1 Incumbent a Cinch to Win School Board Race

Redondo Beach voters will decide Tuesday whether to keep two incumbent members of the local elementary school board or to replace one of them with a retired principal. The two candidates with the most votes will win seats on the five-member board.

The incumbents, Howard Huizing and Rebecca Sargent, and challenger Andrew Deliman agree that Redondo Beach City School District is in excellent shape after adjusting to a traumatic drop in enrollment over 20 years from 10,000 students to 3,800 today.

In interviews, the three candidates said the financial condition of the district is sound, the quality of education is high, teachers and administrators are first rate and many programs cut during the lean years have been restored.

“It’s a happy place,” said Huizing, 69, the board president, who is seeking his second term. “Other districts envy our position.”

“Everything is going extremely well now,” said Sargent, 43, who is running for her third term on the board. “But we need to keep moving forward.”

“We have a fine school system,” said Deliman, 68, who worked for the district for 27 years as a principal before retiring in 1985. He listed 12 areas in which he would like to see further improvements, such as class-size reduction and computer education.

The three candidates agreed that elementary districts in the three beach cities--Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach--are likely in the near future to absorb the secondary students now served by the troubled South Bay Union High School District. What form the reorganization may take will be discussed by the boards of the four districts at a joint meeting March 14.

At South Bay Union, the student population has dropped from a high of 7,000 in the 1970s to 3,300. The decline is expected to continue along with mounting budget problems. The high school district has proposed a kindergarten-through-12th grade unification of all three beach cities.

Deliman said: “Redondo Beach wants its own school system. . . . I might consider Hermosa Beach joining us, since it has only about 700 students.”

Both incumbents said a separate unified Redondo Beach system, possibly including Hermosa Beach, may be the best way to go, but said they will be open to all the options until they hear the views of the other districts.

“I think unification is a good thing and we want to discuss the best way to do it,” Huizing said.

Sargent, who works as a paralegal in a Torrance law firm, was first elected in 1981. She has been active as a volunteer in a number of state and local educational groups.

Deliman worked for the Redondo Beach district for 29 years, including 27 years as a principal at various schools. Since retiring, he has worked as a substitute teacher in Torrance. He said he would like to see a stronger role for teachers in the district’s operations and he proposed providing an annual report on school affairs to the community.

Huizing also is a veteran of service in the Redondo Beach district. He was a teacher and basketball coach, then principal of the Washington school for 27 years. Since his retirement, he has worked as a real estate agent.