It’s Union Versus Union in Race for School Board : 1st District: One is backed by teachers group and the other by administrators. Both candidates have deep roots in the black community.

Barbara Boudreaux and Sterling Delone both have deep roots in Los Angeles’ black community, and both have spent most of their lives on campuses in the nation’s second-largest school district.

Both grew up in the Los Angeles Unified School District, graduating from local schools and sending their own children to district campuses.

Boudreaux, 57, went to work for the district 31 years ago, and is principal of Marvin Avenue Elementary School. Delone, 40, taught social studies in the district for 16 years before taking a leave of absence last year to work as a field representative for retiring Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg.

Their ties enabled them to emerge from an eight-candidate primary election field to compete June 4 for the 1st District seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education. The contest has come down in large part to a high-stakes battle pitting United Teachers-Los Angeles--an increasingly dominant force in generally low-turnout school board elections--against the much smaller Associated Administrators of Los Angeles.

The 35,000-member UTLA has mustered its resources to help elect board members and lobby for issues it considers important, including sharing in school decisions. The 1,800 campus administrators, charged with keeping the schools going during the 1989 teachers strike, recently formed their own union out of concern that they were losing ground on issues that concerned them.

About $130,000 of the $174,000 in money and services that Delone reported raising by last week came from the teachers union, while the California Teachers Assn. added another $9,000. Many of his individual contributions came from teachers and other district employees, according to campaign financial reports on file with the city clerk’s office.

Boudreaux reported raising about $50,000 by May 18, the end of the most recent finance reporting period. Of that amount, $7,000 came from the administrators union. Many of the reported contributions from individuals came from principals and other administrators.

UTLA, battling the budget deficit-induced layoffs or transfers of about 2,000 of its members and facing tough contract negotiations this summer, has campaigned hard for Delone. Its leaders remind teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians and others that Delone represents the opportunity to replace retiring board member Rita Walters--with whom it has regularly locked horns--with one of their own.

The election could become even more important, UTLA newsletters and flyers maintain, if union-friendly board member Julie Korenstein wins her race for City Council, thus creating another opening on the seven-member Board of Education.

In a recently circulated flyer, UTLA leaders said Boudreaux “advocates mandatory transfers for teachers” and “will push an anti-teacher administrative agenda.”

“Blatant lies!” fumed Boudreaux when a volunteer delivered a copy of the flyer to her campaign headquarters in the Crenshaw district.

“I do not support mandatory transfers, and I certainly am not anti-teacher. . . . I get along very well with my teachers. . . . We need to realize that we all have to pull together to save this district,” Boudreaux said, adding that her supporters also include parents, business owners, community members and even teachers.

While she said she would evenhandedly represent all factions within the 625,000-student district, Boudreaux added that “it is not right for any one group to have sole control. . . . There has never been anyone (on the board) who knows anything about administration.” She was referring to the fact that most of the current board members first won election with help from the teachers union, and some are teachers.

Delone, citing campaign “newspapers” circulated by the Boudreaux campaign, said she has wrongly tried to portray him as an outsider in the district and to paint the teachers union as an enemy of the black community.

“I have a program, but Barbara has just been campaigning against UTLA. She’s running against me and UTLA instead of for something,” Delone said. “UTLA is my base, but my support goes far beyond it. . . . I welcome anyone who wants to help kids.”

Delone has endorsements from unions representing the district’s clerical and blue-collar workers, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the county Democratic Party. He is backed by many of the area’s black political leaders--including Mayor Tom Bradley, Democratic U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters, Mervyn M. Dymally and Julian C. Dixon, and Democratic Assembly members Marguerite Archie-Hudson, Curtis Tucker Jr., Gwen Moore and Teresa P. Hughes. Noted educator Carrie Haynes and community activist Alice Harris also support Delone.

Boudreaux has sewn up the support of most of the area’s politically powerful church leaders, as well as that of the high-profile Walters, who is relinquishing her board seat to run for the City Council, and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a San Francisco Democrat. Several black celebrities, including basketball star Jamal Wilkes and actress Nichelle Nichols, are making radio spots for her. Actress Marla Gibbs recently put on a fund-raiser at her jazz and supper club.

Both candidates are energetic campaigners. Delone took a leave to campaign full time. Boudreaux races to her headquarters every day after school, decked out in the black and yellow campaign colors she has worn daily for nearly four months. They have appeared together at so many community forums that they know each other’s pitch by heart.

The 1st District, running from the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles west to the middle-class communities of Baldwin Hills, View Park and Crenshaw, was once almost entirely black. Recently, Latinos have become the largest ethnic group, and the Asian population is increasing. The communities are home to some of the school district’s most troubled schools--in many, achievement test scores are low and dropout rates are high.

Delone proposes a broad community education network to pull in parents, business groups and others to work together to improve the schools and to seek more outside funding for the district, which faces cuts of up to $391 million, almost 10% of its $4-billion budget. He said he wants to involve more Latino parents and promised to hire a bilingual aide if he is elected.

Boudreaux has called for more parent involvement (in part by providing parenting classes), improving youngsters’ self-esteem and seeking more corporate contributions to help the district over its budget crisis. She also wants to bring in more volunteers, including senior citizens. She said she agrees with Supt. Bill Anton’s priorities for cutting the budget and said some system of pay cuts is preferable to massive layoffs.