Member of Dean’s Advisory Board
School of Education
May 1, 2010
When Theresa O’Hare’s son Billy first enrolled in kindergarten in 1992, Theresa followed him into the classrooms of Laguna Beach public schools. Even though Theresa’s youngest son Brendan graduated from Laguna Beach High School in 2008, she remains a fixture in the classrooms, and now the board room, of her hometown school district.
Theresa’s work for Laguna Beach schools began in her son’s kindergarten class at Top of the World Elementary School. Since that time, Theresa has volunteered for nearly every imaginable job and leadership position in support of Laguna’s schools. Theresa served as president of the Laguna Beach public schools’ privately funded endowment (SchoolPower Endowment), president of the district wide Performing Arts Boosters, Co-chair of the school facilities bond campaign and member of the School Construction Oversight Committee that helped complete the reconstruction of every district campus on time and within budget.
Today, Theresa serves as an elected member of the Laguna Beach School Board and president of the Regional Occupational Program jointly formed by the Laguna Beach and Capistrano school districts. Laguna Beach Schools elected to retain their local property tax revenues and receive little funding from the state. As a result, they are one of the few public school districts to have avoided the worst of the devastating state budget cuts. The finances of the Laguna Beach Schools were not always so rosy. In 1994, the combined impact of a declining real estate market, loss of funds in the Orange County bankruptcy, and a fire that destroyed 400 Laguna homes, left the school district on the verge of bankruptcy and a state takeover. First as a community leader and now as a board member, Theresa joined in a cry of “never again,” ensuring that every budget in good years includes a healthy reserve for the difficult years that inevitably lay ahead.
On the foundation of a stable budget, Laguna Beach Schools have flourished. Class sizes at all grade levels remain low, after school tutoring and other supplemental support for students is readily available, summer school and foreign language programs are expanding and programs in sports, the arts and other extracurricular activities abound.
In addition to her very full load of regular board responsibilities, Theresa serves on the Laguna Beach Curriculum Council, board representative to SchoolPower, the Health and Wellness Committee, and Project Reach, a joint City/School District effort to prevent drug and alcohol abuse by young people.
Theresa has also retained her love of students and the classroom, regularly reading to first graders and volunteering in the Artists’ Theatre at Laguna Beach High School.
Theresa is married to Bill O’Hare, the administrative partner in charge of the Orange County office of Snell & Wilmer, a Western regional business law firm. Bill is the president of SchoolPower Endowment and a member of the steering committee of the UC Irvine CEO Roundtable. Bill and Theresa have two sons, Billy and Brendan. Billy graduated from NYU in 2009 and is a first year law student at University of Iowa. Brendan is finishing his second year studying physics at UC Berkeley.