ELECTIONS / L.A. UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT : Runoff Seems Likely as Race of Newcomers Winds Down

The contest for the seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board that represents the South Bay and part of Watts is widely viewed as a tossup; so much so that the powerful teachers’ union has made no endorsement in the four-way race.

“They all have strengths in different areas,” said Inola F. Henry, head of United Teachers Los Angeles’ political arm--the Political Action Council of Educators. “We felt more than likely (the race) would end up in a runoff and decided we would look at the candidates at that point.”

None of the four candidates competing in Tuesday’s election for the open seat in District 7 has previously run for public office.

For the last eight years, the seat belonged to Warren Furutani. His decision not to run for reelection left the seat open, making it unlikely that any single contender could muster enough votes to win the seat outright. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, the two top vote-getters will compete in a June 6 runoff election.

Two of the candidates are longtime district employees: George Kiriyama, 63, principal of Gardena Community Adult School, and Sid Brickman, 68, a retired superintendent for elementary and secondary schools in the South Bay.

The other two candidates are district activists: Laura Ann Richardson, 32, a San Pedro businesswoman who has linked the company she works for with the school district, and Kathleen Fleming Dixon, 42, a mother of two school-age children and a family law attorney who has worked for district reform.

The best financed of the four candidates is Kiriyama, a friend of Furutani who began raising money for his campaign nearly two years ago. As of March 25, he had $139,334 in contributions, more than four times than Brickman, the second-highest fund-raiser, who had $34,082, including $6,000 in loans from his wife. Richardson had $15,540, including a $13,000 loan to herself, while Dixon had $3,070 in contributions.

Kiriyama is endorsed by Furutani, who describes him as “a guy of integrity, not real fancy, who won’t come in wearing Italian pressed suits.” The other candidates, however, have criticized Furutani for throwing his political muscle behind a candidate who only moved into the district to run for the post.

Kiriyama, who began his career in the district as an elementary school teacher in 1964 and has been principal of Gardena Community Adult School for five years, promises to be a strong advocate of the clustering movement, which seeks to forge stronger ties between high schools and the elementary and middle schools that feed into them.

Like Kiriyama, Brickman made a career for himself at Los Angeles Unified. Hired by the district as a mathematics and science teacher in 1952, Brickman spent the next three decades rising through the ranks, first as an assistant principal, then as principal and finally as region superintendent for elementary and secondary schools in the South Bay area.

Brickman said he decided to run because he believes the district has lost direction and that he has the knowledge and experience to set it right.

As an account manager for Xerox who is responsible for handling many of the equipment needs of the school district, Richardson says she can bring a “business-oriented perspective” to the board.

She encouraged her company to adopt the district, which she says resulted in savings for the schools. And two years ago, she organized a Xerox-sponsored workshop to teach more than 500 teachers and other employees to improve their communication skills.

As co-chair of a parent involvement committee, Dixon spearheaded the creation of a community services branch to involve parents in their children’s schools.

“I’m an outsider and yet I’ve been involved as a volunteer on a leadership level,” Dixon said. “I’m not coming to it as a novice, but I’m not part of the district either.”