Voters OK Measure U, Reelect Recalled Board Member : Antelope Valley: Acton and Agua Dulce approve plans to open a local high school. Fox wins seat on hospital panel.

Voters in rural Acton and Agua Dulce overwhelmingly approved plans to open a local high school, while an Antelope Valley hospital board member who was recalled only last April won back his seat, finishing as the top vote-getter.

Those were the highlights from Tuesday’s general election for local contests held in northern Los Angeles County communities, according to semi-official election results released Wednesday by the county registrar-recorder’s office.

Culminating a five-year campaign, residents of the Soledad-Agua Dulce Union School District voted more than 3-to-1 for Measure U, which will permit the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade district to add grades nine through 12 on a soon-to-be-donated high school site.

The Soledad district thus becomes the first of nine elementary districts now served by the financially troubled Antelope Valley Union High School District to break away, or, in school parlance, to unify. Similar measures are being considered by the Lancaster and Palmdale elementary districts.

Acton and Agua Dulce voters also picked four incumbents on the current elementary school board--Rebecca Small, Joyce Field, Laurie Browning and Nancy Kelso--along with high school teacher Brian Sherwood from among 13 contenders to form the new board for the unified district.

The district is receiving a 40-acre high school and a 10-acre elementary school site from Watt Land Inc., a developer planning two major residential projects in the area. But future home buyers there will be assessed at least several hundred dollars a year to pay for the $1.9-million property.

The current three-school, 1,600-student district plans to add a ninth grade to its middle school campus next September and then start ninth and 10th grades in bungalows at the high school site by fall, 1994. Eventually, the district hopes to get state money for permanent high school buildings.

Meanwhile, no one made a bigger comeback than did Steve Fox in the Antelope Valley Hospital District. After winning election in November, 1990, but then being recalled in April, the San Fernando Valley teacher stormed back Tuesday to finish first among five contenders for three seats.

Fox thus regains a job on the five-member board that runs the 341-bed Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center in Lancaster. Two recently appointed members, Henry (Hank) Marvin and Dante Simi, won their first election. Edged out was Dr. Ralph Holmes, a 24-year incumbent.

The other four current hospital board members favored Fox’s recall, calling him disruptive, although Fox considered himself a watchdog. On Wednesday, Fox pledged to try to cooperate with his colleagues but also to remain a watchdog. “It’s going to be in an interesting situation,” he said.

In the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, veteran incumbent George Lane fended off a challenge from Dorothy Wolf Fones, wife of a Palmdale water agency manager. But incumbent Glenn Martin was ousted in a close race by Jet Propulsion Lab engineer Norman Vander Hyde.

In the Castaic Lake Water Agency, incumbents E.G. (Jerry) Gladbach and James Gates easily won reelection over single opponents. But in another race for an open seat, Metropolitan Water District Manager Bill Cooper won by nearly a 2-to-1 margin over retired tool designer A. Jack Ancona.