Orange County residents are getting their first look this week at who their new county superintendent could be, with the county board of education interviewing six of the top applicants at a public meeting on Wednesday.
Whoever is picked will be the county’s first new superintendent in over a decade, replacing outgoing Superintendent Al Mijares, who announced his retirement last month amidst his battle with cancer after nearly a year on medical leave.
[Read: Orange County’s School Superintendent to Retire While Battling Cancer]
While voters will ultimately pick who gets to keep the job long term, whoever replaces Mijares will hang onto the seat for the rest of his term that expires at the end 2026.
They’ll be tasked with running the county Department of Education, a 1,400-person department that manages payroll and provides legal support to the county’s other 28 school districts using $350 million in taxpayer dollars.
The department also manages ACCESS, which offers continuation school and special needs education to students throughout the county.
The replacement will also have to work with the county board of education, who get the final say on who takes the seat until the next election.
The current board holds a panel of charter school supporters who’ve repeatedly said they want more say on how the department operates and even sued Mijares for more access.
[Read: Orange County’s Wild West of Campaign Finance: The Board of Education]
Applicants only have to prove they are a registered voter in Orange County with an administrative credential to apply for the position according to Tim Shaw, chair of the Orange County Board of Education.
In an interview, Shaw said the final decision on the next superintendent will be made next month.
Who Are the Candidates?
Ramon Miramontes, the current acting superintendent who’s been quietly running the department since Mijares stepped away last August, has thrown his hat in the ring to keep the job permanently.
Miramontes was hired as a deputy superintendent in 2023, and before that spent about six years as superintendent of the Buena Park School District, one of the county’s smaller elementary and junior high districts.
He’s already faced some questions from board members over his work with the ACCESS program amidst questions around a proposed relocation of the Skyview school in Anaheim, which saw residents and teachers show up at a board meeting to protest the move earlier this year.
After those concerns, the plan was paused.
His application did not include a cover letter.
The only other applicant from within the OC Department of Education is Dennis Cole, the department’s Director of STEM and Humanities, who also came with a recommendation letter from Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes.
In his cover letter, Cole noted he wanted to create a “community of educators, students, parents, business partners and lawmakers,” and to “grow community involvement in the celebration of learning.”
“Dennis has worked with the Sheriff’s Department for five years to build a working partnership with schools,” Barnes wrote. “With Dennis Cole as our County Superintendent of Schools, our students and their families will thrive more than ever before.”
Another contender county voters may recognize is Stefan Bean, who ran against Mijares in the 2022 election for superintendent and lost by over 50,000 votes.
Bean was endorsed by four of the five current board of education trustees, is currently executive director of the Irvine International Academy, a charter school, and he’s spent over a decade in administration for various charter schools throughout Southern California.
In his 2022 race, Bean focused on giving parent’s a larger voice in deciding where their children could go to school. He also claimed sex ed was being taught in kindergarten by public schools in Orange County, but was unable to provide definitive examples.
He’s also currently suing the county government, OC Registrar of Voters Bob Page, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, claiming the vote center system violates election law.
Bean’s application didn’t have a cover letter.
[Read: OC Voters Asked To Pick Their County Schools Superintendent For First Time In Over Two Decades]
Kirsten Vital Brulte, former superintendent of the largest school district in the county, has also thrown her hat in the ring for the top job, highlighting her over 20 years working in public school administrations throughout the state.
Vital Brulte was fired without cause from her last job as Capistrano Unified School District Superintendent in a controversial special meeting over the December 2022 holidays, with board members never answering why they decided to get rid of her.
Her letters of recommendation highlighted how she helped Capistrano Unified become one of the first districts to reopen in-person education during the COVID-19 pandemic and her close working relationship with charter schools in the district while she was superintendent.
She’s also not the only former superintendent to go out for the job.
Charles Hinman, who served as superintendent of West Covina Unified School District from 2015 to 2021, also submitted an application, highlighting that he wasn’t ready to fully retire and had served as an interim superintendent for several other local school districts in the past three years.
“I believe one of the most important roles of an interim superintendent is to support the goals and priorities of each school district’s governing board,” Hinman wrote in his cover letter to board members. “I intend to work closely with the Board of Trustees to execute its vision.”
Another superintendent aiming for the job is Maria Martinez-Poulin, who just left the position of interim superintendent for Culver City Unified School District in March.
Before that, she was a deputy superintendent at the LA County Office of Education, the nation’s largest regional education agency where she went to after leaving her position as superintendent of the Whittier City School District.
In her cover letter, Martinez-Poulin focused on her efforts to create “equity, diversity and inclusion,” at the various school districts she’d worked for, and said she wanted to “address urgent issues in literacy, mental health issues and fiscal accountability,” in Orange County.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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