ANAHEIM : School Gets Activities Director

After four months, Esperanza High School finally has an activities director, but district officials are unsure if the new employee will start before the end of the school year.

On Tuesday, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District governing board approved hiring John Deavers, a history teacher at Poway High School.

Officials are still waiting for Poway Unified School District to set a release date for Deavers, who is contracted there through the end of the school year.

Esperanza has been without an activities director since November, when Rick Martens left to take a job in another school district.

A candidate was found to fill the opening in early December but before the paperwork could be processed, the county declared bankruptcy and the district froze all nonessential positions.

Members of the school’s Associated Student Body government have been organizing and overseeing dances, rallies and other events without the help of an adviser.

“We’ve been put under an extra amount of stress,” said ASB President Denise Nicholson. “Spring holds many new events and the seniors feel (that) with all the other outside responsibilities and college applications due, we have other priorities.”

Nicholson and several parents urged the board Tuesday to hire Deavers, but a representative of the district’s teachers association said the board should consider promoting one of its existing employees to the $56,000-a-year job instead of hiring someone from outside the district.

Doing so would reduce by one the number of employees that may need to be laid off if the district does not get back all of the $84 million it had in the county’s investment pool, said Randy Dennis, president of the Assn. of Placentia Linda Educators.

“I’m dismayed . . . to see you are going to add a new administrative employee,” Dennis said. “It is contradictory to consider layoffs and at the same time choose to employ someone from outside the district.”