Court Challenge Over Orange Unified Ballot Statements Backfires on Union Allies

Teacher union activists are like dogs that chase cars—they wouldn’t know what to do if they caught one.

Take the recent case of Darshan Smaaladen, a teacher union ally in the Orange Unified School District in Orange County. Trying to protect union-friendly board incumbents in the heat of a political campaign that ends November 3, she took three challengers to court, arguing that the challengers misstated the district’s failure rate in student testing.

In ballot statements, the challengers had said 60 percent of the district’s students cannot perform math at grade level. Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin concluded that the actual number is 54 percent. He required the challengers to correct their ballot statements. They’ve complied — with joy in their hearts.

It’s hard to see how that’s helpful to Smaaladen, the union-backed incumbents she was trying to help, or leaders of the Orange Unified Educators union who endorsed those incumbents. Yes, a friendly news organization gave them the headline they wanted. But thanks to Smaaladen, the union’s challengers lost one talking point and gained a far better one – a judge’s decision that a majority of students in Orange Unified are undereducated. That will be hard to counter — for the union and the board it inarguably controls.

In court, one of the challengers acknowledged her error, saying she simply confused two columns in a state database: it turns out that “60 percent” is the number of OUSD students who cannot read at grade level. Any reasonable person would see that data point as a related failure, one that underscores the challengers’ broader point. Thanks to Judge Griffin, they now get to say that a judge has determined that a majority of Orange Unified’s students cannot read and perform math at grade level.

Smaaladen, the plaintiff who brought the curious case of the ballot statements, may wish she’d kept her mouth shut. She’s a veteran activist who served as co-chair and chief organizer of the teacher union’s 2023 campaign to recall conservative trustees Rick Ledesma and Madison Miner. Financed by the Orange Unified Education Association and the California Teachers Association, that campaign urged voters to recall Ledesma and Miner because, the union charged, both were social extremists. It was untrue, of course: Their actual crime — their “conservatism” — was that both officials had questioned the financial wisdom of raising teacher pay at a time when student enrollment was declining and the district’s finances were blinking red. The union’s messaging won the day. Voters removed both trustees in March 2024, restoring control of the board to Smaaladen’s union allies.

But there too, the dog caught a car with no thought about what might happen next. The reconstituted board that Smaaladen helped elect quickly approved a new union contract in June 2024, granting teachers a 9.75 percent salary increase. The union-friendly board made that decision despite evidence from its own staff that declining enrollment and expiring pandemic money were already undermining the district’s financial position.

That pay hike accelerated the crisis, gutting district finances and setting the stage for a series of moves that are red flags in the government finance world. Enrollment has fallen sharply and is projected to keep declining — and that means declining government income. With fewer students, the district says it’s also looking at workforce reduction; if voluntary attrition doesn’t work, the district will necessarily consider layoffs. The district has also acknowledged saving cash by postponing costly but essential maintenance on schools. It has considered closing or consolidating several under-enrolled schools.

But that’s just buying time. And if it fails, prepare for the union’s next campaign challenge: persuading the public to raise taxes.