Simi Group Seeks Recall of 3 School Board Members : Education: Some parents oppose proposal for birth control information. Others are upset over defeat of middle school plan.

A coalition of Simi Valley parents, concerned about sex education and an aborted middle school program, plan to seek the recall of three school board members who they say have not toed their line.

The group includes conservatives opposed to adding birth control information to the sex education curriculum and reformists who backed an unsuccessful plan to change from the junior high system to middle schools, a spokesman said.

The topics have ignited debate and divided opinion at board meetings in the past year.

The targets of the recall--school board members Carla Kurachi, Debbie Sandland and Diane Collins--so far have sided together in the disputes to form a 3-2 board majority.

“A lot of parents that were meeting in small groups on these different issues finally came together,” said spokesman Don Otto, who lost a bid for the school board in 1990. “They’re saying enough is enough of what’s going on.”

The group Monday sent notice by certified mail to the three board members that it intends to begin circulating recall petitions, Otto said. The recall targets have seven days to respond to the complaints with answers that must appear on the petitions, county elections officials said.

“I was shocked when I heard, because we just went through an election,” said Collins, who was elected to a second term last year. “I thought my position on all kinds of issues was clear.”

Sandland, who campaigned against middle school reconfiguration and whose election last year provided the swing vote against the plan, said her positions were also well-known when she won a seat last year.

“The (middle school) issue has been beaten to a pulp,” Sandland said. “It was the pivotal point of the election, and I think the community spoke loud and clear on how they want their money spent in public education.”

Kurachi said she heard in December that a recall group was being formed by people who feared that Sandland’s election would change the direction of the board and kill the switch to middle schools.

“At the time we were going to be voting on middle schools, I was told if I didn’t change my vote, there was a group forming to come after me in a recall,” Kurachi said.

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Before Sandland’s election, an earlier school board had split 3 to 2 in favor of changing from junior high schools housing seventh through ninth grades to middle schools for grades six through eight and high schools for grades nine through 12.

Kurachi and Collins were the two votes against the change. After Sandland’s election in November, 1992, the middle school plan was defeated the next month by a 3-2 vote.

Otto said Sandland’s election on an anti-middle school platform did not prove that the district’s parents were against the idea. He said one of her campaign brochures erroneously asserted that the plan would “bankrupt” the district.

“It wasn’t going to bankrupt the district,” Otto said. “She misled the public. That case is not a dead issue. The people behind the middle school issue are adamant and passionate.”

Most other school districts in the county have middle schools rather than junior highs, in accordance with studies that show that those age groupings are more appropriate to children’s emotional and academic development.

Sandland said she campaigned on the theme that spending money on restructuring--an estimated $500,000 in onetime costs and about $400,000 a year afterward--was not wise at a time when the budget was being cut.

Last spring, Sandland stepped into the center of another controversy when she advocated forming a committee to study what kind of birth control information should be added to school studies.

Sandland got the idea after the board conducted a routine update of the district’s sex education curriculum. She expressed concern that there was no information about options for preventing pregnancy.

Establishment of a 25-member committee of educators, students and parents was approved 3 to 2 last summer. The group is expected to submit its recommendations at the board’s Dec. 15 meeting.

Since Sandland proposed the idea, parents opposed to the change have attended board meetings in large numbers to protest.

“These three board members have taken it upon themselves to form a family life task force to study and put in place a new birth control curriculum,” Otto said. “The parents don’t want it.”

To notify the board members of their intent to launch a recall drive, the group merely had to serve them notice with 10 signatures on each of the petitions, county officials said.

To qualify for the ballot, each petition must have 8,232 signatures--or 15%--of registered voters in the school district, said Bruce Bradley, the county’s assistant registrar of voters.

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The group needs to file with the county elections division once it has a receipt showing that the notices have been served on the board members, Bradley said. The group then has 160 days to gather enough signatures.

If the issue goes to a vote, the school district would pay election costs, which could range from $16,500 to $55,000, Bradley said. In addition, the district must pay about 50 cents for every signature that the county is required to examine, Bradley said.

“To me, it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Collins said.