The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday appointed Georgia Acosta as its new president, and Oscar Soto as vice president.
The annual organizational meeting was the board’s last of the year.
Acosta was appointed with a 5-2 vote, with trustees Kim De Serpa and Jennifer Holm dissenting.
Soto’s appointment came with a 6-1 vote, with Trustee Adam Scow dissenting.
The trustees voted down a motion to appoint Scow as president with four no votes.
Acosta and Soto will take their seats next year as the district’s search for a new superintendent gets into full swing. This includes board interviews of the candidates around Feb. 17, with an appointment expected in March.
The district is also facing declining enrollment, which means less revenue and a tighter budget.
“We do have a lot of challenges, as we know, going forward into this year,” Acosta said.
Acosta and Soto served in the same positions in 2021, but both terms ended soon after they began.
This started when the board fired Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez in a 5-2 vote. The board did not give a reason for the termination, which was unanimously overturned a few days later after more than 10 hours of public comment lambasting the decision.
The board later censured Acosta for, among other things, not alerting her fellow board members beforehand about the impending vote to fire Rodriguez.
An effort to recall Acosta failed after organizers did not gather the required amount of signatures.
