Teacher Unions Dealt Defeats in School, College Board Races : Education: Boudreaux captures Walters’ seat in L.A. district. Administrator Washington is elected community college trustee.

In a defeat for the politically powerful Los Angeles teachers union, elementary school principal Barbara Boudreaux narrowly outpolled her union-backed opponent to win a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

Election returns Wednesday showed Boudreaux with 50.5% of the votes, compared to 49.4% for high school teacher Sterling Delone. Although 12,000 absentee ballots remain uncounted citywide, neither candidate believed the outcome would change.

United Teachers-Los Angeles spent more than $130,000 on the campaign waged by Delone--a former union board member and negotiator--hoping to load the seven-member school board with representatives sympathetic to teachers.

Boudreaux received about $7,000 of the $50,000 she spent from a newly formed union representing principals and other school administrators. When she takes office in July, she will be the first school principal on the district’s governing board.

The union representing junior college instructors also suffered a defeat when its candidate, Paul C. Koretz, lost the race for a seat on the seven-member Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees.

The American Federation of Teachers College Guild, representing faculty, police and clerical staff in the nine-college district, helped Koretz raise more than $60,000. But longtime college administrator Kenneth S. Washington, who spent about $12,000, won with 51.6% of the vote to Koretz’s 48.3%.

Both Boudreaux and Washington said their deep community roots and networks of friends bolstered their shoestring campaigns, pushing them past better-financed opponents.

“(Delone) had a lot of money, but we had the people power and that’s the most important part,” Boudreaux said Wednesday. “I think the public is tired of the politicking of the machine.”

During the campaign, Boudreaux appealed for votes at shopping centers, churches and nursing homes throughout the 1st District, which stretches from poor neighborhoods in South-Central Los Angeles to the upper-middle-class communities of View Park and Windsor Hills.

Her small band of campaign workers went door to door, passing out leaflets that attacked Delone as an “outsider” and a puppet of the teachers union.

Delone relied on professionally developed mailers and formal campaign appearances and debates, where he painstakingly outlined his plans for improving school performance.

“We’re disappointed, but we’re not really surprised by (Delone’s) loss,” UTLA President Helen Bernstein said Wednesday, discounting speculation that the defeat was a referendum on the role of the teachers union.

“If you look at the history of UTLA-endorsed candidates in that district, we’ve always had trouble,” Bernstein said. “We’ve never gotten more than 20% of the vote.

She blamed the union’s poor showing on years of teacher bashing by veteran board member Rita Walters.

“In fact, I’m amazed at how well we did. Nobody had ever heard of Sterling Delone before and the guy almost won.”

But Delone was clearly dismayed.

“I’m disappointed, both that I lost and that Barbara won with a smut campaign,” he said. He accused Boudreaux of relying on “low blows,” citing her campaign mailer that featured a picture of Delone reading to a small girl seated on his lap. The caption read: “Parents do not want their little girls sitting on the teachers’ lap!”

In retrospect, Delone said he would have relied less on mailers outlining the issues and more on radio ads and lawn signs to boost his name recognition.

Delone, who had taken a leave to work for outgoing school board President Jackie Goldberg, said he will return to the classroom.

Boudreaux, who will take the school board seat vacated by 12-year veteran Walters, joins a board that includes four members elected with substantial financial support from the UTLA--including newcomer Jeff Horton, a teacher who won the April primary election for the seat being vacated by Goldberg, who is retiring.