A week after Election Day, voter turnout is on track to reach 60 percent while roughly 100,000 ballots remain uncounted.

Last November, a few hundred people donned their best suits and gowns and converged on San Jose’s historic Hayes Mansion to toast some of the East Side’s most accomplished alumni. The stars that night, honored in the East Side Union High School District Education Foundation’s Hall of Fame fundraiser, consisted of a 10-person class led by Khaled Hosseini, a 1984 graduate of Independence High School and author of The Kite Runner. But on Nov. 15, 2011, the IRS revoked the foundation’s nonprofit status. And yet almost no one outside of its board—including donors—knew about its lost certification when it threw a fundraiser a year later.

Will school board and council loser Patricia Martinez-Roach, shown at left with unsuccessful council candidates Brian O’Neill and Steve Klein and labor leader Cindy Chavez in June, get appointed to Alum Rock as a consolation prize?

Alum Rock Union School District trustees are making moves to fill a vacancy left by Darcie Green’s departure. School board watchers believe the existing majority has settled on one of two candidates: Patricia Martinez-Roach, who lost two elections this year; and Javier Gonzalez, who was passed over for a county education post. The apparent fast-tracking of the process has created a firestorm in the community.

Eddie Garcia, president of the East Side Union High School District board, has announced that he will not seek re-election to the Board of Trustees this fall.

“After thoughtful consideration with my family, I have decided not to seek another term on the Board of Trustees for the 2010 election for the East Side Union High School District,” Garcia posted on his Facebook profile last friday. 

Garcia, 46, suffered a major heart attack last June, and is currently on medical leave from his job as Chief of Staff for Supervisor George Shirakawa.

Though he’s yet to decide whom he’s endorsing in the District 5 runoff, J. Manuel Herrera will indeed be running to retain his long-held East Side Union High School District Board Trustee seat next fall.

When Herrera hoofed it to the County of Santa Clara Registrar of Voters Office to pull his papers earlier this month, however, whom did he discover in line ahead of him? None other than former East Side Superintendent Bob Nuñez.