School board races key for mayor

You could call it Plan C.

First, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District outright. Then, he crafted a bid for power-sharing. Now, he’s trying to get his way by proxy -- by winning a school board majority Tuesday that, at last, would give him a powerful voice in the direction of local school reform.

But this is no sure thing either.

Standing in the way is United Teachers Los Angeles, the erstwhile ally of the mayor. The union backs two incumbents whose reelection would preserve the board majority that has thwarted Villaraigosa repeatedly.

In all, four of seven board seats are up for grabs. With one ally on the board already, the mayor needs three wins to secure a friendly majority.

In the west San Fernando Valley’s District 3, Villaraigosa backs prosecutor Tamar Galatzan against UTLA-favored Jon M. Lauritzen. In District 1 in South Los Angeles, the union favors Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte against charter school operator Johnathan Williams, whom the mayor tacitly supports.

Total spending in the two campaigns is likely to surpass $3 million.

UTLA is sitting out the other two races, leaving Villaraigosa to endorse candidates who, because of his funding, are expected to win. Their underfunded opponents have made an issue of “keeping the mayor off the school board” but have had trouble getting their message out.

For Villaraigosa, the election results could determine whether he’ll ever directly influence the nation’s second-largest school district. He wants to revive the power-sharing plan laid out in legislation that, so far, has been stymied in the courts. Under that law, he would lead reforms at “clusters” of schools -- three low-performing high schools and the elementary and middle schools that feed into them.

“My focus is on these school board elections,” Villaraigosa said in an interview. “Once there is a board majority, I would hope they would support [the law], specifically the mayor’s clusters but also our entire reform effort.”

A union victory would preserve a board majority that recently negotiated a new contract that calls for a 6% raise for the current academic year and gradual class size reduction. New salary negotiations for the coming two years, moreover, are about to open.

Beyond bread-and-butter issues, union leaders want to become players in broader discussions over school reform, both locally and nationally.

“I don’t necessarily think our school board candidates are going to be the leaders in the reform movement that needs to happen,” said union Vice President Joshua Pechthalt. “I don’t think they will be obstacles either. We do see their opponents, to a greater or lesser extent, as obstacles to the changes we ultimately want to see take place.”

It’s not readily apparent why the mayor and union would be at such loggerheads. Both lambaste a “bloated” district bureaucracy and lament the dropout rate. Both talk of a need for higher teacher salaries, increased state and federal funding and more school-based local control. They speak in virtual tandem of assembling a reform “partnership” of parents, teachers, principals and community members.

So why are they fighting?

Part of the answer is that incumbents LaMotte and Lauritzen are part of a board majority that has repeatedly impeded the mayor. It was this school board that voted to file suit against the law giving the mayor some authority over the school system.

And it was this board that declined the mayor’s demand last fall for a prominent role in choosing a superintendent. It announced the hiring of David L. Brewer when the mayor was in Asia. At every key juncture, whenever the mayor asserted himself to intervene in schools, the board majority opposed relinquishing power.

By late last year, Villaraigosa was accusing the board of being childish and resisting the “will of the people.” For months, the refrain in his office has been, “Wait till March 6.”

If anything, LaMotte has ramped up the vitriol by, for example, likening the mayor’s intervention in schools to the Tuskegee experiment, in which black men with syphilis were observed rather than cured.

Villaraigosa insists it’s nothing personal. Of Lauritzen, he said simply: “I don’t believe he is a change agent.”

All the same, the mayor has been careful not to publicly excoriate UTLA leadership. His political rise has relied on labor -- including UTLA. Some of his allies, however, have expressed deep frustration.

“We were looking for candidates who had intellect, some business acumen, passion for students and the courage to stand up to the teachers union,” said Gary Toebben, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which has endorsed the mayor’s slate.

