THE ELECTION : Voting Goes Teachers’ Way in City School Board Races

The teachers union appeared to be winning a friendly majority on the Board of Education of the Los Angeles Unified School District as voters Tuesday reelected incumbent Julie Korenstein and nearly complete results showed incumbent Alan Gershman losing narrowly to Mark Slavkin.

Slavkin held a slim but steady lead and claimed victory in the Westside race at 11 p.m.

“The old era is gone. Alan Gershman was a symbol of the old era. Now we can get to work tomorrow for the new era,” Slavkin said. Gershman said negotiations in the recent teachers’ strike often kept him from campaigning. “We did all we could do, but the strike took its toll,” he said. But he was still refusing to concede defeat.

West Valley incumbent Korenstein had about 55% of the vote and her challenger, Gerald Horowitz, a junior high school principal, conceded defeat late Tuesday.

United Teachers-Los Angeles, fresh from its bitter strike, had worked hard to defeat Gershman and to aid Korenstein.

Meanwhile, auto shop teacher Pat Owens was ahead of mayoral aide Rose Ochi in a runoff for one of two open seats on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District. In the other college board race, union activist and college counselor Althea Baker held a small lead over English professor Patricia Hollingsworth. Owens and Hollingsworth were considered to be the underdogs because the college teachers guild and the Democratic Party establishment had given strong support to Ochi and Baker.

Bradley Connection

Some political insiders said they had feared a defeat for Ochi because she had identified herself on the ballot as an attorney and aide to Mayor Tom Bradley while Owens described himself as a teacher. They said voters are hostile to attorneys and that the recent investigations into Bradley’s financial dealings may have diminished the value of Ochi’s association with him.

The teachers union in the city public school system saw the election as an opportunity to ensure that there are at least four sympathetic members on the seven-member school board. During contract negotiations, the union usually could rely on three votes, including Korenstein’s, with board President Roberta Weintraub seen as a swing vote to form a majority.

The college teachers union already has friendly relations with a majority of the seven trustees. The winners in Tuesday’s college board runoff will replace two long-term incumbents who are retiring.

In an election with extraordinarily low turnout, the votes of several thousand teachers could have changed the outcome of each race.

Korenstein was elected to the West Valley seat in June, 1987, after defeating Barbara Romey in a runoff for the two years remaining in former board member David Armor’s term. Armor resigned to work for the Department of Defense in Washington.

Romey ran again in the April 11 primary but finished third.

Korenstein holds a teaching credential and worked briefly as a home tutor. She worked as a program director at Chatsworth High School before winning a seat on the board.

Horowitz, principal of Richard E. Byrd Junior High School in Sun Valley, called Korenstein too inexperienced and too close to the teachers union.

Korenstein was forced into a runoff after falling 57 votes short of carrying the 50%-plus-one-vote majority needed to win in April. Of the five challengers, Horowitz received about 22% of the 70,000 votes cast in the primary.

After Horowitz was transferred last summer from Robert Frost Junior High School in Granada Hills to Byrd Junior High, his supporters, mostly parents, charged that Korenstein had arranged it to punish him for his support of Romey in the 1987 runoff.

Korenstein denied any involvement in the transfer. District officials said that principals who had served 10 years at a school, as Horowitz had, were routinely transferred.

The transfer controversy sparked a brief recall campaign against Korenstein last September. Organizers of that recall, which was abandoned a month later, went on to form the Horowitz campaign committee.

Slavkin, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, forced Gershman into a runoff in the April 11 election, receiving 36% of the votes cast. Gershman received about 48% of the vote, short of the 50%-plus-one-vote majority needed.

Gershman charged Slavkin with being a political opportunist with no background in education issues.

Gershman, a former teacher, sided with board members Rita Walters and Leticia Quezada to oppose UTLA demands during strike negotiations last month, saying that the raises of 24% over three years will probably require the district to cut more than $100 million from other programs over the next two years. He said he has not yet decided whether to vote for the settlement contract when it comes before the board for a final vote later this month. Slavkin agreed with the settlement.

In many parts of Los Angeles County, the only contests in Tuesday’s election were the runoffs for two seats on the college board, which runs the district’s nine campuses. Candidates ran for separate seats covering the entire district, which includes the city of Los Angeles and such adjacent areas as Burbank, Beverly Hills, Culver City and parts of the San Gabriel Valley and southern Los Angeles County.

For Office No. 2, Ochi faced Owens, an auto shop teacher and student recruiter at Trade-Tech College. In the April primary, Ochi received 33% of the vote, compared to 20% for Owens out of a field of six candidates.

Late Tuesday night, Ochi said Owens was helped by being on Republican mailers, but she said she did not know if she was hurt by the controversy surrounding Mayor Bradley.

Owens has taught in the district 19 years and said the union, the American Federation of Teachers College Guild, is partly to blame for a decline in the quality of the colleges. He pictured himself as an underdog who represents the rank-and-file teachers.

For Office No. 6, Baker, a union negotiator and Mission College counselor, ran against Hollingsworth, a language arts professor at Trade-Tech. The primary for the seat had four candidates, with Baker winning 45% of the vote and Hollingsworth 32%.

According to campaign allegations by Hollingsworth, Baker’s role in negotiating last year’s contract for the teachers guild would pose a conflict of interest if Baker wins. But Baker responded that such negotiating prepared her well to become a trustee.

Hollingsworth came close to beating Wallace Knox in a 1987 college board runoff. She attributed her loss Tuesday to the “tremendous amount of money that was spent” by Baker.

Also contributing to local election coverage were Stephanie Chavez, Richard Lee Colvin, Alma Cook, Sam Enriquez, Michele Fuetsch, James M. Gomez, Amy Louise Kazmin, Daryl Kelley, Marc Lacey, Jeffrey Miller, John L. Mitchell, Frederick M. Muir, Edmund Newton, Amy Pyle, George Ramos, Richard Simon, George Stein, Jill Stewart and Chris Woodyard.