Recall Drive Takes Aim at 2 Trustees : Fillmore: The leader of the campaign charges that the county’s largest high school agriculture program has been mismanaged.

Two Fillmore school board members are being targeted for recall by a group of about a dozen residents who say they are responsible for a decline in the school district’s agriculture program.

Trustees R. W. Richardson and Clark Johnson have allowed the Fillmore High School agriculture program--the largest in the county--to be weakened in recent years by declining enrollments and mismanagement, recall leader Conway Spitler said.

Spitler, a retired schoolteacher who owns a Fillmore computer business, is a 1938 graduate of Fillmore High who has been active in the school’s alumni association. He will serve recall papers on both trustees by Thursday and has about a dozen volunteers who have promised to collect recall signatures, Spitler said.

Once the recall notice has been served, Spitler’s group has 90 days to collect 1,444 signatures from registered Fillmore voters on a recall petition, said Jenny Harrison, deputy clerk with the county elections division. If the group is successful, the recall vote could qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot, Harrison said.

But defenders of Richardson and Johnson says recall proponents are unfairly blaming the two trustees for problems that are beyond their control. It is difficult to attract new students to the farm program because Fillmore has a large Latino community, many of them migrant workers who fled Mexico for a better life in America, Trustee Joanne King said.

“These people don’t want their children to get into any program that has anything to do with agriculture,” King said. “They want to better themselves and agriculture is one of the last places they want to look into.”

Richardson, who has been a board member for 10 years, said he welcomes the recall effort because it will lead Fillmore citizens to become more involved with the school district.

“Whether their input is negative or positive, good things will come of it,” Richardson said.

However, he said, he is appalled by allegations that he is not committed to the high school’s agriculture program.

“I’ve helped out financially and with labor. I’ve done about as much as anybody can,” he said. “This has been a good program, and I’m determined that it will be again in the future.”

Johnson, a board member for three years, said he thinks that the recall effort may be the product of misinformation. He said recall proponents are angry that the board refused to renew the contract of Dick Piersma, one of two agriculture teachers who run the farm program.

But state laws prohibit him and other board members from explaining why they denied the popular teacher tenure, Johnson said.

“When people have only half the story, they’ll do things that are uninformed,” he said.

The direction of the district’s farm program stirs emotions with Fillmore residents because many in the predominantly agricultural community have gone through it themselves, King said.

The centerpiece of the program, an 85-acre student-run farm located beside the Santa Clara River on the southern edge of the city, was partially paid for when Fillmore voters passed a bond issue supporting it in the mid-’70s, she said.

The farm’s facilities include 10 acres of oranges and lemons, grazing pastures, animal barns and pens, a senior citizens gardening plot and two large greenhouses.

“There’s a real sense of ownership over it,” King said.

The program flourished under the leadership of longtime agriculture teacher Dick Mosbarger, who was “well-organized and had a lot of community connections,” King said. When Mosbarger retired three years ago, Piersma was hired to run the program along with longtime agriculture teacher Marilee Belloumini, she said.

Although King refused to give specifics, she said Piersma was a skilled teacher, but had “personnel problems” that required too much administrative attention. Piersma declined to comment on the reasons for the decision not to renew his contract.

Spitler was among the 60 people who packed a school board meeting in April to protest the decision not to retain Piersma.

“Piersma was like a doctor. He was on call day and night to help deliver pigs, whatever needed to be done,” Spitler said.

The situation was compounded two weeks ago by the resignation of Belloumini, who had taught at Fillmore High since 1980. Belloumini said that she is moving to Central California and that the controversy had nothing to do with her decision.

School officials have said they intend to hire only one new teacher to replace Piersma and Belloumini next year because enrollments are declining.

Only five agriculture classes will be offered in 1992-93, down from a high of nine classes just a few years ago, said Robert L. Kernen, assistant superintendent of business and personnel.