Local Elections : 1 of 3 Incumbents Faces Opposition in El Camino College Board Race

Three incumbents are running for reelection to the El Camino Community College Board, but only one, Pat Scott, has any opposition.

Scott represents Area 1, which covers the same territory as the Inglewood Unified School District. His challengers are Mildred McNair, a longtime community activist who is making her third bid for the Area 1 seat, and Steven Klein, a financial analyst and political activist.

El Camino’s five trustees represent and reside in separate areas corresponding to high school districts but are elected at large by college district voters.

Unopposed Candidates

The unopposed candidates are Delmer L. Fox in Area 2 (Centinela Valley Union High School District) and Gerald M. Hilby in Area 3 (South Bay Union High School District).

Scott, 59, general director of the Centinela Valley YMCA, has served on the El Camino board since 1981. A USC graduate with a doctorate in public administration, he has worked for the YMCA in various posts for 35 years. He lectures at California State University, Long Beach, and has served as a volunteer in numerous school and community posts.

In a telephone interview, Scott said the college appears to be sailing in relatively untroubled waters under its new president, Sam Schauerman. He said the college is aggressively pursuing ways to attract new students and work more closely with industry in training workers in new technologies.

The recent passage of a “free flow” attendance law, which generally eliminates attendance boundaries for community college districts, should help boost enrollment at El Camino above the current level of about 25,000 students, he said.

El Camino officials expect to draw students from surrounding community college districts who find the school and its campus more attractive.

Promises ‘Activism’

Klein, 27, who works for a firm that deals in real estate financing, ran for a board seat in 1979 when he was student body president at El Camino.

If elected to the board, he said, he would be an “activist” trustee who would use his political associations to persuade legislators in Sacramento and Washington to provide more aid to education.

On the local level, Klein said, the board should pay more attention to the needs and views of employees and seek more involvement by the community in college affairs. A child-care center should be established on the campus, he said.

McNair, who declined to give her age, teaches the fifth-grade at Loren Miller Elementary School, 830 West 77th St., in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Besides running for the El Camino board, she has tried a number of times to win a seat on the Inglewood City Council and the Inglewood school board.

McNair said she wants to break the “country-club syndrome” of the all-white college board, which she said denies minorities a voice in the running of the school. She also charged that attendance by illegal aliens at El Camino should be curbed because such students crowd out legal residents.

A college spokesman said that El Camino’s current enrollment is 5,000 under capacity and that officials there have no indication that a significant number of illegal aliens are among those attending classes.

McNair said she also favors a campus child-care or development center, a proposal raised by various candidates in past campaigns. The proposal has been stalled at El Camino and other schools by lack of financing.