CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / SUPT. OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION : Honig Faces 3 Little-Known Opponents

In the quietest of the statewide campaigns, state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig is running for a third four-year term against three little-known and poorly financed opponents.

Honig has received a major share of the credit for improvements in California public schools in recent years, including a tougher curriculum, tighter high school graduation requirements, increased teacher salaries, higher test scores and a reduced dropout rate.

But he presides over a system with plenty of problems. Class size is the second highest in the country (only Utah’s is higher) and per-pupil spending is 30th in the nation, well below most other urban industrial states.

Enrollment is climbing almost 200,000 per year and there is a backlog of several billion dollars in needed but unbuilt classrooms. More money is needed to upgrade the skills of both teachers and administrators.

“We’re nowhere near where we need to be,” Honig said. “What we have shown so far is that we have a strategy and we know how to do it if we get the money and if we get our signals straight.”

One of Honig’s rival candidates is N. Samuel Rodriguez, dean of external education at a small Bible college in Redding, who said in an interview that he is running because Honig will not accept “creation science” as an explanation for the origins of mankind.

After heated debate with creationists and some members of the state Board of Education last year, Honig agreed to accept biology textbooks in which evolution is presented as theory but not fact. However, he refused to grant equal intellectual status to creationism and that angered Rodriguez, who describes himself as a “conservative Christian educator.”

Rodriguez said he will defeat Honig because “I’m pro-life and I’m a Christian and that appeals to an awful lot of people. On top of that, I’m the first Hispanic to run for this office and on top of that, I have an awful lot of educational experience.”

He was a teacher and school administrator in San Francisco, San Jose and Fountain Valley before moving to Simpson College, in Redding, last year.

Carol S. Koppel, a Victorville lawyer and former Municipal Court judge, thinks that public schools have become too “academic” during Honig’s two terms and that more emphasis should be placed on vocational education.

Koppel also favors a “law-related education” program from kindergarten to 12th grade so that “when kids come out of high school, they will know the rules and be ready for society.”

She said she taught mathematics and science at Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley before becoming a lawyer. She was a Victorville Municipal Court judge from 1981 to 1987.

Mark Isler, a Van Nuys soft drink distributor and former Los Angeles-area elementary and junior high school teacher, is the fourth candidate for the superintendent’s job, which pays $72,500 a year.

Isler is campaigning for “school choice”--allowing parents to send their children to any school they choose, public or private--but in an interview he was vague about how public tax dollars should be used to finance private schools.

Three fund-raising committees working for Honig’s reelection have spent very little and have about $130,000 on hand, the records indicate. Rodriguez has raised $21,000, according to reports filed with the secretary of state’s office. Koppel has raised about $10,000 for the campaign, Isler nothing, according to state records.