School Board Challengers Want Separate District for Valley

The challengers seeking to represent the San Fernando Valley on the Los Angeles school board in next week’s election said Wednesday that want to separate the Valley from the rest of the district and end such programs as bilingual education and voluntary busing.

“We have our own racial groups in the Valley and we need to be taking care of our own,” said Cliff Stadig, a retired building contractor. He is one of five candidates running against West Valley school board member Julie Korenstein.

The challengers, speaking to 25 people at Birmingham High School in Reseda, said Korenstein and East Valley representative Roberta Weintraub must share the blame for district troubles such as a pending teacher strike.

“In the last 10 years, can anyone here say that our schools are better off? I doubt it,” said Barry Pollack, one of Weintraub’s two challengers.

Candidates Dauna Packer, Michael Kaliczak, Barbara Romey and Ernesto Llanes all said they agreed with proposals to break up the district and end voluntary busing. They have supported these proposals throughout the campaign.

A seventh candidate, Gerald Horowitz, a Sun Valley junior high school principal, did not attend.

Weintraub and Korenstein replied that the idea of breaking up the Los Angeles Unified School District had been studied in the past, but it has been largely discarded because of legal and financial barriers.

They defended busing as necessary to relieve overcrowding in inner-city schools.

Weintraub, school board president, is seeking her fourth term on the seven-member board. Her most visible challenger is Pollack, a Sherman Oaks resident, emergency room physician and former screenwriter. Also running is Llanes, an electrical contractor.

Korenstein, a former teacher and program coordinator, represents the Valley area west of the San Diego Freeway.

Both incumbents have so far each raised more than $75,000 and are expected to surpass $100,000 by Tuesday’s election. Weintraub and Korenstein each have more than $50,000 to spend in the last days of the election. Those figures are well ahead of the seven challengers, who together will probably raise only slightly more than $100,000.

Romey and Horowitz are Korenstein’s most visible challengers. They hope to draw enough votes to force a runoff election. School board candidates must receive at least half of the votes cast to win.

The problems facing the school district include declining academic test scores and a high dropout rate.