CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR : Bergeson Urges Better Teacher Training : Candidate attacks incumbent Leo McCarthy’s attendance rates at university board meetings and pledges to broaden education programs.

Campaigning at an elementary school bearing her name, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) called Friday for better college training for teachers.

Bergeson, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, also alleged that her Democratic opponent, incumbent Leo McCarthy, failed to attend many meetings when serving as a regent of the University of California and as a trustee of the California State University system.

“If Leo McCarthy were a student at Marian Bergeson Elementary, his attendance would guarantee him an ‘F,’ ” Bergeson said.

A McCarthy aide said that Bergeson was trying to change the focus of the campaign from her stand opposing legalized abortion.

The lieutenant governor serves as a regent and trustee of the state’s two largest university systems, Bergeson said. She pledged to work to broaden teacher education programs to include social issues affecting today’s students.

Noting that 70% of all new teachers in the state and 10% nationwide graduate from the Cal State system, Bergeson, a former schoolteacher and former president of the California School Boards Assn., called for a better exchange of ideas between public school officials and college-level teacher-training programs.

“My concern is the quality of education,” Bergeson said. “We need more excellence, and we should find a way to provide career opportunities for that excellence.”

All faculty of the University of California system should be required to teach at least one undergraduate course per year, Bergeson said. The proposal, which Bergeson called controversial, could help ease the financial strain of the overburdened UC system and prevent professors from being “isolated on their own campuses.”

Meredith Khachigian of San Clemente, vice chair of the UC Regents board, said the proposal has not been formally discussed but agreed that there needs to be greater balance between research and teaching on the system’s nine campuses.

Bergeson attacked McCarthy’s attendance record as a UC regent and a Cal State trustee during his eight-year tenure as lieutenant governor, and from 1974 to 1980, when he served as the Assembly Speaker.

Bergeson said McCarthy had attended 50% of Board of Regents meetings and 40% of Cal State trustees meetings since 1980. In the 1970s, his record was lower, with 3% attendance for the Cal State trustees and 16% for UC regents, she said.

McCarthy campaign manager Roy Behr said, “This is an attempt to divert an important issue--which in this case is her stand on abortion--even if she has to talk about meaningless, 20-year-old statistics.”

According to Behr, McCarthy has attended more meetings of the two boards than any previous lieutenant governor, and has doubled the attendance figures of Gov. George Deukmejian.