LOCAL ELECTIONS / SCHOOL, COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICTS : School Board Races Maintain Low Profile : Election: Campaigns for San Diego Unified and San Diego Communty College seats are the hottest races, along with measures to alter city school board voting.

While controversial and major challenges await the winners of San Diego-area education races next month, the election campaigns themselves have been decidedly low-key.

There are two contested races for the San Diego Unified School District and two races for the equally sprawling San Diego Community College District. In addition, there are ballot proposals to change the method of election for the city schools system to district-only from city-wide, as well as increase the number of board members to seven from five.

Only in smaller suburban districts, where voters find it easier to identify with their school trustees, is there major attention being paid to races.

In the South County, a hot debate has erupted over two ballot propositions to divvy up the Sweetwater High School District and transfer some of its secondary schools to neighboring elementary systems.

And in numerous small districts through East and North County, a bevy of so-called “Christian right” candidates have stirred a vocal number of opponents.

In the San Diego Unified School District, the number of candidates for the board of trustees is the lowest in more than a decade, despite the crescendo of criticism and debate over public education.

The race for District D, home to some of San Diego’s most overcrowded and troubled schools, has only one candidate--Ronald Ottinger. He nevertheless has attended the handful of public forums and become the most outspoken advocate for turning around public confidence in urban schools with a laundry list of reforms.

Ottinger, a former city schools administrative assistant, would try to shake up the system by giving principals and teachers almost complete autonomy for running their schools in exchange for their promising measurable results and for taking the consequences, good or bad.

He would also put a full-court press on improving reading in the schools, even if that means less emphasis temporarily in some other academic areas, given the tight money situation facing the system.

The other two races feature candidates with some specific differences over how they would go about improving the nation’s eighth-largest urban system.

Shirley Weber, a professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, is running for a second term citing district improvements that followed what she says has been her unremitting pressure on administrators to improve nonwhite student performance.

Latino and black academic achievement lags significantly behind that of Asians and whites, at a time when nonwhite enrollment is more than two-thirds of the district’s 125,000 students.

Weber’s opponent is Rhoenna Armster, a veteran city schools business teacher who was named teacher of the year in 1988.

“We may be two black people, but there’s a world of difference between our academic training and our accomplishments,” said Weber in arguing that she has done more for city schools than Armster.

“The difference between me and Rhoenna is that I don’t raise issues unless I am willing to work at solving them,” Weber said.

To the contrary, argues Armster, an outspoken critic of present board policies that she believes let too many teachers off the hook for poor student performance.

Armster won a bitter fight last year with district administrators when a labor arbitrator ruled she had been transferred unjustly from Gompers to Lincoln High School for voicing criticism of Marie Thornton, the Gompers principal, for the way she runs the predominantly minority school.

“Shirley is a rhetorician with a bully attitude, but she turns into a teddy bear in terms of dealing with the superintendent when it comes to really making sure reading scores are improved or teachers are really held accountable,” Armster said.

Armster said that if elected, her philosophy would closely match that of trustee John De Beck, the board’s most irascible member who often finds problems with administration proposals because they are not sufficiently grounded in “education basics.”

Armster denied that her campaign is meant to gain retribution for the way she was treated by the district. “But this messenger is not going away until the message is heard,” she said.

Despite her harsh criticism of the system’s academic record, Amster nevertheless agrees with Weber in opposing the statewide voucher proposal on the June, 1994, ballot, which would give parents back some of their tax money to use in putting their children in any school--public, private or parochial.

In the other contested race, trustee Ann Armstrong, a former school aide, is seeking reelection against retired San Diego school teacher George Vojtko.

Armstrong has been a key board member pushing for health clinics, improved nursing programs, a stronger sex education curriculum as well as better early-education programs so that more children will come to school ready to learn.

Armstrong has also been a consistent voice on the board for music and arts programs, which administrators continue to target for elimination or major cutbacks because of budget problems.

For his part, Vojtko argues that “there is a lot of trouble in the district” regarding student dropouts, reading scores, counseling, lack of parent involvement and student discipline.

Vojtko said there has been too much emphasis on social programs at the expense of academics, although he refuses to be pinned down on which ones he would eliminate “until they have been studied individually.”

He is the only candidate who supports the proposed voucher plan, and he is the only city schools candidate endorsed by the Christian Times newspaper and the California Pro Life Council, an anti-abortion group.

Voters within the school system’s boundaries will also have a chance to decide whether they want trustees to be elected by district only.

Candidates now run in a primary within one of five districts, with the two top vote-getters proceeding to a citywide runoff. The proposed change would be similar to the one made for the San Diego City Council in 1988.

A majority of the board put Proposition G on the ballot because they believe district-only elections would allow voters to know their trustees better.

However, trustee Sue Braun has argued against G, saying that it could lead to Balkanization of the system because trustees would pay more attention to individual district needs and less to other areas, even if they had the greatest educational problems.

Proposition H would expand the number of districts from five to seven, also as a way to encourage more citizen interaction with trustees by reducing the number of constituents represented by each board member. It was also put on the ballot by a majority of trustees.

Both Weber and Braun oppose H, however, saying it would cost more to administer than the current system and would probably reduce minority influence on the board because additional districts would be formed from existing white-majority areas.

In South County, the look of education will change dramatically if two ballot propositions pass next month.

If one or both are approved, several junior and senior high schools now in the Sweetwater Union School District will come under the control of two elementary school districts to create unified school systems covering all grades.

Proposition Z would give control of two junior and senior high schools to the South Bay elementary district that covers Imperial Beach and parts of the city of San Diego. Proposition Y would give two junior high schools and one high school in National City to the National elementary district which at present offers only kindergarten through sixth-grade instruction.

All the districts have a plurality of Latino students, with large majorities especially in the two elementary systems.

The changes would leave Sweetwater offering secondary-level education only to the Chula Vista Elementary School District--the state’s largest primary system--and the small but troubled San Ysidro elementary district.

Proponents argue that unified districts offer more local control, greater accountability to parents and more of a chance to boost low student achievement. Those pushing the propositions point to Sweetwater’s low overall academic achievement among California districts and say that Sweetwater has concentrated its academic efforts in the Chula Vista area.

Sweetwater supporters counter that the two new unified districts, if created, would be too small to match the variety of special magnet programs that Sweetwater offers at some of its schools. In addition, present employees of the high school district fear a new employer, even though they are guaranteed jobs under state education codes governing unification.

The two citywide races for the San Diego Community College District, with 100,000 students at City, Mesa and Miramar colleges and several adult centers, have garnered practically no attention.

Incumbents Evonne Schulze and Fred Colby cite their hiring of more nonwhite faculty; ending a long-running dispute over the district’s foundation; improving job training efforts for private business; preparing more students for guaranteed entry into four-year universities, and a balanced budget despite state cuts.

Engineer Robert Dixon, who is challenging Colby, criticizes the present board for not turning down the $18,000 a year that trustees receive for their part-time service. Dixon also publicizes the fact that he is the only candidate with an advanced degree, a master’s of engineering.

Rod Van Orden, a government analyst, is running against Schulze by saying that she and other trustees should have lobbied more forcefully against the fee increases that the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson imposed on community college students statewide this year.