Oak Park School Board Race Offers Little to Argue Over : Education: The award-winning district is suffering growing pains, however, as the fall election for three seats draws closer.

In the back-porch atmosphere of school board meetings at the Oak Park Unified School District, Tami Lawler, Howard Levy and Wayne Sterling are inveterate participants, joining in the often informal discussions among members of the audience and the board.

But after November, none expects to be sitting in the audience any longer. All are candidates for three openings on the board, along with incumbents Wayne Blasman and Robert Kahn. The third incumbent, Pat Kavulic, is not running. Those wishing to run have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to file.

In many respects, the candidates agree there is little to argue over. The district has received a number of accolades. Oak Hills Elementary School and Oak Park High School both have been designated national Blue Ribbon schools by the U. S. Department of Education.

But Oak Park, which is expanding faster than any other school district in the county, is also suffering growing pains. A third elementary school is scheduled to open this fall to relieve crowding at Oak Hills.

“I think the school board has done an excellent job,” said Sterling, who owns an insurance company. “It’s not like, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got these terrible problems and somebody needs to come in and solve these problems.’ ”

The election will not be without debate.

Levy, an ophthalmologist, said he will renew his criticism of the board for awarding health insurance benefits to its members. Earlier this year the board voted to cut those benefits in half.

“The national awards that we got are wonderful, but they are not enough,” Levy said. “They should not make us complacent.”

Lawler is the only candidate who has attended Oak Park schools. She went to Brookside Elementary School, the district’s oldest school, and graduated in 1980 when Oak Park’s middle and high school students still attended a neighboring school district.

Married with four children, Lawler is active in her children’s elementary school councils.

Incumbent Kahn, who is running for a second term, helped form the district when it split from the Simi Valley Unified School District in 1977. “I would say, over the last four years, things are the best they’ve ever been,” Kahn said.

Blasman, the current board president, also is running for his second term. He is the president and founder of a health insurance brokerage company.

The school board will not be the only Oak Park election on the Nov. 2 ballot. Three positions on the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council also are up for election. All incumbents--Kent Behringer, Barbara Bronson Gray and Ronald Stark--filed to run for another term, along with challenger J. Paul Fredericks.

The council has had a rocky relationship with Ventura County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, whom it is supposed to advise on local issues.

VanderKolk, who serves as a sort of mayor for Oak Park because the community is unincorporated, has said the council is largely unnecessary. She stirred a controversy by proposing to slash council meetings from once a month to a minimum of once a year, but compromised with council members on meeting every other month.

Behringer, the council chairman, said conflicts with VanderKolk made him decide to run for another term instead of stepping down as he had anticipated.