Ethnicity Plays Role in School Board Race : Election: Key endorsements for the seat, designed for a Latino candidate, are split between a Latina novice and Anglo teacher.

The race for a Los Angeles school board seat in a district drawn specifically to favor a Latino candidate has sparked an unexpected debate over ethnic politics, after the two Latino front runners dropped out, opening up the possibility that a white candidate could win.

Only half of the eight remaining hopefuls for the April 11 election are Latino, and key endorsements have split between a longtime teacher and union activist--who is bilingual but white--and a dedicated parent volunteer who is Latina but a political novice.

Many community leaders say choosing a non-Latino would be a significant loss, a regression from the gains Latinos made in electing Larry Gonzalez in 1983 and Leticia Quezada in 1987 and 1991 in District 5, which now stretches from East Los Angeles to the northeast San Fernando Valley.

“If we don’t have a voice for that seat that is Latino and is representative of the community, then we’re cutting our own throats,” said Father Juan Santillan of Our Lady Help of Christians in Lincoln Heights.

Others say political savvy and a broad knowledge of educational issues may prove to be as important as ethnicity in the coming years, particularly as the board faces the challenges of fighting Proposition 187, responding to attacks on bilingual education and affirmative action and holding off calls to dismantle the district.

“I happen to agree philosophically that it would be good to have someone the community feels can represent them,” said Helen Bernstein, president of the United Teachers-Los Angeles union. “But if you’re going to vote for someone purely on their racial background, that’s short-sighted to me.”

The task is complicated by the numbers: While nearly 70% of residents in District 5 are Latino, less than half of registered voters identified themselves as Latino in 1992, when the district boundaries were redrawn. The gap between voters for and constituents of school board candidates is even wider: Eighty-seven percent of the students in District 5 schools are Latino.

“There aren’t really any safe Latino seats,” Quezada said. “For Latino elected officials, especially school board members, the people that you’re serving, that you’re struggling for . . . are not the people who vote for you.”

A flurry of interest in the new District 5 seat emerged in mid-December, when Quezada announced she would step down to return to private business. In all, 15 candidates declared their intention to run, and Quezada endorsed her former aide, Ernest Delgado Jr., now a deputy for Councilwoman Rita Walters.

But Delgado withdrew earlier this month, citing widely held concerns that the large number of Latinos in the race could split the vote. Then the other popular candidate and expected recipient of the teacher’s union endorsement, Theresa Montano, changed her mind about running, after a death in her family.

Several other candidates failed to collect the required 500 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Each of the remaining eight candidates has a solid constituency in one portion of the district but none has districtwide presence.

Two of them have moved ahead in the contest for endorsements--especially important in such a spread-out district because they bring commitments of money for mailings and volunteers for phone banks.

Many of the area’s Latino political leaders have endorsed Eagle Rock High School parent volunteer and paid community liaison Lucia V. Rivera. The politically powerful teachers union is backing David N. Tokofsky, a Marshall High School social science teacher, who coached Los Angeles Unified’s first national academic decathlon champions in 1987.

Other Latinos in the race are Ron Rodriguez, an Eastside teacher who sued the district nine years ago, winning a legal settlement that seeks to equalize funding throughout the district; Sigifredo Lopez, a member of the district’s bilingual-bicultural committee and frequent district critic at school board meetings, and Gilbert Carrasco, a past candidate for the Los Angeles City Council who works as a teacher’s assistant and security guard at Burroughs Middle School in Hancock Park.

Non-Latinos are Joyce Jodon-Durand, a Highland Park community activist, and Kitty Hedrick, a Baldwin Park adult education teacher and past Republican candidate for the state Assembly--both of whom are white--and Pansy L. Wing, a Glassell Park community and church volunteer, who is Chinese.

The candidates downplay the importance of ethnicity in the district.

“I wasn’t even thinking of that when I ran,” Rivera said. “My concern was as a parent, that’s really where I’m coming from--a parent who happens to be Latina.”

