Parents and teachers get ready to decide school policies.

For Sherry and Vernon Renner, voting for members of a new policy-making council at White Point Elementary School was no easy task.

They just moved to San Pedro this summer, and they didn’t know the candidates.

“It’s kind of difficult to get excited when you don’t know a soul,” Sherry Renner said. “We just went eenie, meenie, mynee, mo.”

But the Renners, who have a daughter at the school, were glad to have the chance to vote. Vernon Renner, a Navy commander, has had to transfer his family 14 times in the last two decades. This was the first time that he and his wife, a former schoolteacher, have lived in a district where residents could vote for a council that will have authority to dictate matters including the school budget, school event calendar, student discipline and teacher training. In the future, this council could have a say in curriculum and hiring.

In June, a settlement of a nine-day strike by the Unified Teachers-Los Angeles against the Los Angeles district called for the creation of “shared decision-making councils” at each of the district’s more than 800 regular and adult schools and children’s centers. Each council will have six to 16 members, depending on the level of the school and its number of students. Half of each council must be made up of teachers, and the rest of administrators, parents and community representatives. Similar councils have been established in Rochester, N.Y., Dade County, Fla., and, most recently, Chicago.

At White Point, which has 650 students, the 12-member council will include six teachers, the principal, a non-teaching school employee and four parents or community representatives. Participation in the election was not just limited to school parents. Any voter who lived within the school’s enrollment boundaries was allowed to cast a ballot for candidates, whose terms will last a year.

Although parents at White Point have previously served on advisory boards, the decisions of the new council will be binding on the principal.

“What this does is legitimize something they have done in the past,” said Jack Fishenfeld, whose daughter is in first grade. “But it’s going from ‘This is a suggestion’ to ‘This is what we’d like.’ ”

Voting on Thursday night was, for the most part, rather informal. There were no curtains, no booths, no levers. Instead, the 400 parents gathered and socialized around voting tables and waited to meet teachers as part of Back to School Night, which also was being held.

But Principal Jack Zannella said voters had to adhere to strict guidelines. On the ballots, voters chose four of six candidates or wrote in their own choices. The ballots were then placed in unmarked envelopes, which were in turn placed in envelopes bearing voters’ addresses. This enables anyone to check a voter’s registration and, if necessary, discard the ballot during a five-day period after the election. Voters also registered their names on a separate sheet before they voted.

On the sixth day, Zannella and fourth-grade teacher Dave Pratt, the school’s union representative, will tear off the marked envelopes. Then they will count the votes.

About 400 parents were at the school, perhaps as much for Back to School Night as for the council election. Only 188 registered to vote.

Many of the parents, like the Renners, had randomly selected the candidates they voted for or depended upon word of mouth.

That bothered Jackie Hontz, a parent new to the area. She liked the idea of the election, but she refused to vote.

“I have not had the opportunity to meet these people,” she said. “It’s hardly an election.”

But Zannella said there were no guidelines for creating candidate biographies or holding forums for voters. That was something that the district and union overlooked, he said.

Still, many parents expressed high hopes for the new council. Fishenfeld, whose wife, Pierce College Prof. Winnie Riviere was running for the board, said he wished the school could become as good as a magnet school.

“Making the parents more involved at school will make them more involved at home,” he said. “When it comes to excellence in education, a good part of it is what happens at home.”

The teachers, because they make up the majority of the board, might have the greatest impact. Pratt, who was automatically included on the council because he is the union representative, predicted that drastic changes won’t be made in the first year. But he said the school’s 23 teachers were anxious to have a say on such matters as the budget and school event scheduling.

“The teachers have to get used to decision-making,” he said. “They’re not used to it. . . . (The council) has the force of a majority vote, and the principal has only one vote. He’s just one vote, no veto. He had sort of a veto before.”

But that didn’t bother Zannella. Although other school principals have balked at the policy-making council, Zannella says the more people involved, the better the school.

“There’s room for everybody,” he said.