THE CAMPAIGN WINDS DOWN : School Board : Teachers Union Calls Out Troops for 2 Candidates

More than 100 campaign volunteers, most of them classroom teachers, fanned out along the western flank of the city Saturday as part of a final door-to-door push to change the political balance of the Los Angeles Board of Education.

Hoping to secure a majority of trustees more supportive of its contract demands and classroom concerns, the 22,000-member United Teachers-Los Angeles helped turn out the small brigade of troops for two candidates, incumbent Julie Korenstein in the West San Fernando Valley and challenger Mark Slavkin on the Westside.

Critics warn that the aggressive teachers union and its spitfire president, Wayne Johnson, want control over the governing board of the nation’s second-largest school system at a time when teachers are embroiled in a bitter contract dispute.

“It’s a power play,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig. Honig has endorsed Westside incumbent Alan Gershman, who has been targeted for defeat by the union.

Johnson insists that the union only wants a board more attentive to teachers’ needs, both economic and professional. That theme was echoed Saturday by many of the rank-and-file instructors who showed up to help their candidates despite a record-setting heat wave.

“I am ready to have some changes,” said Lois Biscoe, who joined about 75 other district teachers at Slavkin’s Sawtelle-area headquarters. “I want some help for teachers. Some practical help.”

About 45 volunteers, many of them teachers, also set out Saturday morning from a Northridge home to walk door to door for Korenstein. The day’s effort brought to several hundred the volunteers Slavkin and Korenstein have been able to put in the field and on phones in recent weeks with the union’s help.

Carole Rosen-Kaplan, a Korenstein volunteer and Birmingham High School English teacher, said Saturday that she is helping the campaign because “there is a tremendous amount at stake” in the election. “The contract must be settled.”

3 Seats

Three board seats are at stake in a campaign whose big issues have been the ongoing teacher contract fight, campus crime, the efficiency of the district’s $3.5-billion-a-year budget and how best to increase the say of parents and teachers in running neighborhood schools.

While making endorsements in two of the races, the teachers union has remained neutral in the third, where longtime incumbent Roberta Weintraub is seeking reelection in an East San Fernando Valley district.

The Gershman-Slavkin race is largely a two-way contest, while Korenstein, a liberal Democrat, is facing formidable challenges from two conservatives, Principal Gerald Horowitz and parent activist Barbara Romey.

If both Slavkin and Korenstein win, four of the seven board members will be close allies.

Last-minute volunteer efforts like Saturday’s may prove important in this low-interest, relatively low-budget election because of new state limits on political fund raising. The voter-approved reforms greatly restrict the ability of UTLA or other large contributors to pump last-minute funds into the campaigns to pay for large mailings.

Contrasted with the general emphasis on grass-roots politics, incumbent Gershman, who has run a low-profile campaign despite raising more money than his opponent, has had no organized phoning or precinct walking campaign and apparently made no major public appearances on Saturday.

The only candidate who appeared to come close to the union-backed volunteer effort on the final weekend was Horowitz, a popular Sun Valley junior high school principal who had about 40 volunteers signed up Saturday.

Armed with campaign literature, pre-written pitches and computer printouts directing them to the homes of the most likely voters, the Slavkin workers set out Saturday ringing doorbells from Venice to Hollywood.

However, what they often ran into were barking dogs, empty homes or people who knew little or nothing about the school board election.

“I hate to vote without knowing a lot about it,” one elderly Wellworth Avenue resident told teacher Geri Thigpen, who was working a Westwood neighborhood for Slavkin. The woman expressed a vague concern that Gershman had not been doing enough, but she also seemed troubled by not knowing much about his challenger.

Light Conversation

Following instructions she received at campaign headquarters, Thigpen kept the conversation light, with no talk of labor-management beefs or school spending priorities. “He’s a very nice young man,” Thigpen said of Slavkin.

Finally, the hesitant woman said she would “probably” be voting for Slavkin.

Korenstein’s volunteers have for more than a month been phoning every day, whittling down huge stacks of computerized phone lists targeting Democrats, senior citizens, parents and voters who have a record of casting ballots in off-year elections, said Jo Seidita, coordinator of Korenstein’s volunteer force.

Wayne Fisher, a studio prop master by trade and the regional vice chairman of the Los Angeles Democratic Party in charge of the San Fernando Valley, said that for Korenstein “it’s the phone bank that is going to win it.”

Gershman, a former teacher and education consultant, has run on his record, generally defended the district’s instructional and management efforts and charged that his opponent is a political opportunist with no qualifications.

Liberal Democrats

Slavkin, a political aide for county Supervisor Ed Edelman, charges that Gershman is too close to the district’s “fat-cat” administrators. Gershman and Slavkin are liberal Democrats.

Korenstein, a single mother with two grown children and a 13-year-old son, had hoped to portray herself as the board member who is “shaking things up” at the district headquarters downtown.

But in appearances at several candidate forums, Korenstein has been forced to defend district programs considered generally unpopular with conservative West Valley voters, such as bilingual education and a counseling program for gay and lesbian students. Her five challengers have also sought to blame growing campus violence and declining academic performance on Korenstein.

Times staff writer John Mitchell contributed to this story.