Weintraub Elected School Board President

Reflecting a shift to a more conservative stance, the Los Angeles school board Friday elected Roberta Weintraub to replace Rita Walters as president.

Weintraub, 52, who represents the East San Fernando Valley, was the unanimous choice on a second ballot. Westside board member Alan Gershman was nominated first but received only three votes.

Weintraub was elected to the panel 10 years ago as a fierce opponent of mandatory busing and was chosen as president her first year on the board. She served two consecutive terms as president, but her tenure was marked by volatile board confrontations over integration, which, her critics said at the time, were made worse by Weintraub’s stridently outspoken style.

The seven-member board is now sharply split again, but over the issue of year-round schooling as a solution to school crowding--a politically thorny problem because it affects predominantly minority areas of the district. But, according to current and former colleagues, Weintraub has gained the experience and skills needed to be an effective board leader.

‘A Lot Has Changed’

“I think she’ll make a wonderful president,” said Jackie Goldberg, one of the board’s staunchest liberals. “A lot has changed.”

As one sign of the more mellow Weintraub of recent years, the newly elected president took pains Friday to praise Walters, whom Weintraub once called a “bitch” during a radio broadcast at the height of the busing battles and with whom she remains philosophically at odds on a number of major issues.

“Rita has been an outstanding president of the Board of Education,” she said. “She has done a yeoman’s job.”

Weintraub, who opposes year-round schools, said resolving the year-round issue is a high priority for the board.

“We’re operating under tremendous uncertainty. We either have to decide not to look at it for two or three years” or settle the issue now, she said.

Not long ago, Weintraub was in the minority as a year-round foe. But now Gershman and Julie Korenstein, who won election to the board last year from the East San Fernando Valley, have joined forces with her to stymie year-round school expansion plans. Another recent addition to the board, Harbor-area representative Warren Furutani, says he is undecided on the question.

Only Walters, Jackie Goldberg and Leticia Quezada--all strong liberals--support expansion of year-round schools as a more equitable solution to the crowding.

About 90 schools in predominantly Latino and Asian neighborhoods operate on a year-round basis to relieve crowding. When the board last year considered a plan to extend year-round schooling into non-crowded, non-minority areas of the district, parents from the Westside and the San Fernando Valley bitterly protested, and a slim board majority succeeded in shelving the plan.

The issue may be raised again in the fall when Supt. Leonard Britton plans to make a recommendation on whether a districtwide, year-round school calendar should be adopted.

Weintraub said other board priorities include addressing low academic achievement in the district and building new schools.

Reflecting a personal interest in troubled youngsters, she asked in a brief acceptance speech Friday that each district employee befriend one student--”the average, disaffected, problem student” who is most at risk of failing--and try to help that youngster stay in school.

Although still a strong conservative, Weintraub has championed such issues as equal pay for comparable jobs in the district and affirmative action for women seeking principal posts. Along with Goldberg, she successfully pushed for the establishment of high school health clinics, at one point challenging Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony to a debate over whether the clinics should dispense birth-control information and devices.

Weintraub fought for mandatory expulsion of students who bring weapons to campus and for a ban on the sale of junk food in school cafeterias. She also has consistently opposed school closures in white Valley neighborhoods with shrinking populations of school-age children.