4 Seats Up for Election in L. A. School Board Race

Open for the first time in 12 years, the 1st District seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education has produced a crowded, competitive campaign to replace Rita Walters, the board’s only black member.

It is the liveliest of the four board competitions in the April 9 election but the presence of eight candidates for Walters’ seat makes it unlikely that any single contender can muster enough votes to win without a runoff. If no candidate gets a majority, the top two vote-getters will compete in the runoff election June 4.

Just one other school board race holds the possibility of a runoff--the three-way race for the 3rd District seat being vacated by board President Jackie Goldberg.

In the two other contests, incumbents Leticia Quezada of the 5th District and Warren Furutani of the 7th District drew only one under-financed challenger each. Both are expected to win reelection in the primary. Quezada is being opposed by former board member Richard Ferraro and Furutani is being challenged by Timothy E. McKinney.

As in other school board elections in recent years, United Teachers-Los Angeles is playing a major role in the two open contests and has also endorsed Furutani and Quezada.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s biggest employee union is providing campaign flyers and mailings, running an absentee ballot drive and mustering volunteers for phone banks and precinct walks. It also has donated about $15,000 cash to each of its endorsed candidates in the two open races, according to financial statements filed with the City Clerk last week.

The issues being voiced are many of the same ones that have long dogged the board that oversees the nation’s second-largest school district. They include overcrowding, budget problems, dropout rates, student achievement and lack of equitable educational opportunities for all the district’s 625,000 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students. More than 86% are minorities, and about one-fifth live in poverty.

Several candidates have called for cutting the school district’s central bureaucracy, reflecting a popular perception that the system is “top heavy” with administrators.

In the race in the 1st District--which includes South-Central Los Angeles, the Crenshaw district, Baldwin Hills and View Park, five of the eight candidates work for the school district, and another is an administrator in the Inglewood schools.

Teacher Sterling Delone is backed by Goldberg and UTLA, which has provided nearly $42,000 of the $64,700 in contributions reported by last week. Almost $27,000 of UTLA’s portion was in printing and mailing services. Among others endorsing Delone are Furutani, Assemblywomen Marguerite Archie-Hudson, Teresa Hughes and Gwen Moore, all Los Angeles Democrats, and U. S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

Delone, who grew up in South-Central Los Angeles and graduated from Washington High School, has taught social studies in the district for 16 years; this school year, he took a leave of absence to work as Goldberg’s field representative.

On a recent locally televised forum attended by seven of the eight candidates, he proposed solving the district’s budget crunch by lobbying for more state and federal funding, enlisting more corporate and other private financial support and expanding and systematizing the district’s “Adopt a School” program.

Attorney Charles E. Dickerson III has the backing of veteran incumbent Walters, who is giving up her board seat to run for City Council. He also has been endorsed by Mayor Tom Bradley, U. S. Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles) and retiring Councilman Robert Farrell. Financial reports showed the campaign has raised about $41,000, including a $25,000 loan from the candidate himself.

Dickerson chaired the school district committee that developed a “common calendar” intended to put all the district’s more than 600 schools into year-round operation this summer. His first-grader attends a private religious school, but he said he intends to enroll her in a district school next year.

Dickerson said his top priorities are to improve student achievement, provide safe campuses and reduce teachers’ administrative paperwork. He called for the expansion of programs to improve results in the system’s lowest-achieving schools, many of which are in the 1st District.

The campaign of Barbara Boudreaux, principal of Marvin Avenue School and a 31-year school district employee, has drawn interest from district administrators, who account for much of the nearly $20,000 in contributions she has reported.

She is endorsed by the 1,500-member Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents principals and assistant principals. Her political backing includes endorsements from Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Councilman Nate Holden.

Boudreaux wants to assign more experienced teachers to the inner city’s predominantly minority schools, to increase parent involvement and to encourage moral values and critical thinking in students.

Another district employee in the race is Donald F. Jones, manager of the Facilities Service Division. He will retire in June after 35 years with the district. He has reported raising about $12,000, including $10,653 from contributors who gave less than $100 each. Financial reporting laws do not require such contributors be identified.

