LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. SCHOOL BOARD : Incumbents Face Aggressive Challengers : District 6: Korenstein moved in order to run for retiring Roberta Weintraub’s seat.

With the timely purchase of a condominium in Tarzana, Julie Korenstein has positioned herself to reap full advantage from her San Fernando Valley political base in her attempt for a third term on the Los Angeles Board of Education.

When new school board boundaries were adopted by the Los Angeles City Council last summer, Korenstein moved to the mid-Valley district in the hope of succeeding longtime representative Roberta Weintraub, who is retiring.

District 6 incorporates 60% of Korenstein’s old territory in the West Valley, so the move seemed logical for a woman whom supporters like to cast as one of the strongest champions of Valley viewpoints on the school board.

However, Korenstein, 49, may run into strong opposition in next month’s primary election from Eli Brent. Brent is a longtime school principal from Northridge who is among three candidates challenging Korenstein. The others are Lynne Kuznetsky, an elementary teacher from Encino, and Richard (Ricc) Bieber, a Northridge electrical contractor.

Brent, president of the administrators union, and Korenstein, who is backed by the teachers union, have already publicly traded barbs in what could be a showdown of warring factions in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Of the two school board fights involving the Valley, the District 6 race has already become the more acrimonious.

Korenstein accuses Brent of trying to maintain an inequitable status quo.

“Eli is clearly representing the good ol’ boys network . . . and many of the highest-paid bureaucrats in the district,” she said. “His main focus is to keep high-paid people high-paid. I don’t think he has the children and the children’s educational needs as his top priority.”

For his part, Brent, 67, charges that Korenstein is a mouthpiece for United Teachers-Los Angeles, which has endorsed her for the third time.

“We know what Julie does. She votes the party line,” Brent said.

In addition to his own union, Brent also claims the support of most of the school district’s other bargaining units, which have banded together to blast UTLA over what they say is a willingness to protect its members at the expense of non-teaching employees.

As of March 6, Brent reported receiving $17,175.99 in campaign contributions. More than a third of his major benefactors were school district administrators, but the lion’s share of the total came in donations of less than $100, which are not itemized.

During the same period Korenstein reported $6,169 in contributions, including an in-kind donation of $830 for printing from the political action committee of the teachers union. Korenstein said, however, that she anticipates spending $100,000 on the campaign.

Kuznetsky and Bieber, as lesser-known candidates, have tried to cast themselves as above the fray and declare they are not beholden to special interests.

Though an instructor at a San Fernando elementary school, Kuznetsky, 47, said she would not solely represent teachers and expressed concerns that the district’s unions as a whole exercise too much influence over the nation’s second-largest school system.

“I’m not a politician, and I don’t have anybody I have to be responsible to except my own feelings and what I believe in,” said Kuznetsky, who opened her campaign account with a personal loan and self-donations totaling $16,444.

“I have no crosses to bear, no axes to grind, nobody to play to except the parents,” said Bieber, who pledged to bring a dose of business savvy to the financially ailing Los Angeles school district.

Bieber earlier this month reported no contributions and said his would be a shoestring campaign, partly because serving on the school board is technically a part-time function with relatively low compensation. Bieber, 40, said he would maintain his contracting business if elected and criticized school board members who have “turned a part-time job into a career.”

Brent also faulted Korenstein for her 1991 bid to unseat Hal Bernson on the Los Angeles City Council, a race she lost by only a handful of votes.

“We have to stop using the board as a stepping-stone to something gloriously bigger,” said Brent, who believes board members should be limited to two four-year terms. “I’m 67 years old. What higher office am I going to seek?”

Korenstein responded by saying she pursued the council position only after Bernson’s detractors turned to her in search of political relief.

“I don’t seek out the offices. Fortunately or unfortunately, in the Bernson race, people came to me and said, ‘Julie, you’re the only who can defeat Bernson,’ ” she said. “I give every ounce of my energy to the job of being a member of the Board of Education. I am very conscientious.”

However, Korenstein would not rule out another bid for higher office, although she said she currently has no plans to mount a campaign.

Her current bid for reelection entailed moving to Tarzana from her longtime Porter Ranch neighborhood, where she resided in the same reapportioned district as board member Mark Slavkin. Her move averted a potentially bruising battle with a fellow incumbent.

If returned to the board as one of its three senior members, Korenstein said she would devote her attention to securing more state funding for the cash-strapped district and increasing campus safety in the wake of two fatal on-campus shootings.

And despite her opposition to the idea several years ago, Korenstein now strongly favors breaking up the giant school district, specifically a Valley secession to form its own school system, which would still be the second-largest in the state.

“There have been years and years and years where the Valley has been a stepchild of the district,” she said. “We need to start new. We need to start fresh.”

Brent also supports splitting up the 640,000-student district to create a Valley school system, but only if much-heralded reforms recently adopted by the Board of Education fail to revitalize the city’s schools. The so-called LEARN proposals, developed by a coalition of business and community organizations, aim to turn control over schools to parents, teachers and principals at their individual campuses.

“We need the threat of breaking up the school system to make people move to do something with the system,” said Brent, adding that he, too, would concentrate on bringing more funding--both public and private--into the district.

Bieber has tentatively endorsed the concept of a Valley school system but remains skeptical of the LEARN effort, which he described as “full of smoke and mirrors.” His priorities on the board, he said, would be to run the district “like a business” and restore arts and music programs as well as vocational courses lost to budget cuts.

Kuznetsky said she supports an even more radical breakup plan that would carve the district into six or seven systems with no more than 100,000 students each, which would dictate at least two districts in the Valley.

She also called for beefed-up security measures, including the involvement of groups such as the Guardian Angels and the establishment of more after-school programs to keep youngsters off the streets.

“We need to have people feel confident in the Los Angeles Unified School District,” she said.

SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION OVERVIEW: B6