2 School Board Members Look Like Winners

Two Los Angeles school board members were headed for narrow reelection victories Tuesday and a third faced a runoff in a contest that appeared likely to prolong the district’s bitter labor and political strife for another three months.

Amid the threat of a possible teachers’ strike next month, an incumbent targeted for defeat by the teachers’ union, Westside representative Alan Gershman, was being forced into a June 6 runoff election by union-backed challenger Mark Slavkin. And with nearly all the votes counted, a union-backed incumbent in the West San Fernando Valley, Julie Korenstein, was holding onto her seat by less than 1% of the total. She had been in a see-saw battle all night to avoid a runoff against Principal Gerald Horowitz.

Escaping Runoff

In the East San Fernando Valley, incumbent Roberta Weintraub narrowly escaped a runoff against challenger Barry Pollack.

United Teachers-Los Angeles had hoped to obtain a board majority in the election that would be more supportive of its demands in a long-running contract dispute. But with Tuesday’s results, it appeared that the months-long labor strife in the district would continue.

Board President Weintraub said the Gershman race had been a key to quick settlement of the contract fight.

“If he had won, I think we maybe would have resolved the (teachers) contract,” she said. “Now we have to wait until after the runoff.”

In the Los Angeles Community College District, early returns indicated that two open districtwide board seats would not be decided until a June runoff election. The top vote-getters who appeared likely to face each other in an Office No. 2 runoff were Rose Ochi and Pat Owens. Althea Baker and Patricia Hollingsworth appeared to be headed for a runoff in Office No. 6.

As the early returns in the Los Angeles school board race came in, Gershman charged that his challenger had used a campaign of “attack, attack, attack . . . it’s been character assassination.”

Inola Henry, a political chairwoman for UTLA, said “the fact that the incumbents all seem to be wobbling” suggests voters are fed up with the labor unrest in the district.

While the 595,000-student district faces wrenching educational problems--including overflowing inner-city schools and some of the lowest achieving students in the state--the tempo of this year’s campaign was set largely by the contract struggle between the school board and its teachers.

The teachers union, which represents 32,000 instructors, counselors, nurses and librarians, has been locked in a running battle with the school board over increased pay, more paid preparation time and giving teachers a major voice in how their schools will be run.

The union and the school board have deadlocked on the issue of salary increases. The union has threatened a strike next month if the board does not increase its offer of a 20% raise over three years.

The winners in Tuesday’s election will not begin their terms until June, and the contract could well be settled by then. But negotiations came to a standstill weeks ago as school board members and the union focused their attention on the potentially pivotal election.

UTLA poured money and volunteers into the Slavkin and Korenstein campaigns in hopes of obtaining four sympathetic votes on the seven-member board. Much of the estimated $200,000 the two UTLA-backed candidates raised came from teachers who made small donations, union officials said. Hundreds of teachers also walked precincts and worked phone banks in the closing days of the campaign.

The threat of a UTLA-allied board majority helped fuel a counteroffensive to retain Gershman, who was outspending Slavkin 2-to-1 when the most recent campaign finance reports were filed late last month. Gershman, who defended the district’s spending practices and management, raised a sizable share of his nearly $100,000 from administrators, non-teaching school employee unions and the district’s law firm.

Gershman, a former classroom teacher, raised the teachers’ ire in part by resisting some UTLA contract demands that he contended would lead to deep cuts in essential instructional programs.

Slavkin, an aide to county Supervisor Ed Edelman, echoed UTLA’s position that more would be available for teacher salaries if it were not wasted on unnecessary management and high salaries for “fat cat” downtown bureaucrats. Slavkin also hammered away on campus crime, an issue of particular concern to senior citizens who would make up a large share of the voters in the low-turnout election.

In contrast to Slavkin’s free-swinging, hard-driving campaign, the low-key Gershman ran quietly on his qualifications and record. He had no campaign headquarters or organized precinct volunteer efforts and relied on 400,000 last-minute mailers targeted to a group of about 90,000 likely voters.

In the other key contest in the West San Fernando Valley, UTLA-backed Korenstein, who was seeking her first full term, tried to run against the allegedly unresponsive bureaucracy. But as the incumbent she was roundly criticized by five challengers for doing little to address the needs of Valley schools and for allegedly being a captive of the teachers union.

A liberal Democrat in a conservative-leaning suburban area, Korenstein’s big challenge came from the right. Parent-activist Barbara Romey and Horowitz, both conservatives, blasted the incumbent for supporting a gay and lesbian student counseling program and school health clinics that distribute birth control information.

The union had remained neutral in Weintraub’s race. One of the best-known board members, Weintraub ran on her record and far outspent her nearest challenger, physician-screenwriter Pollack.

Teacher union influence was also an issue in the nine-campus community college district, where three of the seven board seats were on the ballot. Lindsay Conner, the only incumbent trustee on the ballot, was unopposed in his bid for a third term.

Two races for open seats were widely viewed as a test of strength of the American Federation of Teachers College Guild, Local 1521, which supported Ochi, an aide to Mayor Tom Bradley, and Baker, a counselor at Mission College who was the union’s chief contract negotiator last year.