Fireworks on Fundamentalism Fizzle : Schools: Potential ideological slugfest at debate in La Mesa-Spring Valley district comes off as something less than that.

It was sweltering at Highland Elementary School, with only a few ceiling fans in the auditorium to swirl the heat around.

But almost 300 people showed up, expecting fireworks over the issue of Christian fundamentalism in schools as eight candidates for the La Mesa-Spring Valley Elementary School District board held their first debate. The religious right could hold sway on the board after next month’s election.

Those expecting an ideological slugfest came away from the Wednesday night session disappointed. The audience, primed for battle, hung on instead in polite intensity as a friendly but firm moderator peppered the candidates on the issues.

Clear differences did emerge from two hours of intense questioning--on sex education, curriculum, prayer in schools, parental choice and bilingual education.

Yet no one came across as a firebrand. To some, that just showed how religious fundamentalists can mask their true intent. To others, it meant there can be honest differences over how best to improve the public schools.

It showed that, in a year in which cynicism runs high regarding public office, there’s at least one election that makes a difference to a lot of people.

The so-called “religious right” is competing all over the county for seats on school boards, service districts and other agencies. Nowhere could their clout be greater than in the shadow of Mt. Helix, where 14,000 students attend elementary and middle school.

Their fundamentalist views could become the dominant philosophy if one or more of their candidates gains office next month, and that has galvanized both supporters and opponents in a mostly middle-class area of East County where parents still take an active, personal interest in their public schools.

Construction worker Jim Deyling, one of three candidates endorsed by the Christian Times, summed up the mood of many in attendance Wednesday by decrying “signs of decay in our neighborhoods . . . of morally adrift kids who need . . . a vigorous counterpoint to misplaced values.”

When asked, both he and fellow candidate Sylvia Sera Sullivan said they send their children to private, Christian schools because of uncaring administrators and a lack of excellence they have seen in the public schools.

“It’s a sacrifice,” Sullivan said to a few scattered hisses. “I wish we could send our kids to the nearby public school . . . but I saw the test scores . . . below average and going down . . . and the problems with gangs.”

Candidates on an anti-fundamentalist slate--Community for Responsible Education--took turns parrying the views of Deyling and Sullivan.

Computer businessman Ted Crooks said all his sons are in public schools, “and that’s pretty fundamental involvement.”

He added later that, if he and his colleagues are “tarred” as pro-Establishment, it’s because they’ve “spent a lot of time at long, boring school meetings, showing up for (trustee) debates, and having kids in our public schools.”

Both Deyling and Sullivan asked voters to send a message about family values and the need to return to what they say are the basics of public education.

“Let’s see (the teaching of) marriage reinstitutionalized in the school,” Deyling said of how sex education should be handled in a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade district. “We should re-advocate the husband and wife, and kid-centered families.”

But Crooks and fellow candidate Sharon Jones labeled the issue irrelevant.

“Let’s be honest, we tell the kids the biological facts of life,” Crooks said. “But in a K-8 district, sex shouldn’t have a major role. . . . If we have a pregnancy, that’s an issue for (county) Child Protective Services, not for a school counselor.”

The positions weren’t always that clear. Businessman Larry Darby is also endorsed by Christian groups, but he agreed with Crooks on the sex education issue and parted company with the fundamentalist position on supporting prayer in schools by asking, “Whose prayer?”

Darby also straddled the issue of whether to offer free federally funded breakfasts to students who otherwise go hungry, a program approved earlier this year on a narrow 3-2 vote by trustees and subject to reversal depending on the election results next month.

“Empathy is not shown by how many are on a program but by how many are off the program,” Darby said in a Sphinx-like response.

Deyling argued that such programs promote a welfare mentality. He said that, instead, families should volunteer to feed children who go without breakfast, a plan that Sullivan called “real community involvement.”

In one of the night’s more direct moments, Crooks said: “Let’s get this straight. Kids have been hungry for years, we have to feed them. . . . If they eat well, they’ll get better grades and learn better.”

For most of the evening, everyone came across as within the mainstream.

Even on the sensitive issue of acceptable reading material, i.e. censorship, the differences were about what is appropriate at each grade level and how parents can be part of the decision.

“I didn’t argue that no one should read it,” said candidate Tami Scott, who decided to run after she bristled at how a majority of the school board treated her complaint over allowing the Roald Dahl classic “The Witches” to be read to second-graders.

“I argued the age-appropriateness,” Scott said.

At night’s end, Barbara Carr, a board member aligned with Jones and Crooks, predicted that the “real majority” in the district will show its power in November.

But Sullivan spoke against “some of the scare tactics” being used against the Christian alignment, saying the evening proved that “we’re not here to destroy the public schools.”