Bigger Issue Behind Schools Election

When voters go to the polls Tuesday to fill the only open seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education, their actions could provide the first hint of how the public feels about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposed takeover of city schools.

The four candidates have taken varying positions on whether the mayor should run the nation’s second-largest school district.

Voters can chose among two candidates who are opposed to the idea, Christopher Arellano and Enrique Gasca, and two candidates who have at least indicated openness to the mayor’s proposal, Monica Garcia and Ana Teresa Fernandez.

Villaraigosa’s push for a schools takeover has pitted him against United Teachers Los Angeles, the powerful teachers union that strongly backed his election campaign but is vehemently opposed to mayoral control of schools.

The union has endorsed Arellano, 33, whose candidacy was rocked last week by reports that he had twice been convicted of shoplifting during the 1990s and his own admission that he had lied about completing a graduate degree from USC.

Villaraigosa is backing Garcia, a former aide to Jose Huizar, who held the seat prior to his successful run for Los Angeles City Council in November.

The special election comes at a unsettled time for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Villaraigosa has continued to deride the seven-member board and the district as a whole, saying there exists a sense of complacency and a reluctance to change. Board members, meanwhile, have begun the search to replace Supt. Roy Romer, who, after six years at the helm, has said he wants to leave by September.

And, the district is engaged in a massive school construction program and an ongoing effort to revamp high schools to boost poor student achievement and graduation rates.

The seat in contention will be decided by voters in a district that stretches from Boyle Heights to Mid-Wilshire and includes Chinatown, Koreatown and the Pico-Union area. But Villaraigosa’s proposed takeover of the entire school system has been a strong undercurrent of the campaign.

It was Arellano’s stance against mayoral control that in large part earned him the union’s backing.

“I don’t think it should be up to the mayor to make these types of decisions,” Arellano said. “It is important that voters have the right to chose who represents them on educational issues.”

The 48,000-member teachers union has contributed $200,000 to his campaign, more than the totals raised by any other candidate. It has also sent scores of teachers into neighborhoods to drum up support for Arellano and paid for campaign materials.

Arellano said he dropped out of school in eighth grade and had “a troubled youth.” He eventually graduated from UCLA. He said a priority would be to increase services to at-risk students.

Garcia, 37, is considered the insider candidate -- winning many of the same endorsements that Huizar had. She served as his chief of staff after the two studied together at UC Berkeley. As Huizar’s aide, she was involved in a controversial, but ultimately successful campaign to require students to take more rigorous college prep courses.

That involvement earned her strong grass-roots support from community groups that favored higher academic standards.

The mayor’s endorsement has helped Garcia raise funds and he has made campaign appearances for her.

Villaraigosa’s support, however, has seemingly put Garcia in an awkward position on mayoral control. While trying to win the teachers union’s endorsement, Garcia told union officials she was opposed to mayoral control, said A.J. Duffy, the union president.

But Garcia has since taken a more ambiguous line, trying to sidestep the issue and refusing to say outright whether she supports the idea.

“I think we have to wait and see what his plan is,” she said. “I’m running for the way the job is today, and whatever the mayor is putting out will be a 24- or 36-month discussion.... The mayor and I are on the same page that we have a problem [in the schools].”

The daughter of two district educators, Fernandez, 23, has emerged as a surprising dark horse, winning endorsements from The Times, the L.A. Weekly and Richard Riordan, the former mayor and ex-state secretary of education.

Until recently, she worked for the California Charter Schools Assn., an advocacy group that lends support to the publicly financed, largely independent schools.

As a senior at Belmont High School, Fernandez led large student walkouts to protest the poor, overcrowded conditions at the school. And while at UCLA, Fernandez worked as an aide to current school board member Mike Lansing.

Much of Fernandez’s low-cost campaign was financed by a $20,000 contribution from Frank Baxter, a retired investment banker and charter school supporter.

Fernandez dismissed the idea that, if elected, she would be an easy vote when the board decides whether to approve charter school proposals.

On the contrary, she said, she would push the board to be more critical of subpar charter proposals.

Fernandez said she would not rule out any options regarding control of the school district and was open to the idea of Villaraigosa taking over.

But Fernandez has faced a steep uphill battle against the well-financed campaigns of Garcia and Arellano.

Also opposed to mayoral control is Gasca, 31, the only parent in the race. Born in Boyle Heights, he returned to Los Angeles after graduating from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Gasca worked for several state politicians, including former Assemblyman Tom Calderon.

He now owns a small public relations firm.

Gasca has little education experience, but is critical of how nonnative students who are learning English as a second language are taught in city schools.

He said one of his priorities would be to overhaul the curriculum for English learners.

“I think his heart is in the right place by making education a priority,” he said of Villaraigosa. “But education is far too important to put it with other issues on a mayor’s agenda.”

Maria Lou Calanche has raised little money and is no longer actively campaigning.

If no one candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, a runoff election will be held in June.