School Board Seat Proves Hot for Furutani

Warren Furutani, who turned 40 on Friday, said the night before: “I’m going to spend my birthday doing something very interesting.”

That proved to be an understatement.

Less than three months after he took his narrowly won seat on the Los Angeles school board, Furutani took action on Friday that put himself at the center of a national debate over whether schools should switch to a year-round calendar. After casting the crucial swing vote earlier in the week to approve such a switch for all Los Angeles schools by 1989, Furutani formally posted a motion to have the board reconsider its vote after more public hearings.

During his campaign, Furutani repeated the theme that he would bring better communication between parents and board members, that he had renounced the confrontational style of his days as a student radical in favor of conciliation. And, he repeated those themes on Thursday in announcing his move for a new vote on the calendar issue.

His supporters called his move courageous and consistent with his campaign philosophy. His critics described him as a naive waffler who was stunned by the opposition--including a possible recall movement against him--triggered by the earlier year-round decision. Others, including some fellow board members, went so far as to suggest that Furutani had not understood what he originally voted for; he denied that.

Some of Furutani’s colleagues and associates said he stresses the theme of communication so much--sometimes to the annoyance of other board members--that he may have unintentionally led some parents to conclude that he intended to vote against the year-round calendar as those parents wanted. Thus, these observers said, those parents were surprised by his initial vote, which some saw as a double-cross.

Furutani, who did not return several telephone calls to his office and home on Friday, represents the 7th District, a diverse area stretching from Watts to San Pedro and includes such independent cities as Lomita, Gardena, Carson and South Gate. Ethnically, Latinos make up 40% of its population, blacks 35%, whites 13% and Asians 12%. About 20% of its students are already on a year-round schedule.

Won in an Upset

In an upset, he won his seat with 51% of the vote against two-term incumbent John Greenwood after a race that raised issues about Furutani’s credentials and some campaign contributions. Greenwood credited his loss to heavy financial and voter support for Furutani from the teachers’ union and the burgeoning Asian population in the 7th District. Furutani said it was time for a change.

Of Japanese descent, Furutani is the first Asian elected to the board. A Gardena resident, he was a youth counselor for many years and, more recently, was coordinator of community programs at UCLA’s Asian-American Studies Center. That job, Greenwood charged, did not merit Furutani’s self-description on the ballot as a “UCLA administrator.” Furutani strongly denied that he was embellishing his credentials.

Furutani has gone on to resign from that job to devote himself full-time, he said, to his $24,000-a-year school trusteeship. He has said that his wife, Lisa, would go back to work and that he would do some consulting work to help support them and their two children.

During the campaign, Greenwood criticized Furutani for accepting a total of $400 in campaign donations from three South Bay businessmen implicated in an alleged scheme to embezzle $500,000 in supplies from the district. Furutani set aside the money but did not give it back and he threw the issue back at Greenwood, saying that the thefts would not have taken place if the school board ran a tighter ship.

As a student, Furutani was once charged with inciting a riot at San Mateo Community College but was later acquitted of that charge. In a 1971 column in an Asian weekly newspaper, he praised such left-wing icons as Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara as heroes of youthful rebellion.