“As a progressive Anglo, I can vote for (a Latino),” Tokofsky said. “Doesn’t it work the other way in this city, that someone who shares my values can vote for me?”

But most of the candidates acknowledge that ethnicity will play a significant role in the District 5 race, some of them grudgingly.

“Unfortunately, a lot of Latinos feel that only a Latino can represent them,” Jodon-Durand said. “That’s one of my concerns, of course.”

Political observers say the race presents a particularly perplexing quandary for Latino politicians because, while Tokofsky may be stronger on political issues, they would be loathe to endorse a white man over a Latino. Even the teachers union initially considered a dual endorsement of Tokofsky and Rivera, despite the longstanding union commitment of both Tokofsky and his mother, a preschool teacher.

Councilman Richard Alatorre, who is backing Rivera and has promised to put her on his council seat slate mailer, said he did so “in an effort to guarantee an Hispanic gets elected to the board.”

Alatorre said that while he views Tokofsky as a strong candidate, it is “the wrong district and the wrong time” for him. The endorsement “has nothing to do with reverse racism, it has to do with the importance of this (seat),” Alatorre said. “I don’t think we can afford as a people to go backward.”

Rivera also has scored endorsements from Councilman Mike Hernandez, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) and school board member Victoria Castro.

The endorsements have not split cleanly along ethnic lines, however. Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Lee Baca--the highest ranking Latino in local law enforcement--has backed Tokofsky. So far, neither of the other local Latina elected representatives, Quezada and Supervisor Gloria Molina, has endorsed anyone.

For those still on the fence, one consideration is the history of representation in District 5. Because a Latino has held it for the past 12 years, the seat has become the board’s unofficial clearinghouse for Latino issues, a particularly crucial role in the wake of Proposition 187’s passage last November.

Quezada, for instance, was the main force behind the district’s bilingual master plan, which led to increased recruitment of Latino teachers and higher salaries for bilingual teachers.

“That’s such an important district for the voice of Latino students,” said Liz Guillen, a staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “No matter where they are in the district, Latino students have to count on that representative to speak for them.”

Others say the urgency of electing a Latino in District 5 is lessened by the 1992 reapportionment, which created a second Latino-dominated school board seat to the south now held by former school principal Castro.

That same redistricting means the District 5 representative must reflect more varied points of view because the territory now snakes like a crooked finger through middle-class neighborhoods in Eagle Rock, Toluca Lake and North Hollywood.

Indeed, the eight candidates in the race do express a broad diversity of opinions on issues affecting the district, such as Proposition 187--the voter-approved measure which calls for barring illegal immigrant children from public schools--and the school board’s decision to fight the law in court.

Five candidates are against Proposition 187 and two of them--Rivera and Rodriguez--also back the school board in its lawsuit. Tokofsky, however, questions the wisdom of spending money to join a court battle that was already being fought by others, while Jodon-Durand and Lopez say that the board should not spend educational dollars on the lawsuit.

Wing is sympathetic to the sentiments behind 187--though she thinks it was poorly written--and she also opposes the board’s suit.

Hedrick supports the law, saying that while as a teacher she understands the “pain of students and their families that is going to result from the implementation of 187 . . . if we wink at the law, it results in a breakdown of our attitudes toward all of our laws.”

Only Carrasco declines to weigh in on the initiative at all, saying, “I don’t really think it is an issue. It’s a proposition on the state ballot. . . . It has nothing to do with me as a candidate.”

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School Board Battleground

A hot Board of Education race may be developing in District 5 of the Los Angeles Unified. It is about 70% Latino overall, and an estimated 87% of its students and 47% of registered voters are Latino. The district includes the city of San Fernando, parts of unincorporated East Los Angeles and all of parts of the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Mission Hills, Sylmar, Pacoima, Arleta, Sun Valley, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Atwater, Eagle Rock, Cypress, Glassell Park, Mt. Washington, Highland Park, Montecito Heights, Monterey Hills, El Sereno and Boyle Heights. Source: Los Angeles Unified School District, 1990 U.S. Census