In memoriam: Maxine Frost

Maxine Frost, CSBA president in 1981 and a 40-year member of Riverside Unified School District, died Nov. 27 in Riverside. She was 76.

Ms. Frost was born in Janesville, Wis., in 1931. She moved to California with her family as a young girl and graduated from Huntington Park High School in Southern California. In 1953, she earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University. At Stanford, she met her future husband, Matt Frost. Mr. Frost, a Riverside banker, died in 2003.

Ms. Frost was among a handful of long-term board members honored for their decades of service to public schools at CSBA’s 75th anniversary Annual Education Conference and Trade Show in 2006.

Her involvement in the schools began in the 1960s, when many schools across the country were segregated. A staunch supporter of making education equitable and accessible for all children, Ms. Frost served on a school desegregation committee and championed Riverside Unified’s decision in 1965 to become the first sizeable school district in the nation to desegregate voluntarily. Her work contributed to her appointment to the school board in 1967, and voters backed her in subsequent elections.

Along with her many years of service on the Riverside Unified board, Ms. Frost also served as president of the California Association of Suburban School Districts and president of the Affiliates of UC Riverside. Gov. George Deukmejian appointed her to the national Education Commission of the States in the 1980s, and she served as an education adviser to Rod Pacheco when he was a state Assembly Republican leader in the 1990s.

CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin recalled Ms. Frost’s feistiness, professionalism and leadership qualities.
“Maxine not only had her priorities right, she also did her homework and knew the issues,” Plotkin said. “When we took her with us to Washington in 1992 to meet with officials from the first Bush administration, she quickly proved to them that she wasn’t some provincial school board member with an ax to grind.

“Maxine was a woman with high-level political connections, and she wasn’t afraid to use them against a bunch of beltway neophytes who had ‘all the answers’ for reforming the public schools,” Plotkin said,

Echoing Plotkin’s sentiments, CSBA President Paul H. Chatman said, “We will all miss her leadership.”

Ms. Frost is survived by two sons: Doug, of Riverside, and Grant, of San Diego; by her daughter, Anne Francis, of San Diego; and by four grandchildren.