity comes from, but also having those conversations in a respectful dialogue, tone and manner, and realizing we’re a board of education. We’re leading by example to our youth in the community.” 

With more than 15,000 students and 2,379 employees in its 31 schools, PVUSD is the largest school district in Santa Cruz County. The district’s boundary spans from Aptos to Pajaro in northern Monterey County. PVUSD, like districts across the state, has struggled to recover from learning loss brought on by the pandemic, declining enrollment and budget challenges, teacher retention and the youth mental health crisis. 

The school board is responsible for steering the direction of the district as it navigates those kinds of challenges. This past year, the board voted to hire a new superintendent, Heather Contreras, and also voted to place a $315 million bond measure on the November ballot to improve its aging infrastructure. 

Turley: Pajaro Dunes Association general manager

From Watsonville, Turley has deep ties to PVUSD. 

She attended PVUSD schools, including Freedom Elementary School, Aptos Junior High and Watsonville High School. Her dad and stepmom both taught in the district their entire careers, and Turley’s two daughters graduated from PVUSD schools and “have benefitted from the excellent education they received there.” 

Turley studied a couple of years at UCLA but didn’t graduate and soon after she started working at the Pajaro Dunes Association in 1982. She has worked there ever since – excluding a two-year sabbatical. She’s been the homeowners association’s general manager since 1999. She oversees 15 employees and manages a $2 million budget. 

Turley refers to herself as the chief problem-solver. 

“I’m good at listening to people, even if they don’t get what they want, at least they feel like they’ve been heard,” she said. “I deal with a lot of things where neighbors are unhappy with one another – so trying to bridge their issues and at least get to where, if you can live together harmoniously.” 

She first announced she would run during a school board meeting when public comment speakers were asking the board to renew a contract with a firm that helped the district develop its ethnic studies curriculum. 

During a board meeting last September, after Acosta and trustee Kim De Serpa accused the founder of Community Responsive Education (CRE) of antisemitism – which several district officials have said are unfounded accusations – the board decided not to renew the contract. 

The curriculum is widely praised – even by Acosta and De Serpa – as being a positive and good curriculum. But despite the pleas of many students, teachers and community members to renew the contract, the board hasn’t brought it back for renewal. 

Turley attended some of the meetings and said she was frustrated by the board’s decision to not bring the program back. At one of those meetings this past year, she announced that she would be running for the seat. 

“I was in it before that came up,” she said. “To me, that’s a symptom of something that’s not working right.” 

Turley said she feels that symptom is not keeping the students’ best interest at heart. 

“If your motivation isn’t what’s best for the kids, then things aren’t going to go right,” she said. “There are going to be mishaps like firing superintendents without good cause – and then having to hire them back.” 

She referenced the firing of former superintendent Michelle Rodriguez in 2021, when Acosta was board president. Acosta told Lookout she can’t comment on why she and three other board members voted to fire Rodriguez, citing the confidentiality of some personnel matters. When the board reinstated Rodriguez days later, it also voted to remove Acosta as board president. In March 2021, the board censured her. 

Turley served as the campaign manager for a group that attempted unsuccessfully to recall Acosta months later. 

At the time, Lookout reported: “In a video message played at the meeting, campaign manager Carol Turley said Acosta ‘failed to fulfill the duties and responsibilities entrusted to her as a governing board member.’

“’Trustee Acosta has failed to attend 26 board meetings, failed to participate in PVUSD committees and failed to regularly meet with the district superintendent to provide oversight, accountability and solutions,’ Turley said.” 

The recall failed, and Acosta filed a formal response in which she disclosed a cancer diagnosis and called the recall a “witch hunt.” 

Turley said she thinks this kind of dysfunction on the board is one of the main issues the district is facing, and she plans to address it by listening to people attentively and using her problem-solving skills. If elected, she also plans to focus on the district’s budget challenges and ensuring staff feel respected. 

The district’s teachers union has endorsed Turley, “for her commitment to the well-being of students and staff, her interest in enhancing counseling services, and her budget-conscious approach that protects classroom resources.”

Turley also received an endorsement from former interim superintendent Murry Schekman, who lives in trustee Area 2. Turley’s two daughters were students of his at Watsonville High School, where Turley advised the Interact Club.

“I’ve known Carol for a long, long time,” Schekman said. “She was a very involved parent.” 

Acosta: Incumbent and CSUMB adjunct professor 

Acosta spent much of her childhood in Morgan Hill, moving to Watsonville when she was 14. She completed her high school education at Watsonville/Aptos/Santa Cruz Adult Education. 

After graduating, she started working as a bus driver for PVUSD. She did that for about 15 years as she and her husband raised their three kids. 

She later went back to school, starting at Cabrillo College and graduating from CSUMB’s undergraduate and master of business administration programs. She currently teaches courses in its College of Business, including Responsible Business Practices and Personal Finance Literacy.

