Orange County Superintendent Al Mijares hasn’t been seen in a public school board meeting in over a year due to medical issues, and questions are swirling on why nothing has been publicly disclosed.
His position as superintendent is a unique one, serving as the only elected school administrator overseeing a 1,400-person department that manages payroll and provides legal support to the county’s other 28 school districts.
Mijares stopped attending county board of education meetings at the end of 2022, shortly after he was reelected to the position of superintendent.
[Read: OC Voters Asked To Pick Their County Schools Superintendent For First Time In Over Two Decades]
And he hasn’t been in the office since August 2023, and isn’t planning on returning until this upcoming August from an extended medical leave that was never directly announced to the public.
In March 2023, Mijares shared with “staff and close contacts” that his lack of public appearances was due to “complications from a medical issue,” according to a letter from the department’s upper management to staff last August, when it was announced he’d be going on leave.
“Unfortunately, his recovery has taken more time than anticipated, and his doctors recently advised him to take a temporary leave from work so he can commit his energies to restoring his physical health,” staff wrote. “He will be using some of the sick time leave he has accrued.”
Mijares’ last public statement came in May 2023, with a letter celebrating Classified School Employee Week, praising the work of employees like janitors and bus drivers.
Mijares’ annual salary is just under $400,000 before benefits, according to district salary data in 2022 provided to Transparent California, making him the highest paid elected official at the county level.
The last update on his return came at the end of March in a letter to staff from Mijares himself, where he noted his goal was to return to work in August of this year.
“I am hopeful to be cleared to resume my responsibilities in August, following an appointment with a trusted physician. Until then, I know our work is in capable hands,” Mijares wrote. “I am eager to return and continue serving alongside you all.”
Mijares’ letter came just over a month after an op-ed published in the Orange County Register by Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the California Republican Party, questioned where Mijares has been.
“The Orange County education department is not a driverless car,” Fleischman wrote. “Who’s minding the shop? We suppose an unelected and unaccountable bureaucrat. But how can we know for sure?”
Who’s Currently Running the Department of Education?
In his absence, the county’s department of education is being overseen by Ramon Miramontes, who joined the district as deputy superintendent in March 2023 according to district spokesperson Ian Hanigan.
Before that, Miramontes was the superintendent of the Buena Park Elementary School District, one of the smallest districts in the county, responsible for managing five elementary schools and two junior high schools.
While Miramontes has handled the day to day operations of the district, Mijares has still been involved in the department’s major decisions, according to Hanigan.
Hanigan also acknowledged there was never a public notice issued that Mijares would be taking an extended leave, but pointed out it had been referenced at “several meetings of the Orange County Board of Education.”
Board of Ed Weighs in on Superintendent’s Absence
Tim Shaw, the current chair of the county board of education, said that communication with the department and Mijares has been a struggle over the past year.
“The first several months he was gone we heard very little from him. We want to be respectful of his health and privacy, but he wasn’t very forthcoming,” Shaw said in a Wednesday interview. “He finally told us he had a medical problem he was working on and that was all we got.”
Shaw and the rest of the majority on the Board of Education have frequently clashed with Mijares over their tenure on the board, including in an ongoing lawsuit to determine which one of them should get the final say over the department of education’s $333 million budget.
[Read: OC Board of Education and Department Ramp Up Taxpayer Spending On Internal Lawsuits]
He also said the board is getting the same information as the public on the department’s operations, making it hard to see what’s going on, and referenced how recent complaints from the public were the main way the board was able to learn about issues in the department.
“Dr. Miramontes and the rest of the staff don’t typically involve the board members in these decisions, so we just kind of end up hearing about them in the meeting,” Shaw said. “A lot of the time we’re learning about it for the first time at the meeting so that’s kind of an odd dynamic.”
Board Member Ken Williams Jr. also said he was hearing concerns from staff over how the department was being managed in Mijares’ absence.
He wished Mijares well, but said he hoped Mijares would share more with the public.
“I understand the privacy and HIPAA issues and I want to validate that … but at the same time, it sure would be nice to know exactly how we can pray for him or help him because he’s one of the significant county authorities in a very important area of education,” Williams said.
Mari Barke, who also serves on the board, said that while she appreciated Mijares’ respectful presence at meetings despite their disagreements, she was “disappointed” over the lack of transparency around his extended leave.
“I think there’s just been a true lack of transparency which isn’t unusual between the board and the staff,” Barke said. “We’re elected officials and we owe transparency to the public as well as each other. I can’t imagine I’d be missing for this long and not be more transparent.”
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.