SCHOOL BOARD RACES : Two or More New Trustees in Eight Districts May Spell Policy Changes

Tuesday’s elections swept two or more new members onto each of eight Orange County school boards, setting the stage for possible shifts in policy when the newly elected officials begin their terms next month.

Of the 17 districts that had open or contested seats on their school boards, only one--Cypress School District--retained all its incumbents. The other 16 have one or more new members.

The school board with the most changes is Capistrano Unified School District, the county’s third-largest, serving 30,000 students in South County. There, three new members were elected to the seven-member school board. One incumbent was reelected.

In Capistrano, as in other districts, some observers and candidates believe that the anti-incumbent sentiment shared by many voters across the country helped elect newcomers to local school boards. E.G. (Ted) Kopp, who had served 17 years, and A. Edward Westberg, who had served for 20, were ousted.

“There was a desire for change that swept the nation. It started with the presidency and came down into smaller elections,” said Sheila Benecke, a regional PTA president who was elected to a newly created seat on the Capistrano board Tuesday.

The election was a victory for the Capistrano teachers’ and classified employees’ unions. They had thrown their support to Benecke, Cal State Fullerton professor Mildred Pagelow and Peter J. Espinosa, a college professor and counselor, and to incumbent Marlene M. Draper. All four won.

Four conservative Christian candidates lost their bids for school board seats in Capistrano. They were among 23 candidates for school boards countywide who were supported by the Orange County Pro-Family Coalition and the Traditional Values Coalition because they oppose unrestricted abortion and favor a heavy emphasis on abstinence from sex in health-education classes.

Of those 23 candidates, 10 won school board seats. Frank Ury and Debbie Hughes, both Coalition-backed candidates, won election to the Saddleback Valley Unified board. Janel Hangartner was elected to the Magnolia School Board in Anaheim, and Barbara Clendening was reelected to that board. In six other districts, one Coalition-backed candidate won election to each board.

The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition hailed the victories and said he plans to keep in close touch with the newly elected board members, keeping them informed and helping them stay active on conservative, “family-values” issues.

Lou Lopez, a Coalition-backed candidate who won a board seat in Anaheim Union High School District, said he believes that the backing helped him, but not as much as the theme he emphasized most in his campaign: keeping campuses free of gangs and crime.

“People want to get back to home values, get back to the basics,” said Lopez, a police officer. “They want to clean up their schools. And I stood for zero tolerance of drugs, gangs and dropping out. There have been too many drive-by shootings, too many assaults near our schools.”

Rob Stewart, the other victorious candidate in Anaheim Union, emphasized a back-to-basics approach as well but in a different way. Stewart focused his campaign on the need to upgrade students’ skills in the three Rs, and advocated English-immersion programs to force immigrant students to learn English more quickly.

He said the board needed members from outside the educational Establishment. Noting that he is an auto shop teacher without a college education, Stewart told potential voters: “You can’t solve the problem if you’re part of the problem.”

In Saddleback Valley Unified, three incumbents met different fates: Raghu P. Mathur was defeated, Marcia Birch won and R. Kent Hann chose to not run again. Debbie Hughes and Frank Ury, the two newly elected candidates, ran as a virtual slate, contending that the board has ignored the views of many parents on highly charged issues such as a controversial $365 annual busing fee approved earlier this year. Hughes and Ury oppose the fee. Birch voted for it.

Both Hughes and Ury support the school voucher proposal expected to appear on California’s 1994 ballot, which would allow parents to use some taxpayer money to send their children to whatever public or private school they chose.

Hann, the Saddleback board member who chose to not seek reelection, said he thinks that the public’s “taste for change” and the much-touted year of the woman played a part in the district’s election, along with the busing-fee issue.

Some also feel that the anti-incumbent feeling toward school board members was fueled by the state’s longest budget crisis, which forced districts to make deep cuts in programs, personnel and other areas.

“For three years, Saddleback has had to make some major cuts,” Hann said. “It couldn’t be avoided. But it really upset a lot of people.”

In Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified, budget cutbacks appear to have factored into the race for the school board. One newly elected board member, dentist Craig T. Olson, a parent with seven children in the district’s schools, organized a group that successfully opposed the board’s plan to eliminate instrumental music programs in the elementary schools.

Another newcomer to the Placentia-Yorba Linda board, Jerry Brakebill, campaigned to keep classes as small as possible in a district that increased class size to save money. A police detective who taught the DARE anti-drug program in the schools, Brakebill also believes that his clean-cut image proved appealing to voters concerned about gangs and drugs.