Acosta homeschooled her kids through Pacific Coast Charter School – a PVUSD charter school.  

“I decided that I wanted to run in 2016 because I was, as many other parents in the community, frustrated with things that I was seeing in the district – the performance of the district – and wanted to be a person at the table with a voice and wanted to represent my community,” she said. 

When asked for examples of what she was seeing, Acosta said “the educational performance wasn’t the greatest” and that a potential factor that led to this was the “influx of getting so many charter schools.” 

Acosta said there are several highlights she’s proud of from her eight years serving on the board. She cited the district’s work to develop its 28 career technical education pathways and its Expanded Learning Program. 

When she first started as a trustee, the Expanded Learning Program was limited to serving students after school. 

“Our student population at that time was over 20,000 students, we were servicing about less than 600 on a daily basis,” she said. “Now, with our dwindling student population down to about 17,000, we are servicing over 9,000 students through the Expanded Learning Program on a daily basis.” 

Acosta added that she’s also proud of hiring the district’s new superintendent, Heather Contreras. 

Disagreements on the board: A superintendent fired, a contract-renewal debate

Acosta’s time on the board hasn’t been without controversy. In 2021, Soto and Acosta, serving at the time as vice president and president of the board, respectively, voted with two other trustees to remove the former superintendent, Rodriguez. They haven’t provided a reason since then. 

Following an outcry from the community, the board voted to reinstate Rodriguez days later. In the same meeting the board reinstated her, the board also voted Acosta and Soto out of their leadership positions, but they remained on the board.

Lookout asked both Soto and Acosta in separate interviews about why they fired Rodriguez and what they thought of their removal as officers. Soto said he couldn’t speak about the reason for their decision. 

Acosta said it’s confidential and emphasized that the board didn’t fire Rodriguez but instead voted to give her “early release termination.” 

“Any personnel matter is a closed-session conversation. That’s it,” she said. “The second I’ll say to that was, I suggest you do the research and dig deep for the news articles, because Dr. Rodriguez was not fired. So let’s be really clear about that. She was not fired. All public employees, including a superintendent, right, there’s a certain process, and it’s a due process that they all have. And we didn’t go through that process because she was not fired.” 

“The decision that came out, which is a matter of public record, that you can go and watch that video or pull the minutes, was that she was released under the early termination clause of her contract on a 4-3 vote,” she said. “That’s that.” 

Lookout asked the district for clarification on whether Rodriguez was fired at the Jan. 31, 2021, meeting. 

“Dr. Rodriguez’s termination action of January 27 was rescinded on January 31, effectively nullifying January 27’s termination action,” said district spokesperson Alicia Jimenez, without getting into whether “termination” is different from “firing” as Acosta asserts. She provided the minutes from the meeting of Rodriguez’s statement: 

Minutes from Special Meeting of January 31, 2021

Vice President [Jennifer] Schacher moved to rescind the prior action of the Board regarding the dismissal of Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez [from Wed, Jan 27]. Trustee Dodge Jr. seconded the motion. The motion passed 7/0/0 (Trustees Acosta, De Serpa, [Daniel] Dodge Jr., [Jennifer] Holm, [Maria] Orozco, Schacher and Soto: Yes).

Minutes from January 27 (Reporting out of closed session):

2.4 Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/Release/Leaves – President Acosta reported that the Board voted to terminate the employment agreement effective immediately for the superintendent with a 4/3/0 vote (Trustees Dodge Jr, Schacher, Soto and President Acosta: Yes; Trustees De Serpa, Holm and Orozco: No).

Lookout also asked Acosta for her take on the debate over renewal of the CRE contract for the district’s ethnic studies curriculum. 

Acosta told Lookout that it’s a great program: “I’ll remind you, I was on the board and one of the board members who approved [the contract initially].”

She then said that the district can’t move forward with a decision until proposed state legislation, Assembly Bill 2918, has been discussed and voted on. 

“Until we have that direction, and we know, I’m not willing to move forward on this at all,” she said.

Authored by Assemblymembers Dawn Addis (whose 30th District includes part of PVUSD) and Rick Zbur, the bill would “respond to incidents where antisemitic and anti-Israel content appeared in ethnic studies courses and teacher training,” according to a statement from the authors. 

However, Sebastian Aguilar, a representative from Zbur’s office, said the bill shouldn’t affect the district’s decisions on the issue.

“AB 2918 did not move forward this legislative session, so it shouldn’t have any impacts since it didn’t pass,” he wrote via email.

Acosta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about the bill’s status.

Teachers, students and community members continued their demand that the board renew the contract at the most recent board meeting last Wednesday. Several of them held signs saying, “Vote out Soto and Acosta.” 

FOR THE RECORD: This story has been updated to clarify that Carol Turley attended UCLA but did not graduate.

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