Only One Spirited Exchange Ripples Forum : Little Diversity Surfaces in School Board Race

A school board candidate angrily accused the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach last weekend of stacking the deck at a candidates’ forum with questions representing the group’s special interests.

“I’m dismayed that we keep getting questions related to teachers’ issues,” said Jerome Orlando Torres, a candidate in District 3, responding to a question regarding academic freedom.

“Academic freedom is not a teacher’s issue but an education issue,” replied his opponent, Jenny Oropeza, who has been endorsed by the teacher group, which later denied Torres’ charge.

The exchange marked the most dramatic moment in an otherwise-tepid series of forums for school board candidates.

Sponsored by the League of Women Voters, the forums--scheduled back to back for nearly six hours in the sweltering heat at Burroughs Elementary School on Saturday--offered nearly two dozen candidates the chance to answer questions submitted by members of a sparse and mostly partisan audience.

Although the questions covered a wide range of topics, the candidates--grouped according to the districts in which they are running--offered remarkably similar replies.

“There wasn’t a lot of diversity,” Felice Strauss, president of the teacher group, complained afterward.

In many ways the forums mirrored the entire school board campaign--the first time single-member district representatives have been elected--which has generally lacked both fire and focus.

In District 4, for instance, where incumbents Harriet Williams and John Kashiwabara are battling for their political lives, just one question related to board policy elicited a difference of opinion. Kashiwabara, a doctor who has been on the board for five years, said he opposes the use of educational funds to provide health services on school campuses. Williams said she favors “some form” of health care on campus.

“Young boys and girls need help,” said Williams, a nine-year board veteran. “They need someone to talk to; (their) problems won’t go away.”

School health clinics became an issue last year when a group of parents complained to the board that a proposed clinic represented the first step toward introduction of birth control and abortion counseling.

The same question asked of other candidates indicated widespread agreement with Kashiwabara’s position. Two exceptions were Jay Cain in District 1 and Bobbie Smith in District 2, both of whom said they support health clinics on campus, but only for nonsexual matters.

Most of the candidates also said they support the idea of a new elementary school at the old military academy site in Signal Hill, although many disagreed with the district’s refusal to provide an environmental impact report for the project. Those uncritical of the school district’s position were incumbents Williams and Kashiwabara and District 3 candidate Polly Garverick Ridgeway, all of whom argued that an EIR is unnecessary because the proposed use for the site is not new.

Some other questions also elicited differences of opinion, though not necessarily among candidates in the same district.

On classroom discipline and corporal punishment, for instance, all three District 1 candidates present--Cain, Jerry L. Shultz and William Pacey--said they strongly favor spanking misbehaving children in school, with parental approval. Cain and Pacey added that they are opposed to state laws outlawing such practices and would like to see them rescinded.

The same question asked in other districts elicited mixed responses.

The question of whether the school district should offer child care for working parents of younger children also revealed differences. While most said they supported the idea, three District 5 candidates--Lani M. Halter, Kathleen Hollingsworth and Larry P. Smith--said they did not. “In theory it’s fine, but in reality I don’t think it will work,” Smith said. “We’re strapped already.”

On class sizes, Halter and Cain stood virtually alone in asserting that current class sizes--which now average slightly more then 30--are not a problem.

“I managed to learn in the baby boom years, even though class size was 30 to 32,” Halter said. “I’m not sure that we couldn’t do better with our funding (than reduce class size).”

According to campaign reports submitted earlier this month, no candidate had then raised more than $10,000. Among those approaching that sum, however, were the candidates supported by the teachers association, each of whom, Strauss said, has received $5,000 from the state teachers organization, plus $2,500 from the local group.

The teachers organization has endorsed Schultz in District 1, Bobbie Smith in District 2, Oropeza in District 3, Williams in District 4 and Rabbi Jonathan Brown in District 5. Of the five, only Williams has refused TALB’s offer of financial support.

Other candidates participating in the forums included Jeff Baker, Doris Topsy-Elvord and Roberto Urango in District 2; Patricia Ericksen in District 3, and Richard Aschieris, Gloria D. Cordero, John Machisic, Bob McKittrick and Karin Polacheck in District 5.

Four candidates did not participate in the forums. They were Elizabeth Wallace, an incumbent running in District 1; District 5 candidate Dea Langlois, and District 2 candidates David Garza and Emma Calhoun Conley, who, a spokesman for the County Registrar’s office said, has withdrawn to become the director of a church-based social service project.