2 New Candidates for School Board Seats : Election: Parent activist Deborah Dentler and attorney John Gantus join race for April polling.

Two new candidates have joined the field for three Board of Education seats at stake in April.

Glendale attorney John Gantus declared his candidacy Tuesday, becoming the fifth candidate to enter the race for the April 6 election. Last week, parent activist Deborah Dentler said she would run.

“I think we need to get business people back in the school district, people who are on payroll and who have children,” Gantus said at a press conference Tuesday.

Gantus, 44, a 15-year Glendale resident, is married and the father of four. Three of his children attend a Roman Catholic school in Pasadena, but he said “I’m going to be a representative for the entire district.”

Gantus is active in several local organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis Club, the Foundation for the Retarded, and the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustments.

If elected, he said, he plans to push for a parent advisory council to meet with the board periodically.

Dentler, 40, a part-time history professor at Glendale College and a lecturer at the Glendale University College of Law, practiced law in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1990.

She founded a nonprofit fund-raising group at Glenoaks Elementary School, spearheading a fund drive last year that helped raise $30,000 for her son’s elementary school. A year earlier, she volunteered in the Glendale Schools 2000 Project, a district-wide school reform plan.

“The school budget crisis last spring really woke parents up,” Dentler said. “My unique combination of skills and experience can help the system get what it so badly needs--a new infusion of parental, community and business support.”

Two incumbents on the five-member board have said they will not seek reelection, and a third is undecided.