Campaign to Recall 3 Members of Simi School Board Unravels : Education: Organizers say effort lost momentum because of earthquake and a stabbing. Opponents say it never really got off the ground.

A recall campaign hastily organized five months ago to oust three Simi Valley school board members appears to have unraveled--and leaders of the effort say the Jan. 17 earthquake is partly to blame.

Organizers of the recall effort said the campaign lost momentum after the earthquake and the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old student at Valley View Junior High.

Some supporters of the recall effort are now involved in studying issues of campus safety or are preoccupied with repairing their homes, said Don Otto, a spokesman for the recall group.

“Whatever hits your pocketbook, home, families and safety of kids--that has a tendency to take a much higher priority over trying to stay active and make changes in our school district,” he said. “It’s a tough time.”

Otto said no formal decision has been made to abandon the recall, but he characterized the effort as “on hold.”

The campaign was launched last fall by a group of parents angry at board members Carla Kurachi, Diane Collins and Debbie Sandland. All three had voted against a plan to establish four-year high schools, and had favored adding information on birth control to the district’s sex education curriculum.

Calling themselves Parents Aligned for Children’s Education, or PACE, the loose-knit coalition announced plans to collect the 8,232 signatures needed on each of three petitions to force a recall election.

To qualify for the November ballot--when board members Kurachi and Doug Crosse are up for reelection--supporters of the recall would have to turn those signatures in to county election officials by May 10.

Otto will not say how many signatures have been collected, but another early supporter of the recall said the group had just begun to canvass voters when the effort began to lose steam.

“The recall drive at this point is kind of done and over with,” said Janice DiFatta, a member of the Simi Valley PTA Council who at first had supported the recall.

Despite Otto’s claim that several hundred people initially supported the recall, opponents question whether the campaign ever got off the ground.

Moreover, Sandland and Collins said they believe the recall’s organizers are using the issue of school safety and the Valley View stabbing to cover up a lack of support.

“I think that’s sort of face saving,” Collins said. “It was a roaring failure.”

Nevertheless, Collins and Sandland said they took seriously the threat of being unseated. Along with board President Kurachi, they spent five or six weekends talking with voters at shopping centers around Simi Valley.

Collins said the fact that a Simi Valley mayor and city councilman were recalled in 1979 made her all the more concerned.

“You have to take it seriously. A recall is very hard to defeat if it gets the signatures (needed to put it on the ballot),” she said.

Sandland said she won’t feel comfortable until after the May 10 deadline passes.

“It was very stressful,” she said. “You’re new on the board and people say, ‘OK, let’s get her out of here.’ ”

The controversy over sex education erupted last spring when Sandland proposed adding birth control information to the curriculum for students in the seventh and 10th grades. After months of debate, the board voted 5 to 0 in February to include some information on birth control while stressing abstinence.

Collins, Sandland and Kurachi voted against the plan to establish four-year high schools, while board members Judy Barry and Crosse supported it. Sandland had campaigned against the reconfiguration in 1992, saying it would cost the district too much money.

Collins said she believes the board’s unanimous vote on the birth control issue and the cost of staging a recall election--estimated at $50,000 to $80,000--helped erode support for the recall.

DiFatta said supporters of the recall came together out of frustration and anger over the two issues.

“It wasn’t anybody out to destroy the school district, it was just parents who were angry with what they felt was going on in the district,” DiFatta said.

Otto said that even if the recall effort dies in the next few weeks, he believes the issues behind it will surface in the campaign for the two school board seats in November.

Collins agreed, saying: “I think there’s going to be a couple candidates in the November elections who are quite conservative, and those people will probably be supported by the core group of the recall.”