Open Seat Cools Race for Board : Schools: With Weintraub bowing out, the battle between incumbents Slavkin and Korenstein is off.

What promised to be a tough and costly race between two Los Angeles school board incumbents for a single Westside seat this spring was averted last week when a third incumbent announced she will not seek reelection.

The withdrawal of veteran school board member Roberta Weintraub leaves the mid-San Fernando Valley seat open, and West Valley member Julie Korenstein, who has purchased a condo in Weintraub’s district, immediately filed papers for her seat.

Korenstein had been expected to square off against Westside board member Mark Slavkin, after the City Council approved a remapping last year that placed both in the same district. Each claimed to be the rightful representative of the newly drawn district that stretches from Los Angeles International Airport north to Porter Ranch, and each had already started sniping at the other.

Slavkin said he breathed “a sigh of relief” at the unexpected turn of events.

“I’m delighted that the scenario in which Julie and I would be running against each other has been avoided,” Slavkin said Wednesday, just before filing for reelection to his Los Angeles Unified School District board seat. “She is an ally and a friend.

“For me, it’s good. I was real concerned here at the board about any of us running against each other. With a board of seven, it’s like being in a submarine together and it is especially difficult in these tough times. This way we can avoid posturing and fighting over whose idea something is. The campaign could have interfered with the work of the district.”

Slavkin said Korenstein’s decision to run for a Valley seat makes sense because she has endorsed the concept of a separate school district for that area.

Still unknown is who, if anyone, will oppose Slavkin. Weintraub’s surprise announcement came just before the filing period opened Wednesday, and candidates have until 5 p.m. tomorrow to indicate their candidacy. The election is April 20, followed by a June 8 runoff for contests where no candidate gets a majority of the votes cast.

“Most potential candidates were expecting a Slavkin-Korenstein race and deferred running,” Slavkin said. “Now that people are hearing otherwise, I expect some will come forward. There are many perennial candidates and ambitious people out there. Look for a flurry of last-minute filings on Monday.”

Both Korenstein and Slavkin were backed by the Los Angeles teachers union in the 1989 election, causing some district observers to suggest that the union pressured Korenstein to move to Weintraub’s district to avoid pitting two union-supported candidates against each other. Others said Slavkin would have won easily, because 60% of the voters in the new District 4 live on the Westside, Slavkin’s home and power base, compared with 40% in the West Valley, where Korenstein lives.

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Helen Bernstein, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, denied that her organization influenced Korenstein’s shift, and said the union has not yet decided whether to endorse either candidate. Teachers are battling to reverse a 12% pay cut approved by the board and have threatened a strike next month.

“There’s no guarantee that we’re giving any money to anyone this year,” Bernstein said. “The only candidate that might get any teacher grass-roots support is Julie Korenstein. That’s because she voted against the pay cut.”

Bernstein said Slavkin voted “to unfairly cut our pay. . . . So as far as many teachers are concerned, Mark Slavkin’s priorities are all wrong.”