CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS / 12TH DISTRICT : Campaign Zeros In on School Crime : Charges: Bernson says Korenstein didn’t back up her policy to expel students with weapons. She claims he’s diverting attention from Porter Ranch.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson took a swipe Wednesday at challenger Julie Korenstein’s assertion that she has been tough on school crime, again charging that she voted repeatedly as a city school board member not to expel students caught with weapons.

But Korenstein said Bernson was distorting her actions in an attempt to divert attention from what she said is the central issue in their June 4 runoff election for Bernson’s 12th District seat: his strong backing of the controversial Porter Ranch project.

The clash came as the two candidates entered the final days of their increasingly rancorous campaign for Bernson’s post, which represents the northwest San Fernando Valley. Bernson has held the post since 1979.

Bernson was thrown into a runoff with Korenstein after he fell far short of the 50%-plus-one-vote majority he needed to win reelection outright in last month’s city primary election. Although he outpolled Korenstein and four other opponents, Bernson garnered just under 35% of the vote, the lowest percentage of any council incumbent since 1971.

At a news conference Wednesday, Bernson, a conservative Republican, released a new campaign mailer charging that Korenstein was “speaking out of both sides of her mouth” about a school-board policy she authored requiring automatic expulsion of students caught with guns on city school campuses.

Korenstein, a liberal Democrat, has touted the expulsion policy as her chief tough-on-crime credential in a district that is generally considered moderate to conservative and where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats. The policy took effect last June in Los Angeles schools.

Bernson’s brochure, sent to thousands of voters, carries the outline of a pistol and the slogan: “Julie Korenstein Says, ‘Carry a Gun, Come to School.’ ” It said Korenstein “voted for the policy but continues to vote to allow students to remain in school who carry drugs and weapons to school.”

The mailer cited eight recent cases in which Bernson said students were returned to regular classes after they had been caught with guns, knives or other weapons, or had caused or tried to cause physical injury to another person.

Speaking to reporters in front of a Northridge elementary school, Bernson also mentioned another case involving an elementary school student who came to school with a loaded gun.

“This student was a sixth-grader with a long history of school disruption and class problems dating back five years. Julie Korenstein’s solution to the problem? Return this student to class,” said the councilman.

But Korenstein said Bernson was deliberately distorting the mandatory expulsion policy and her votes on it in a desperate, 11th-hour effort to hold onto his job.

She said the policy that she wrote applies only to students in grade seven or higher caught in possession of firearms.

None of the eight students cited in Bernson’s mailer were carrying guns, she said, and therefore the expulsion policy did not apply to them.

Hector Madrigal, the school district’s coordinator of student disciplinary proceedings, said that the weapons in five of the cases cited by Bernson were knives. The others involved a screwdriver, a box-cutter and a “mild stun-gun” he said was not capable of inflicting serious injury.

He said, in one instance, a 13-year-old boy brandished a screwdriver at another boy because he thought he “was going to get beat up.” The armed student did not strike the other one and “displayed extreme remorse” at his disciplinary proceeding, Madrigal said.

Korenstein said students caught with knives or weapons other than guns are sometimes returned to regular classrooms but not in the schools where they committed the offenses. Such students, she said, are closely monitored and subject to immediate expulsion if they commit further offenses. She said being transferred to different schools is a form of punishment, because it takes students away from their friends.

Korenstein said she does not condone students bringing knives or other weapons into schools. But she added that simply expelling them may aggravate the problem. “I didn’t want to expel students who brought Boy Scout knives to school. . . . You don’t want to simply throw these kids into the streets,” she said. “If they’re on the streets, they may just get deeper involved with gangs, deeper involved with drugs and be breaking into stores.”

Although some students who carried weapons other than guns are returned to regular schools, she said, most are sent to special schools operated by Los Angeles County or private contractors outside the school district.

Korenstein said she has voted “a very few times” to send elementary school students caught with guns back to regular schools. But she said she did so because the only alternative was to expel them. The school district has not yet created any alternative schools for them.

Madrigal said the gun-carrying sixth-grader cited by Bernson was not covered by the automatic expulsion policy because he attends an elementary school. However, the boy, who is 13, will be placed in an off-campus program when he enters seventh grade in September, he said.

Madrigal said Korenstein called him before he spoke with a Times reporter Wednesday but only to “verify with us what the actual facts were regarding what Mr. Bernson said.”

Korenstein said Bernson was raising the expulsion issue only to deflect voters’ attention from his backing of the Porter Ranch project north of Chatsworth. She has attacked the project as too big, saying it will overload streets, sewage treatment plants and schools in the northwest Valley.