Critics Accuse Carrabino of Making Racial Slurs : Education: State school board member denies uttering insensitive remarks. His defenders blame complaints on political foes.

Joseph D. Carrabino, a pugnacious Los Angeles conservative who has been reappointed to the State Board of Education by Gov. Pete Wilson, is facing mounting criticism over alleged racial slurs and other statements that critics say make him unfit to be a board member.

Carrabino’s critics, who hope to persuade the state Senate not to confirm the appointment, say the 67-year-old former UCLA management professor has repeatedly denigrated minority students and has made racially bigoted and anti-Semitic remarks during his six years on the board. The panel, whose 11 members are appointed by the governor, sets policy for California elementary and secondary schools.

In an interview, Carrabino denied making many of the statements and said he has no animosity toward minority students.

The Senate Rules Committee is expected to hold a hearing about Carrabino soon. Confirmation requires a two-thirds favorable vote in the Senate as a whole. He was reappointed by Wilson last March.

In a recent letter to the governor obtained by The Times, Elizabeth Stage, former chairwoman of the state Curriculum Commission, said Carrabino once asked her: “How do you deal with all the Jews at Berkeley?” referring to the university where Stage was employed as executive director of a statewide science project.

“I said, ‘What?’ or ‘What do you mean?’ ” Stage wrote. “He said: ‘The Jews run UCLA. Don’t they run Berkeley?’ . . . He continued to speak about the control exerted by Jews in the administration at UCLA. It was a line of discussion that made me uncomfortable” and eventually prompted her to write to Wilson.

“Statements such as this, and many others that are on the public record . . . are not befitting a public official in California,” Stage wrote, “certainly not one charged with the education of all of its students.”

Carrabino said Thursday: “I never made those comments. . . . I have no recollection of meeting with her at all. I grew up back East. I come from an ethnic background myself. . . . What else can I say? It’s not my style. I don’t do that.”

Dan Schnur, Wilson’s communications director, said that “the matter is under review” but that the governor, busy dealing with the Los Angeles riots and other problems, “has not had an opportunity yet to review the situation.”

Carrabino’s critics also point to a board discussion of new reading textbooks that took place in Monterey in October, 1988.

At that meeting, according to tapes of the discussions, Carrabino said he and other Los Angeles business executives and educators were asked to work with young blacks after the 1965 Watts riots, “trying to make these people employable. . . . There was no drug business at the time so they didn’t have that source of income.”

He was arguing at the meeting that the state board should adopt special reading materials stressing basic skills for low-income, minority youngsters, not the literature-based books that had been recommended to the board by the Curriculum Commission.

“The hardest lesson we had to teach those youngsters was the concept of getting out of bed and going to work in the morning--that was a foreign concept,” he said. “Now, you can’t tell me you can use the same literature to reach a youngster from that kind of background that you do with the kids up in Bel-Air.”

Daniel Chernow, a member of the state Curriculum Commission, among other critics, believes that these and other comments Carrabino has made over the years indicate that he does not believe many minority students are capable of learning.

When asked about those remarks this week, Carrabino said: “No, no. I would never give up on anybody. What I was trying to say (was) you don’t just pull ‘em out and take ‘em to a machine or to vocational school. . . . We don’t have time at these meetings, you just say a few things, it’s all out of context.”

Another example of Carrabino’s alleged racial insensitivity mentioned by critics took place at the March meeting of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, on which Carrabino is the State Board of Education representative.

He questioned the findings in a staff report that said California high school students generally are taking tougher courses, getting better grades and qualifying for the University of California and the California State University systems in record numbers.

Carrabino attributed some of this improvement to “social engineering,” suggesting that some minority students were being given higher grades than they deserve and that was increasing grade-point averages statewide.

Kenneth O’Brien, former executive director of the commission, said in an interview: “In discussing foreign students, he would talk about ‘those Japs’ and others coming to take the place of California students. It was very derogatory but I’m not sure he really meant it. He was always surprised when people were offended.”

Carrabino denied, in an interview this week, that he is hostile toward foreign students or American minority students.

“If anything, I’ve been their (black and Latino students) godfather at UCLA. I went out of my way to help them, especially the Hispanics. . . . It’s a big gap, it’s a big emotional adjustment for them. I listened to them and talked to them and encouraged them--a little kindness goes a long way.”

Carrabino said the complaints about his behavior probably stem from the two-year feud between state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, a liberal Democrat, and Carrabino and other conservative Republicans on the State Board of Education.

As board president in 1990 and 1991, Carrabino clashed with Honig on a range of issues, including administration of the Department of Education; Honig’s involvement with the Quality Education Project, a parental involvement program formerly run by Honig’s wife, Nancy, and whether the board or the superintendent should set state educational policy.

Wilson Administration sources also suggested that the campaign against Carrabino was being orchestrated by Honig and his supporters.

The gruff, loquacious former professor, who lives in the San Fernando Valley and runs a management consulting business, has a number of defenders.

Joseph Stein, who replaced Carrabino as board president in January, said: “The board would not be where it is today if it were not for his leadership.”

Stein praised Carrabino for focusing on the governance of California elementary and secondary education and for insisting on tighter controls over education spending.

Peter G. Mehas, who was education adviser to former Gov. George Deukmejian, and served briefly on the State Board of Education before being elected Superintendent of Schools in Fresno County, said: “Maybe he is outspoken but with many of the issues he raised--reform of the department, board procedures, conflict of interest--he’s been right on.”

But others think Carrabino has been a disruptive force, not a constructive one.

The California School Boards Assn., the Assn. of California School Administrators and the statewide Parent-Teacher Assn. all have urged the Senate Rules Committee, and the Senate as a whole, to reject Carrabino.

He has made “both public and private attacks on public education,” said Scott Plotkin, president of the school boards association. “We consider him to be no friend of the public schools and, as such, he should not have a part in making public school policy.”

Several public school educators criticized Carrabino for showing up as a guest of honor at a Beverly Hills tea given by supporters of the proposed Parental Choice Initiative, a plan that would provide parents with state-funded vouchers that could be used for private schools. Carrabino said the event was “strictly informational” and that he attended because “there are a lot of things about this initiative I don’t understand yet.”

Kenneth Peters, a registered Republican who was appointed to the state board by former Gov. George Deukmejian and who served with Carrabino for six years, said Carrabino became “increasingly careless about ever knowing what was going on at board meetings, except for his own very narrow agenda, which had to do with Honig.”