Long Beach Elections : Reviews Mixed on New L.B. System in School Elections

There is general agreement on at least one aspect of this city’s district school board campaigns.

Despite previous arguments over electing board members by area rather than at-large, people on both sides of that question now say the new district process has resulted in more interest and a plethora of candidates in the April 12 election.

Especially impressive, they say, is the unprecedented ethnic diversity among the five districts’ 25 candidates, one whom is Asian, two of whom are black and five of whom are Latino.

“I’m very happy with their quality and diversity,” said Jenny Oropeza, a candidate in District 3 who was one of the prime movers in last year’s push to institute district elections to fill the school board’s five seats. After months of debate, voters overwhelmingly approved the measure in November, 1986.

Complaints of Uniformity

Disagreements still exist, however, over what district elections will mean to the future of education in Long Beach.

Many of the same people who praise the candidates’ diversity of background, also complain of a general uniformity in their vision and a lackluster debate that has so far yielded few truly local district issues. “There are issues that are not being explored because . . . candidates are over-sensitive to the possible backlash,” said Jerome Orlando Torres, one of Oropeza’s opponents in District 3.

Ironically, the cost of running for the school board--which theoretically should be reduced when a candidate runs in a single district rather than campaigning throughout the city--seems to have skyrocketed under the new system largely because of the increased competition.

And more than a few are perturbed at what they see as the exchange of one overly powerful special interest group for another. In the past, school administrators have been criticized for exerting inordinate influence in school board races. But now, it appears that the power balance has shifted to the local teachers union.

Sacrifices Predicted

“A lot of these excellent candidates are going to be sacrificed as a result of the power politics that’s taking place,” Torres said. “One has to be disturbed, if not alarmed, by the level of money and support the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach is channeling into these elections.”

In his own district, the results could be telling. While Torres says he expects to spend slightly less than $10,000 on his campaign, Oropeza has a campaign budget of $30,000--$7,500 of which came from the local teachers association and from the California Teachers Assn. District 3’s two other candidates--Patricia Eriksen and Polly Garverick Ridgeway--say they expect to spend about $3,500 and $6,500 respectively.

“We have a chance this time,” said Marilyn Bittle, assistant executive director of the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach., in explaining the union’s unprecedented participation in this year’s elections. “Before now it’s been a very closed operation and we just couldn’t break in.”

Besides Oropeza, she said, the union is supporting four other candidates: Jerry L. Schultz in District 1, Bobbie Smith in District 2, board trustee Harriet Williams in District 4, and Rabbi Jonathan M. Brown in District 5. With the exception of Williams, who Bittle said declined any financial help, each of the endorsed candidates received $2,500 from the local union and $5,000 from the union’s state counterpart. That means a total of $30,000, contrasted with the $4,800 the union spent in the 1985 election.

To raise its “war chest,” Bittle said, TALB asked its 2,100 teacher members to contribute $25. In addition, she said, the organization relied on voluntary payroll deductions of $7 a teacher per year, and requested funds from its state organization to which the teachers also contribute voluntary payroll deductions of an additional $10 a year.

In choosing the recipients of union support, TALB leaders say, they required agreement on two items favored by the union: binding arbitration of grievances and a vote by teachers on the question of adopting an agency fee paid to the union by all district teachers, whether union members or not. In addition, said President Felice Strauss, the local teachers union picked candidates it considered generally receptive to teachers’ comments and likely to make good legislative advocates in Sacramento.

“We’re just tired of not having any rights and not having our professionalism appreciated,” Strauss said. “We are supporting people who we think will do that.”

But there are those who see danger in the union’s role.

James Zarifes, an incumbent board member who chose not to run for reelection under the new system, views the teacher organization’s heavy involvement in the school board elections as an attempt to influence the teacher contract negotiations just now getting under way. “I’m very concerned that if any of these TALB candidates get elected we might have the teachers association board of directors running the school district,” Zarifes said. “That’s not the way it’s programmed to be.”

Alarmed at Involvement

E. Thomas Giugni, the district’s superintendent, says he is as alarmed by the extent of the union’s involvement as he would be by heavy involvement of district administrators. “Candidates can be asked to make commitments to association positions that could affect the overall running of the district,” he said.

The superintendent recently drew praise from several candidates for his position that the administration should not be involved in school board races. Especially pleased were those who view the new district elections as an antidote to the administration’s past power. But some of Giugni’s subordinates have chosen to ignore his advice to keep a low profile in the election.

Candidate Ridgeway in District 3, for instance, says her campaign is being run by a junior high school principal.

And Ed Eveland, the district’s assistant superintendent of secondary education, describes himself as one of several “active coordinators” in the campaign of incumbent Elizabeth Wallace in District 1.

“The most unethical thing I could do as an educator would be to have strong convictions concerning what is best for education in Long Beach and not work conscientiously and deliberately to assure” it, Eveland said. “It’s something I feel that as a citizen I have every right to do.”

Questions Tactics

Eveland said he is distressed to see an increase in mudslinging and questionable campaign tactics. “It’s become very political,” Eveland said. “Before, it might be a question of where people sit on desegregation or financial issues. Now it’s become a little bit more personal and a little bit ungentlemanly.”

One recent example occurred when Eveland’s own candidate--Wallace--got drawn into a verbal fracas with opponent Schultz over the placement and treatment of campaign posters. Another has occurred in District 4, where some critics of trustee John Kashiwabara have engaged in a whisper campaign regarding his former employment as a medical doctor at Long Beach City College. Until his recent resignation, Kashiwabara continued to collect a $30,000 annual salary despite having had his duties considerably reduced.

Kashiwabara’s opponent, Williams, says she had nothing to do with raising that issue and considers the effort to do so misguided. “We are completely ignoring it,” she said. “I think it is certainly not relevant to our race.”

And all things considered, Williams said, despite the fact that she expects to spend about $15,000--double the cost of her last campaign--she is rather pleased with the unfolding of district elections, which she alone on the board supported. “In terms of quality of candidates,” Williams said, “I’m ecstatic.”