Council Race Heats Up; School Candidates Battle Apathy : Educators’ Top Obstacle Is Getting Out the Vote

For the eight candidates on the June 2 ballot for the Los Angeles school board and Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees, talking about education issues is easy. The tough part may be motivating the voters to go the polls next week.

“It’s like a fistfight in a closet,” said one observer of city education politics. “These races usually draw little interest.”

The turnout in the April 14 primary election was 15%, one of the lowest in modern city history. And in some parts of the sprawling community college district, especially outside the city of Los Angeles where the races were the only contests on the ballot, the turnout was barely 4%.

Two spirited City Council runoff contests the same day are likely to boost turnout in the central and Westside districts, but city election officials are not optimistic about a large turnout.

Wallace Knox, a candidate for one of the community college board seats, is one of many who finds the voters’ apparent lack of interest disturbing.

“People who think (school elections are) unimportant should realize that the impact of these institutions is enormous,” he said. “Very few parts of local government touch so many people’s lives so closely.”

The eight candidates for education posts are those who ran first or second in their respective April 14 primaries, but fell short of winning an outright majority of the votes cast. One of the four contests is for a school board seat representing the west San Fernando Valley, and the other three are for districtwide seats on the community college board.

Briefly, the lineup for next Tuesday looks like this:

- The single school board election is between two women who have long been active in west Valley school affairs, Julie Korenstein and Barbara Romey. They finished atop a pack of seven candidates in April.

- Community College District Office No. 1--Trade Technical College instructor Patricia Hollingsworth faces Los Angeles attorney Wallace Knox. They gained the runoff by finishing ahead of incumbent Monroe Richman.

- Community College District Office No. 3--Incumbent Marguerite Archie-Hudson, an administrator at UCLA’s College of Letters and Science who fell just short of winning an outright majority in a four-candidate race in April, is challenged by librarian Julia T. Wu, who finished a distant second.

- Community College District Office No. 7--USC Prof. David Lopez-Lee faces Richard E. Ferraro, a conservative member of the Los Angeles Board of Education for 14 years. The seat is being vacated by Leticia Quezada, who was elected to the school board in April.

The runoff for the west San Fernando Valley school board seat could be dubbed the “Battle of Lanai Road Elementary School.”

Korenstein, who led the April primary field with 24.6% of the vote, and Romey, a close second at 22.9%, have attempted in the last week to capture the symbolism that is associated with Lanai. The Encino school was the birthplace in the mid-1970s of Bustop, the Los Angeles group that opposed mandatory busing to achieve desegregation of the city schools.

Last Monday, Romey, 40, a Northridge accountant and longtime anti-busing activist, called a news conference in front of the school to announce the endorsement of her candidacy by a stalwart of the anti-busing battles, Democratic state Sen. Alan Robbins of Van Nuys.

Three days later, Korenstein, 43, the coordinator of a community volunteer program at Chatsworth High School, held her own press conference at Lanai to publicize her endorsement by another forced-busing foe, outgoing school board member Tom Bartman.

The race has been dominated by local issues, and the two find themselves in agreement on several points. They both believe that teachers, currently in a pay dispute with the school board, should get a double-digit salary increase. They oppose conversion of Valley schools to year-round operation to ease overcrowding and favor instead the reopening of schools previously closed because of low enrollments.

Korenstein has been endorsed by the teachers’ union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, but the current pay dispute has not played a significant role in the runoff. The teachers are seeking a 14% pay hike, retroactive to the beginning of the school year, while the district’s maximum offer has been a 10% raise, retroactive only to November.

UTLA officials have been angered by the stalemated talks and have threatened a strike on June 1--the day before the election. On Saturday, an impartial fact-finding panel agreed that the lesser offer was the best the school district could afford, but the union said it would nonetheless proceed with a strike authorization vote it has scheduled for today.

Both Romey and Korenstein oppose a strike.

Community College Races

In the community college races, the runoffs have focused on the same issues that dominated the April 14 primary--the nine-campus district’s continuing financial problems and the future of longtime Chancellor Leslie Koltai.

In the primary, the American Federation of Teachers College Guild opposed two incumbents--Richman and Archie-Hudson--because for the last two years they had voted in favor of sending layoff notices to teachers. Although Richman and Archie-Hudson contended that the votes were necessary because of severe projected deficits, the teachers’ union said the cuts should be made elsewhere. A third incumbent supported by the AFT, Harold Garvin, was reelected.

Koltai, 55, the chancellor since 1972, has come under increasing criticism in recent years, which have been rocky ones for the community college district. The reverberations of a steep decline in enrollment from 1982 to early 1986 are still being felt, and the runoffs probably will have some bearing on whether he will be retained. He has one year remaining on his $103,000-a-year contract.

Here is how the three runoffs are shaping up:

Office No. 1--Hollingsworth’s surprise second-place finish meant that four-term incumbent Richman, a Sun Valley physician, did not make it to the runoff. Knox, 40, finished first in April with 38% of the vote and enjoys the endorsement of the AFT. Hollingsworth drew 22.1% for the second spot on the ballot.

Knox, active in Democratic Party circles in the past, is critical of past fiscal practices that have plagued the 104,000-student district. But he said he is not an automatic vote to dismiss Koltai.

“It is essential that a very careful and thorough review be conducted,” he said.

Hollingsworth, also 40, said her experience as an instructor gives her good insight into the workings and needs of the community college system. She has been a teacher for 19 years and has taught English at Trade Tech since 1981.

She favors new accounting and budget controls to help in the district’s annual review of budget expenditures and revenues. She also favors an expanded effort by the district to recruit students.

Office No. 3--Archie-Hudson, 49, the board’s only black member, nearly won reelection outright in April despite the opposition from the teachers’ union. She polled 49.1%, and Wu, endorsed by the AFT, came in second with 22.4%.

Archie-Hudson said she has long championed instructional and physical improvements at West Los Angeles, Southwest and Mission colleges, particularly because of the minority communities they serve.

Aware that the AFT has targeted her for defeat, Archie-Hudson is working especially hard for votes in central and Southwest Los Angeles, where two City Council runoffs are likely to attract more voters to the polls.

Wu, also 49, said Archie-Hudson no longer deserves to be a trustee because she has allowed expenditures to get out of control. “I will not be a rubber stamp for the district bureaucracy,” she said.

Wu is the only Californian on the 15-member National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, a group that advises the President and Congress.

Office No. 7--USC professor Lopez-Lee, 44, endorsed by the AFT, led a seven-candidate field for this seat in April with 38% of the vote, while Ferraro, 62, received 23.2%.

The differences between the moderate Lopez-Lee and the conservative Ferraro are clear, according to the candidates.

Lopez-Lee: “The crucial problem is central administration, and I’m going to size everything up. If (any person) has lost the confidence of the district, then I’ll work for their removal. I also oppose the closing of Mission College. It’s not the same as closing a Ford plant. Faculty positions have to be absorbed. (Ferraro) . . . will ask for somebody’s head before all the evidence is in.”

Ferraro: “I feel I have substantially more experience as an educator (dating back to his days in the 1960s as a teacher at Franklin High School). We need a new chancellor, new directions for this district. It continues to be top-heavy with administration, and we need to get rid of them . . . and move out of those district offices. If people want that done in a professional manner, then they should vote for me. (Lopez-Lee) would be a disaster if elected.”