Some community leaders worry about the affordability of the recent teachers pact. But the issue runs deeper, Toebben said: “It’s not just one contract. And it’s not just money. It’s the fact that it’s difficult to manage resources and hire the very best, because it’s difficult to move a teacher around or fire a teacher who, according to their supervisors, isn’t performing.”

The mayor, a onetime UTLA organizer, won’t go that far.

“I want to partner with the teachers union, but I also believe that they can’t be the only stakeholder,” he said. “You need parents.... You need the broader community, including the business community, involved.”

Union leaders, meanwhile, echo Villaraigosa in downplaying the election rift as temporary. How this squares with some of the mayor’s other allies -- who believe that rapid reform requires defanging the union -- remains to be seen.

Lauritzen, the 68-year-old Valley incumbent, is perhaps the closest embodiment of UTLA’s voice. The union never seriously considered other candidates despite his health problems -- he’s battling brain cancer and freely admits that some days are better than others.

The retired teacher insisted that he doesn’t take orders from UTLA. An example: He said he favored all-day kindergarten ahead of the union leadership, because he was certain that many rank-and-file teachers felt as he did.

Lauritzen’s critics aren’t persuaded of his independence. He sided with UTLA in its successful push to rescind the forced transfer of an outspoken union leader from Crenshaw High, a South Los Angeles school far from Lauritzen’s district.

Galatzan, 37, says she has a more appropriate vested interest: her two preschoolers.

Lauritzen’s campaign has compensated for having less money with sharp attacks on Galatzan’s lack of education experience.

A third candidate in the District 3 race, teacher and college lecturer Louis Pugliese, 56, is running a low-budget campaign, arguing that he combines education experience with true independence.

District 1, which stretches westward from South Los Angeles, features a different dynamic. The UTLA-backed LaMotte, 73, is less tightly aligned with the union than Lauritzen but provided crucial support in the recent contract negotiations.

Villaraigosa, meanwhile, made the strategic decision not to endorse her challenger, Williams. In the past, the mayor has publicly praised Williams, 39, for his charter-school work, and Villaraigosa sent his political strategist to run Williams’ campaign. The mayor is reluctant, however, to anger the city’s black political and religious leaders -- most of whom lined up squarely behind LaMotte.

Many black community leaders distrusted the mayor’s aggressive bid for district control, fearing that it would dilute black political power. District 1’s voting base is predominantly African American, as are both candidates.

Villaraigosa is relying instead on city power brokers such as former Mayor Richard Riordan and philanthropist Eli Broad to promote Williams’ campaign. That hasn’t stopped LaMotte and other black elected officials from painting Williams as an upstart doing the mayor’s bidding.

Williams is hoping that voters will respond to his story of starting the well-regarded Accelerated School in South L.A. while in his 20s.

The mayor and UTLA avoided conflagration in two other districts.

District 5 includes Silver Lake and Eagle Rock and stretches across the Eastside and into adjacent cities, including South Gate. It was carved out to elect a Latino, but retiring white incumbent David Tokofsky held the seat for 12 years.

Villaraigosa is supporting Yolie Flores Aguilar, 44, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council.

Her opponent, longtime middle-school teacher and neighborhood activist Bennett S. Kayser, 60, snared the endorsement of the administrators union but fell just short of getting the backing of UTLA, which has remained neutral here as in District 7.

In that district, from Watts to the harbor area, the mayor backs Richard A. Vladovic, 62, who served as superintendent of the West Covina Unified School District after rising into the senior ranks of L.A. Unified.

His opponents are union organizer and former teacher Jesus M. Escandon, 39, and recently retired principal Neal B. Kleiner, 60, who, like Kayser in the 5th District, has somewhat simplified an earlier, more nuanced message.

“I respect the mayor’s moral leadership,” said Kleiner. “I would love to work with the mayor for his good ideas. But if you want the mayor sitting on the school board, vote for my opponent. If you don’t, vote for me.”

howard.blume@latimes.com

joel.rubin@latimes.com