ROV Certifies Petition To Fill Murrieta Valley Unified Trustee Area 3 Seat By Special Election

The Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) today certified a petition to conduct a special election to fill the Murrieta Valley Unified School District (MVUSD) Board of Education Trustee Area 3 seat vacated by former Trustee Yvonne Munoz earlier this year.

According to the certification, the petition was delivered to the ROV on December 1 for signature verification. The petition was declared sufficient December 19 after the ROV found that of the 329 signatures submitted, 255 were sufficient and 74 were insufficient. 

The petitioners needed 200 signatures, which is 1.5% of the 13,295 voters registered to vote in the Trustee Area 3 election in 2024.

“This certification is a clear affirmation of community engagement and the public’s right to have a direct voice in who represents them on the school board,” said representatives from Support Murrieta Schools — the Murrieta Schools Team arm of One Temecula Valley PAC in a Friday news release. “The voters of Trustee Area 3 organized, participated and followed the process outlined in law — and that process worked.”

According to California Education Code §5091(c), “if the petition is determined to be legally sufficient by the county superintendent of schools, the provisional appointment is terminated, and the county superintendent of schools shall order a special election to be conducted not less than 88, nor more than 125, days following the order of the election.”

In a statement to The Riverside Record, the Riverside County Office of Education said it had received the certified petition from the ROV and would “act in accordance with the law.”

The district, in a statement to The Record, said it acknowledged the certification of the petition challenging Hartley’s provisional appointment.

“Throughout this process, our governance team will remain steadfast in our focus on our key mission: to support student achievement and ensure high-quality educational opportunities for every student,” the district said. “We are committed to working closely with the Riverside County Registrar of Voters and the Riverside County Office of Education to follow all legal requirements and next steps.”

On the district’s website, the Trustee Area 3 seat was listed as vacant Friday afternoon, though it was not immediately clear when that page was last updated.

Hartley was provisionally appointed to the Trustee Area 3 seat at the October 28 meeting of the MVUSD board on a 3-1 vote with Trustee Nancy Young voting against. 

Young also voted against the appointment process at both the September 23 and October 7 meetings where parents like Jeremy Murphy also came out to oppose the appointment process and urge the board to instead let the voters choose who would fill the seat for the remainder of the term that ends in November 2028.

“When the board majority ignored our voices, we decided to show them that the community wants to vote,” Murphy said in an email to The Record. “Our initial petition event was outside on a Saturday in November during a downpour. When we had such a great turnout in terrible weather, we knew we were on the right track.”

Murphy, who lives in the district and has three daughters enrolled at the schools, said the goal of the petition was to ensure Area 3 residents had the opportunity to make their voices heard.

“This is the second time in the last couple of years that families have been denied our right to vote,” he said. “In 2024, [Area 1 Trustee and Board President] Nick Pardue, who is my representative, blocked a bond initiative from appearing on the November 2024 ballot, so families were not allowed to vote on their own schools. We simply want to exercise our right to vote for our representatives and our schools.”