Greenwood Ousted From School Board; Walters Easy Victor

Los Angeles school board President Rita Walters swept to an easy victory in Tuesday’s balloting despite the opposition of the teachers’ union, but her colleague, John Greenwood, was ousted by union-supported challenger Warren Furutani in a close race.

In other school board races, incumbent Jackie Goldberg won reelection handily, and community college trustee Letitia Quezada switched boards by winning election to an open seat representing the Eastside. In a wide-open, seven-candidate race in the West San Fernando Valley, educational consultant Julie Korenstein and businesswoman Barbara Romey led the pack and headed into a runoff election that will be held June 2.

In the Los Angeles community college board elections, incumbent Harold W. Garvin of San Pedro won reelection, but a second incumbent, Monroe F. Richman, finished behind challengers Wallace Knox and Patricia Hollingsworth in his bid for a fifth term and thus will not participate in the runoff.

The college board’s only black member, Marguerite Archie-Hudson, led two union-backed challengers, but in nearly final returns appeared to have fallen just short of the outright majority needed to avoid a runoff. She will face librarian/educator Julia Wu in the June runoff.

In the contest for the open seat created by Quezada’s departure from the college board, USC Prof. David Lopez-Lee and former Los Angeles school board member Richard E. Ferraro led four other candidates and headed for a runoff.

The college teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers College Guild, supported Garvin but opposed the other two incumbents.

Altogether, five seats were being contested on the school board and four on the community college board.

Test of Union’s Clout

Some Los Angeles school insiders believed that the school board primary election was a test of the political clout of United Teachers-Los Angeles, which opposed incumbents who had incurred its wrath.

Walters, 56, thought to be in her toughest political fight, but she easily defeated three challengers, including a well-known union-backed candidate, Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Walters told reporters before Tuesday’s election that she regarded the union as “my real opponent.”

As the votes came in, Francis Heywood, a union vice president, said it was unfortunate “if people perceive that is what it is--that UTLA is trying to take over” the school board.

Walters claimed victory late in the evening and said it was a time to patch up differences with UTLA.

“We must begin a healing process with our friends and neighbors who supported one or another candidate,” she said. “It’s a victory for our children.”

According to election laws, a candidate who gains a majority of the vote is the outright winner. If no one wins a majority, the two top vote-getters in each race take part in a runoff.

UTLA poured in volunteers and nearly $35,000 in the primary election campaign to unseat Walters and Greenwood, who were each seeking third terms on the school board.

The teachers union endorsed challengers Ridley-Thomas and Furutani because of the incumbents’ role in the stalled pay negotiations. The teachers, still working at last year’s pay levels, are seeking a 14% pay increase for the current school year. The school board’s best offer has been a 10% raise retroactive only to November.

Walters and Greenwood also infuriated the teachers union by opposing a last-minute UTLA demand during the pay talks that all of the Los Angeles district’s teachers, not just members of the union, be required to pay an “agency fee” to UTLA because the union represents all teachers in contract negotiations. Of the system’s 26,000 teachers, about 6,000 are not members of the union.

“I opposed it because I have a responsibility to all of the teachers, not just UTLA members who have supported me in the past,” Greenwood said.

Although the union also opposed Goldberg, it did not actively support her principal opponent, Trias, in District 3, which includes downtown Los Angeles, Echo Park and Hollywood.

In Ridley-Thomas and Furutani, the teachers found two energetic challengers who were willing to go on the offensive against the incumbents.

Taking on Walters in District 1 was no small task, considering that she was elected four years ago with 91% of the vote.

Ridley-Thomas, 32, attacked her for low achievement scores at five area high schools in the Southwest and South-Central Los Angeles district and for “losing touch” with area parents and community groups.

The incumbent replied, however, that Ridley-Thomas was not representative of the many area parents who supported her candidacy. Walters said she deserved reelection, citing her advocacy of busing to achieve desegregation in spite of widespread opposition and her authorship of the “C-average” rule, which requires students to pass all of their classes in order to participate in sports and other after-school activities.

Greenwood Criticized

In District 7, which stretches from the harbor area north to Watts, Furutani, 39, criticized incumbent Greenwood for adding to the public rancor over the pay negotiations. Although endorsed by UTLA, Furutani stopped short of advocating a full 14% pay raise, saying only that he favored a “double-digit” increase.

In recent weeks, Greenwood counterattacked, claiming that Furutani exaggerated his job credentials at UCLA, where he is a program coordinator in the Asian American Studies Center. Greenwood claimed that the job carries no administrative duties, and Furutani insisted that it does. Greenwood also cited his work in supporting anti-gang and suicide-prevention programs in the schools.

In the wide-open race in the western San Fernando Valley’s District 4, UTLA backed Korenstein, but the endorsement was not regarded as important in this relatively conservative district as it was in other parts of the city. The Valley race was a special election to fill the final two years of the term of David Armor, who resigned from the school board last year.

Several more conservative candidates, including Romey, George St. Johns and Bunny Field, sought to attract votes by touting endorsements from Republican legislators and opposing year-round schools.

Talking Up Experience

In the Eastside’s District 5, Quezada had the support of much of the Latino political Establishment, including board member Larry Gonzalez, who was not seeking reelection. She walked many of the area’s precincts in recent weeks, talking up her two years of experience on the community college board.

Her strongest opponent, Raul Ruiz, a Chicano studies professor at California State University, Northridge, sought to sway voters by extolling his longtime concerns with local schools, dating to student walkouts at five Eastside high schools in 1968. The walkouts were sparked by criticism that administrators were doing little to stem the high dropout rate among Latino students and that not enough Latino educators were given management jobs.

In the community college races, which were for four at-large seats, one of the three incumbents seeking reelection was supported by the American Federation of Teachers College Guild.

Garvin, a former Harbor College professor, was supported by the AFT because of his votes against the threatened layoffs of full-time faculty members.

Votes Lead to Opposition

The union decided to oppose the other two, Richman and Archie-Hudson, because of their votes in favor of the layoffs.

Richman, a Sun Valley physician who was seeking his fifth term, was opposed by, among others, the AFT-supported candidate, Knox, and former Trustee J. William Orozco, a former ally of Richman.

In the race for the seat vacated by Quezada, Lopez-Lee, 44, and Carmen Luna, 28, campaigned hard, partly because of their belief that the seat should go to a Latino. Ferraro, a former Los Angeles school board member, sought to attract votes by promising tight fiscal management to reverse the community colleges’ poor financial posture.

Ferraro also promised to push for the dismissal of Chancellor Leslie Koltai, whom he blamed for many of the colleges’ problems.