Armor Denounces Past Policies on Campus Closures : School Board Candidate Fires at a Wobbly Target

David Armor, a candidate for the West Valley seat on the Los Angeles Unified District Board of Education, fired his first campaign salvo Wednesday. But before his press conference started, the intended target seemed to have moved.

Standing alongside Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Chatsworth), Armor, one of seven candidates running for the open seat in the April 9 election, denounced past policies used by the school board to close 19 West Valley schools with low enrollments. He cited his demographic research as a basis for his belief that no other schools should be closed.

Although Armor characterized the board as being “two steps behind reality” in its school closure policies, the board members themselves have indicated in recent weeks that they are changing their positions on the topic.

Citing district enrollment projections that 70,000 new students will enter the system in the next five years, school board president John Greenwood said his reading of the board is that there is little support for closing more schools. Other board members confirmed Greenwood’s assessment.

Birthrate Increase Forecast

Armor, a former Rand analyst who now heads his own consulting firm, said studies that forecast an increase in Los Angeles County birthrates, combined with a continued growth in kindergarten enrollments, will lead to new demand for classroom space in the West Valley.

He said these new students could lead to overcrowded conditions in West Valley schools and could possibly force the district to reopen some of the schools that are now closed.

“It would be foolish to close any more Valley schools,” Armor added.

He said reopening of Prairie Street school in Northridge, the site of the press conference, would be his first priority “when the demographics indicated.” Prairie’s 1984 closing was hotly contested by residents of the neighborhoods it served.

Commenting in an interview Monday about the school board’s mood on school closures, board president Greenwood said it is unlikely that the board would approve a motion to study the possibility of closing certain schools. He added that the board has received a letter from the chairman of the Underutilized School Committee, the district’s advisory board on school closures, recommending that the district place a moratorium on closing schools until 1986.

“We have closed all the easy schools to close--the ones in overbuilt areas, the ones where school population will never return,” Greenwood said. “The rest of the ones we left open were left for good reason.”

Weintraub Press Conference

Meanwhile, another board candidate, Roberta Weintraub, gave her campaign for reelection to the East Valley seat a boost by her appearance at a press conference Wednesday. Weintraub, a leader of the city’s once-active anti-busing movement, is developing a strategy to reinforce her accomplishments while reaching out to the growing minority community in her district.

The event was the formal presentation to the district of a $21.5-million check from the state to help pay for the district’s voluntary desegregation program. The money was presented to Weintraub and district Supt. Harry Handler by state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), who opposed integration of schools through mandatory busing.

Robbins is the author of a state constitutional amendment that stopped forced busing of students to integrate Los Angeles city schools.

Weintraub, who has one opponent in the April elections, was first elected to the board in 1979 on an anti-mandatory desegregation platform. Currently, the all-voluntary system buses minorities to predominantly white schools in the Valley and on the Westside, but virtually none of the participants in the voluntary programs are white students bused to predominantly minority schools.

“You may find it ironic, but I don’t,” Weintraub said of accepting the check for desegregation programs. “My position has been consistent on this. I have always been in favor of voluntary desegregation. And that’s been Alan’s policy, too.”