In spite of all the staff time and taxpayer money that went into SJ2020, Santa Clara County students have benefited not one whit.

The Santa Clara Country Board of Education reappointed Darcie Green to a trustee seat on Wednesday after her resignation in March.

The Santa Clara County Board of Education is moving quickly to find a replacement for the seat lost by the resignation of Area 6 Trustee Darcie Green, who stepped down last month after the District Attorney’s offie called into question the legality of her appointment. The school board on Wednesday will consider a timeline and form an ad hoc oversight committee to fill the vacancy. Other items on the Board agenda include efforts to prevent teen suicide and a master plan for the coming influx of charter schools.

My professional life has been filled with many ups and many downs. One big down moment came in a Jan. 9 email from District Attorney Jeff Rosen to Superintendent De La Torre, with a “cc” to the SCCOE Board of Education. In this email, Rosen said he had received a complaint that Darcie Green’s recent Board appointment was unlawful.

Election Day 2012 was good for public education in California and the nation. President Obama’s reelection means continued reform of public education through choice, quality early childhood education, meaningful teacher evaluation systems, pay for performance, career technical education and rethinking tenure. Proposition 30’s passage leads to a more stable publicly funded system of California schools.

Craig Mann vacated his county school board seat in August and filling it should be no big deal. But the appointment has set off a flurry of activity that will reverberate in other races, because that’s the way things work around here with ambitious rising politicians and established ones who want to keep their privileges in the era of term limits.

By sending a series of emails regarding Schools Superintendent Chuck Weis to his colleagues on the County Board of Education, Craig Mann may have violated the Brown Act, which dictates that public officials not conduct business in private. Leila C. Knox, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition, says Mann violated California’s open government policy when he sent off his messages to the entire board.

The Santa Clara County Board of Education (SCCBOE) has put off voting on whether or not to sanction trustee Craig Mann for alleged ethics violations, moving the decision to a special meeting on August 25.

Mann showed up at the beginning of the yesterday’s regular board meeting with a doctor’s note. He informed board members that he was battling a bad cold and was attending the meeting against doctor’s orders. However, after the other board members went into an hour-long closed session to discuss an unrelated student expulsion matter, they came out to find that Mann had left.