An Opaque Path to the Board of Trustees

Sophie Sukendro

At the start of the 2025–2026 school year, OCSA announced the appointment of Natalie Odebunmi to its Board of Trustees, citing her extensive experience in public education, leadership in Capistrano Unified School District and ties to the school as an alumni parent.

What the announcement did not include was how the vacancy arose, how candidates were identified, or what steps occurred prior to the appointment. Beyond the final outcome, little information was shared publicly about the selection process itself.

Trustee selection occurs outside of official public meetings. Under OCSA’s charter, two trustees are appointed by the Orange County Department of Education, while three are appointed by the OCSA Foundation. The vacancy filled this year fell under the Foundation’s authority. Shaffer shared that a selection committee interviewed multiple candidates.

Odebunmi said she entered the process after being contacted directly by OCSA President and CEO Teren Shaffer. She met with Shaffer and Chief Operational Officer Greg Endelman to “learn about OCSA’s Board of Trustees, the current state of the school, etc.” and later participated in a formal interview “led by a selection committee of the OCSA Foundation Board of Directors.” Odebunmi was ultimately appointed following the selection committee’s recommendation that was approved by an OCSA Foundation Board vote.

What remains unclear, however, is how candidates were identified or invited into that pool in the first place. There was no formal announcement of the vacancy, no public call for nominations or applications, no published selection criteria and no timeline shared for how or when the position would be filled.

In an anonymous survey sent to all teachers, 97.1 percent of respondents answered “not clear at all” to the question “How clear would you describe the trustee selection process to be from a faculty perspective?” Some educators said they learned of the vacancy only through informal conversations or a mention on the board webpage that a seat would be filled at a later date, with no additional information provided.

Faculty concerns extend beyond this appointment. Multiple teachers expressed frustration with what they described as a longstanding lack of transparency in school governance. “The decisions of the board affect teachers and students directly and substantially,” one teacher said. “Yet teachers have no voice in determining who sits on the board.”

Several educators said repeated requests for the OCSA Teachers Association to appoint a representative to the Board of Trustees have been denied. Some also questioned why OCSA trustees are appointed rather than elected, noting that many other public schools rely on elected boards to provide broader community oversight. Others raised concerns about term limits, accountability, and the concentration of appointment power, and proposed broader stakeholder involvement in trustee selection through groups such as OCSATA, People Supporting OCSA, and the OCSA Foundation each appointing a trustee.

While some teachers acknowledged recent efforts to improve compliance and website transparency, many described the trustee selection process as fundamentally opaque. As one teacher summarized, “It’s encouraging to see someone with an education background join the board. But given years of calls for transparency, the process itself felt closed off.”

As OCSA continues to emphasize accountability and community engagement, the question raised by this appointment is not the qualifications of the trustee selected, but how visible, participatory and accountable the process of selection is to the community the Board is meant to serve.