Jorge Valdes
County Board of Education · Trustee Area 1
Controls: county schools & charter appeals.
Civio maps government as seen from Lake Forest, California. Districted seats like this one cover part of the city — enter your address to see the exact roster that governs you. Your address never leaves your device.
1What can this job do?
This is the county-level school board — the Orange County Board of Education. It oversees the Orange County Department of Education, approves that department's budget, and runs special programs that cross district lines: schools for students in juvenile facilities, some special-education services, and similar countywide work. Its most visible power is hearing appeals — when a local district denies a or an inter-district transfer, this board can be asked to decide.
It does NOT run your local school district — Saddleback Valley and the others are independent and have their own elected boards. It does not set your child's school boundaries, hire your district's teachers, or write state education law.
2What has this person done with it?
We don't yet track a record of this official's actions here. For local offices, the public record lives in the body's own minutes, agendas, and recorded votes — published on its official website — and in the Orange County Registrar of Voters' . Those are the primary sources to check; we'd rather say "we don't know yet" than summarize selectively.
We only log matters of public record, in the same format for every official — never opinion or news coverage.
3How does this affect you?
This is the one board member your elects to the Orange County Board of Education, the countywide school board. You vote for this single seat, but the whole five-member board makes countywide education decisions, including hearing charter school appeals, approving the county education budget, and overseeing programs run by the county Department of Education. So you pick one , and that trustee is one of five voices on the county board.
4How do you change it?
This is an elected seat with a four-year term, chosen by trustee area across Orange County — you vote for the one member from your area. These races appear on the regular statewide ballot. Registration, polling place, and mail ballots: Orange County Registrar of Voters (ocvote.gov). This is one of the least-known elected boards in the county, so a reminder is worth setting.
We haven't verified when this seat is next on the ballot — rather than guess, we say so.