8 Candidates Debate School Issues : Education: A voucher system for private schools is among the hottest topics. Solutions to low student achievement, low teacher morale vary.

Candidates for the Board of Education agree that the Pasadena Unified School District has low test scores, high dropout rates and insufficient funds. It is the solutions for those problems that divide them.

The eight candidates for three citywide seats spoke at a public forum held this week by the teachers union, United Teachers of Pasadena.

The March 9 election pits Timothy Price, a television editor, against George A. Padilla, an architect, the incumbent in Seat 1.

Geoffrey Commons, a probate referee, and Lisa Fowler, an administrative analyst with the city of Pasadena and a former mayor of Sierra Madre, are challenging incumbent Wilbert L. Smith, a banker, for Seat 3.

Kevork Keushkerian, a teacher, and Andrew Paterson, a businessman, are challenging eight-year incumbent Anne Pursel, a former teacher, for Seat 5.

Whether the state should provide vouchers to parents who want to send their children to private schools was the hottest issue among candidates for Seat 5.

Paterson--an author of a state ballot initiative scheduled to go before voters in 1994 that would give parents money toward private school tuition--said vouchers would help disadvantaged students go to private schools.

“We have apartheid in this city,” he said. “You need to tear down the walls between public and private schools.”

The 22,080-student district, which includes Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre, is 80% minority. Many of the area’s middle-class and affluent whites go to private schools.

Pursel, 57, called the initiative “evil.”

“We need the dollars to go into the public schools, not subsidize those who can really afford private schools,” she said.

She said the biggest problem in the school system is low teacher morale because of lack of funds and large class size.

Keushkerian, a Los Angeles schoolteacher, said parents need to become more involved in education. “Parents aren’t asking about homework and classes,” he said.

Keushkerian, Padilla, Price, Commons and Fowler also opposed vouchers.

In the Seat 3 race, incumbent Smith said he sees merit in the voucher concept. He said the biggest problem in public schools is that the board has failed to heed the community’s concerns.

One of two black school board members, Smith said the district must look for alternative sources of revenue including bingo games, and it should rename schools to better represent women and minorities.

“The issue has to be achievement,” said Commons, 54. “Pasadena schools rank in the lowest 25% for 12th-graders and the lowest 16% for eighth-graders.” He said the district must assess student abilities and set goals for grades.

Fowler, 42, a former Pasadena music teacher, said more school-based management of the district is needed to restore public confidence in the schools.

Seat 1 incumbent Padilla, 47, the only Latino board member, said funding is the fundamental problem and the priority should be reaching out to the community for resources, including encouraging more parents to volunteer.

Price, 49, his opponent, said communication among teachers, parents and administrators needs to be improved. Price wants more parental responsibility and favors jailing parents who allow their children to be truant.

Padilla said the idea of jailing parents is an outrage.

If no candidate for a seat gets more than 50% of the vote, a runoff of the top two candidates will be held April 20.