Jones called for equitable treatment for all district employees and for restoration of programs to “provide broader employment opportunities for all students.”

Veteran teacher Marion Sims works in the district’s “10 Schools” program to improve the prospects of youngsters in schools with high dropout rates, low achievement scores and other problems. She favors school-based management, a system in which most key decisions are made at individual campuses, and called for more bilingual teachers and increased dropout-prevention programs.

Celestine W. Palmer, who began teaching in 1960, works as a student discipline counselor with the district. She advocates better coordination of local services and public and private agencies to stretch shrinking tax dollars and resources and expanded efforts to teach youngsters from different ethnic groups to live in harmony.

Arnold C. Butler, a principal in the Inglewood Unified School District, has criticized the Los Angeles board for not including enough minorities among its contractors. He has called for a mandatory multicultural curriculum and preschool for all disadvantaged children.

Chetera Ingram Watson, a former teacher and one-time assistant professor at Cal State Los Angeles, said she has been volunteering in her children’s schools since 1975. She said the six children she has in the district’s schools make her the candidate “with the biggest vested interest” in improving its track record. She wants a broader, better organized system for involving parents and more multiethnic educational materials.

In the 3rd District--encompassing Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, downtown, Mid-Wilshire and the Olympic corridor--teacher Jeff Horton is running with the backing of UTLA and Goldberg, along with the group of community activists that helped bring Goldberg to office eight years ago.

Horton has raised almost $57,000, campaign finance reports show. Of that amount, UTLA provided $15,000 in cash and another $19,000 in campaign flyers and mailings. He also has endorsements from the county Federation of Labor, the Stonewall Democratic Club, City Councilman Mike Woo, state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) and former Assemblyman Mike Roos, who now heads a new local education reform group.

A 15-year veteran of the district, Horton wants to raise community interest in the school district, improve campus safety and parent involvement, increase state and federal funding for education and shift district resources and authority from central and regional offices to individual schools.

Retired principal Stan Bunyan, who spent 32 years in teaching and administrative posts in the district, has raised more than $32,000, including $2,000 he loaned his campaign early in the race.

After his retirement in 1989, Bunyan worked for state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles). He is endorsed by the district’s principals union and the leaders of several area community organizations.

Bunyan has called for major cuts in the district’s administrative offices and supports contracting for more services in ways to decrease the number of employees through attrition. He said he can bring the broadest background in district experience to the board room.

Businessman Tony Trias is trying to regain the board seat he lost to Goldberg in 1983, drawing on his longtime ties to business and civic leaders and the name recognition he achieved from three years on the board.

The most recent available campaign reports showed he has raised $4,275, including $1,350 he loaned the campaign.

Trias said his previous board experience would enable him to get up to speed faster than the other two candidates. He said he supports finding more private donations for the schools but does not favor seeking more tax dollars for education. He opposes building a high school on the Ambassador Hotel site, saying it would be too expensive. Trias said his own experiences as an immigrant would help him be sensitive to the needs of the district’s many immigrant families.

In the 5th District, former board member Ferraro, a conservative, is campaigning in large part by debating the well-organized, well-financed Quezada at several community forums in the heavily Latino East Side district, which also includes several small incorporated cities southeast of Los Angeles.

Quezada has stressed her efforts on behalf of parental involvement, bilingual education and better opportunities for poor and minority students. Ferraro has said that many of the same issues that prompted him to run for the board in 1969 are still present and that he is concerned about low test scores, violence on school grounds and drug problems.

Furutani, elected four years ago to represent the 7th District, which runs from Watts to San Pedro, is facing carpenter Timothy E. McKinney, who has been active in the movement to ban abortion and who wants textbooks that uphold “traditional values and literary excellence.” McKinney said he expected to raise less than $1,000; Furutani reported raising about $85,500.

Furutani supports school-based management and has emphasized that he has worked toward building a consensus during his tenure on the board. McKinney supports shared decision-making councils which give teachers and parents more say, and improved drug education and textbooks.