No One Ignores Billy Pricer These Days : Education: As the high school board president in the High Desert, he has been able to push his agenda. To some, he is a family values hero, to others a bombastic ideologue.

The first time Billy A. Pricer went before the local school board to propose an idea he thought would strengthen the moral fiber of students, he was summarily dismissed.

The retired deputy sheriff turned minister and anti-gang activist told the board that students should be given random, voluntary urine tests for drugs. If the results came back clean, students would be rewarded with discounts at movie theaters, bowling alleys and music stores. Those who tested positive would be offered drug counseling.

In a stinging 4-1 vote, the Antelope Valley Union High School District board shot down Pricer’s plan, citing concerns about the accuracy of drug tests and the impact on students who chose not to undergo testing.

“I was made to feel like an imbecile for even coming up there,” Pricer recalls bitterly. “It was embarrassing and humiliating to me.”

But Pricer, now 52, did not just get angry--he got himself elected to the school board, where he has just finished a productive year as president of the very panel that once rebuffed him.

Under his leadership, the board was the first in the state to refuse to administer the California Learning Assessment System test--better known as CLAS--because Pricer and other board members believed that it promoted anti-family values. The action kicked off months of bitter statewide debate before the board was vindicated--funding for the test has now been dropped.

Pricer also advocated the use of truancy sweeps in which deputies rounded up students who ditched class, then brought them to a counseling center that pays Pricer a salary. Most recently, he made it into the national news when he promoted a program that pays a $25 reward to any student who turns in a classmate for possessing drugs or weapons on campus.

To many in this High Desert community, all this has made Pricer a clear-thinking hero. To others, he is a bombastic ideologue. But one thing is certain: No one is dismissing Billy Pricer anymore.

“I represent this community,” said Pricer, who has a year left on his term. “I believe in family values, moral values. They’ve been made to be dirty words. But what in the world is wrong with that?”

Pricer, a native Californian who serves as a pastor at a Lancaster church that came to national attention for producing anti-gay videos, sees his policies as just common sense.

“They call you a right wing fundamentalist,” said Pricer of his critics. “I didn’t know I was a fundamentalist. I’d rather believe the decisions I make on the board come from a common sense perspective. I’ve seen the basics work.”

Some of his harshest critics are local teachers who say Pricer is trying to shape what is taught in classrooms instead of just making district policy decisions.

“I think he overstepped the bounds of his role as president of the board of trustees,” said Kathleen Parks, an English teacher at Quartz Hill High School. “He is dictating issues of curriculum and administration of the school district and not allowing professional educators to do the job they were hired to do.”

Lancaster elementary school teacher Joanne Opdahl is critical of Pricer’s student tipster plan. “I think there’s an absurdity that a student is going to do this for $25,” Opdahl said. She said his policies are “intellectually shallow,” simple solutions to complex problems.

But Pricer was the leading vote-getter in the 1991 school board election and his support in this politically conservative area seems solid.

Doc Burch, an Antelope Valley businessman and Republican Party activist, considers Pricer his closest friend. “I like his policies, and I’m behind him 100%,” said Burch, who serves on the executive board of Pricer’s nonprofit counseling center. “He’s worked with youths. He’s worked with gangs. I don’t think I have an adequate vocabulary to express how much I appreciate and love him.”

Even some of his political opponents say they admire his administrative abilities. Shortly after Pricer was elected to the school board, an audit revealed that the district’s budget deficit was $12 million, far more than had been estimated. The board laid off more than 100 employees and made other spending cuts.

This year, Pricer announced that the district had returned to solvency. Charles Whiteside, who served on the school board from 1991 through 1993 and has opposed Pricer on the CLAS issue, says Pricer played a key role in the turnaround.

“He asked a lot of critical, probing questions regarding the district’s financial situation,” Whiteside said. “He provided critical leadership and support in implementing that fiscal recovery plan.”

Prominently displayed in Pricer’s counseling center office is a picture of him with Oliver L. North, who came to the Antelope Valley on a speaking appearance a couple of years ago. On the bookshelf is a volume called “Christian Counseling” and a book by Rush Limbaugh.

Pricer’s conservative outlook may spring in part from his traditional upbringing in Blythe, Banning and later Anaheim, where his father was a telephone company supervisor and his mother was a real estate broker. He was not always a model student, particularly in elementary school where he was paddled occasionally for misbehavior.

“I think it helped keep me in line,” he said. “If my mother or dad heard I got whacked in school, I’d get whacked again at home. If some of my teachers knew I was a school board president, they’d probably roll over in their graves.”

After a stint in the Navy, Pricer worked briefly for the phone company before becoming a sheriff’s deputy, first in Orange County, then in Los Angeles County. A 1975 ambush by gang members sent him to the hospital for three weeks with a fractured skull, broken ribs and an eye injury. He later retired from the department because of continuing eye problems and still receives disability pay.

During the next decade, he worked at camping resorts, ran restaurants and earned a master’s degree in psychology and counseling. In 1984, Pricer and his wife, Deborah, took jobs with the American Adventures Forest Lakes Resort, a recreational vehicle and tent camping center in the Antelope Valley.

After moving to the High Desert, Pricer began attending church at Antelope Valley Springs of Life in Lancaster and eventually became an associate pastor. The small church came to national attention as the producer of “The Gay Agenda,” a widely distributed video that Pentagon officials and members of Congress used in opposing a move to allow openly gay men and lesbians to serve in the military. Pricer says he was not involved in “The Gay Agenda” project but does not disagree with its message.

In 1990, after the gang-related shooting death of an 18-year-old Antelope Valley High School athlete, Pricer set up a gang information hot line in his home. He later founded the nonprofit United Community Action Network to offer counseling for troubled teen-agers and their parents.

“If you’re going to take a gang away from a kid,” said Pricer, who earns a $42,000 annual salary as executive director, “you have to provide an alternative.”

The group is funded by state, county and local grants, along with corporate and private donations. It has four paid employees, including Pricer and his wife. During fiscal 1992-93 its budget peaked at about $250,000. This year, Pricer said, the budget dropped to $180,000 because of a falloff in government and private aid.

The organization was particularly hard hit during the summer when the city of Palmdale, which had been providing $25,000 annually, cut its grant to $5,000. Council members said it was part of a citywide belt-tightening. But Mayor Jim Ledford also said he was concerned about how the group was spending its money, with more than 50% of the budget going to staff salaries. Also, some teachers and community leaders expressed concern about the close relationship between the high school district and the group.

“One of the things we’ve been watching real closely is the issue of the schools’ truancy program, and the Sheriff’s Department doing sweeps and then turning in all the students to UCAN,” said George Salas, president of Latinos for Social Justice. “I don’t know whether there’s any kind of a conflict or not, but it sure gives the appearance of one.”

Pricer flatly denies that any of UCAN’s funding is tied to the number of truants the group assists. “If I never took in another truant, it wouldn’t affect my budget at all,” he said.

With Pricer’s stint as school board president ending, some local leaders believe he has set his sights on running for the Palmdale City Council or the state Assembly. Pricer declines to comment on his future.

But he does say that he did not put forth his controversial programs for personal political gain. Fame, he says, is just a byproduct.

“I don’t know about the limelight,” Pricer said, “but I enjoy the challenge.”