School Board Calm Hides Signs of a Political Split : Conejo Valley: Keeping controversy from the public eye may be masking the dissension between a moderate majority and a minority influenced by the religious right.

In Thousand Oaks, where the City Council and the Planning Commission regularly debate past midnight, the school board is an exception.

Its meetings end early. Virtually every vote is unanimous. Members shy away from controversy, so much so that board-approved minutes of a recent meeting report one trustee saying, “It is not appropriate for the board to engage in public debates, especially regarding personnel or student issues.”

As board President Dorothy Beaubien puts it, “Why fight?”

The board’s peaceful demeanor irritates some members of the public, who charge that the body ducks important issues and closes its ears to parents’ concerns.

But perhaps the biggest danger the Conejo Valley Unified School District’s Board of Education faces may come not from too much calm, but from a potentially destructive rift. Behind the facade of tranquillity, there are signs that the board is split 3 to 2 between a moderate majority and a conservative minority influenced by the ideas of the religious right.

In an interview, Trustee Elaine C. McKearn said she bases her opinions on “very strong religious views” and “family values.” She said she and Trustee Mildred Lynch share a common philosophy.

As for the other three trustees, McKearn said, “I think maybe they’ve been there so long that they know it all. I get the perception that if there’s nobody there to speak, they’re very happy.”

McKearn also complained that in closed sessions, when the trustees interview job candidates and conduct student expulsion hearings, the three other trustees sometimes interrupt her questions.

There is more at stake in this squabble than in most ordinary personality clashes or philosophical disagreements. The school board controls a $75-million annual budget. It employs hundreds of teachers, custodians and administrators, and it is responsible for the education of more than 17,000 students.

Some board members deny the rift even exists. But they acknowledge that differences could degenerate into the bitter paralysis that has marked the Ventura County Board of Education. There, a debate over the involvement of Planned Parenthood and an AIDS education group in workshops for sex-education teachers led to shouting matches and a recall campaign.

“Those things could happen in any district, that’s true,” Trustee Dolores Didio said.

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Most Conejo Valley school board votes, which tend to cover mundane matters such as approving purchase orders and field trips, are still unanimous. When it comes to what goes on in the classroom, though, the differences among the Conejo Valley school board members have already come close to affecting what happens in classrooms.

In May, the board nearly killed a trial program at Meadows elementary school that mixes students from different age groups into classes taught by teachers who combine different subjects. McKearn and Lynch favored ending the program, partly because it seemed too non-traditional; the three other board members voted to continue it.

In April, the board narrowly approved telling teachers to put more emphasis on word problems when teaching math. Lynch, who favors continued emphasis on basic computation skills, voted against the plan. A conflicted McKearn abstained, and the three other members backed the new math curriculum.

The split also came into play when outraged parents and students visited the board to protest the transfer of popular administrators between two of the district’s high schools. Following the protest, the transfers were postponed.

With Lynch hospitalized because of heart problems, McKearn said she privately told parents concerned about the personnel moves, “It’s one against three, basically.”

In interviews, other trustees denied that there is a 3-2 division on the board.

“It’s not really a split. I don’t think it’s a split. I don’t,” Beaubien said.

Trustees also denied McKearn’s assertion that the veterans think they “know it all,” and are not interested in listening to members of the public who visit the meetings.

“I’m sorry she feels that way. I don’t know how she came to that conclusion,” Beaubien said.

Didio said McKearn might have the wrong idea because she just joined the board last year.

“I’m not sure Elaine at this point knows us three others so well that she really knows where we’re coming from,” Didio said.

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The other board members maintain that they listen carefully to members of the public who speak at the board meetings. But some parents find that hard to believe.

“The school board doesn’t listen,” said one parent, Barry Gabrielson. “They are a wasted entity, with people that really do not want to discuss the problems and issues of their district. They are not interested.”

Gabrielson said the school board’s attitude ends up doing more than simply alienating parents: It costs the district a lot of money in legal fees spent to defend against the likes of three lawsuits he filed against the district on behalf of his autistic son.

Lou Carpiac, a parent who spoke to the board about a discipline issue, said he found the trustees “impersonal and distant.”

He criticized the board’s practice of not responding to people who raise concerns during the public comment period of meetings.

“That’s not a dialogue,” he said. “You get no answers. I’d like to at least be told, ‘You’re wrong, for the following reasons.’ ”

Trustee Richard Newman said he feels limited in his ability to respond to many speakers because he thinks students deserve privacy.

He said he gives people who speak to the board different receptions.

“Some you listen to quite carefully; others you don’t listen to very much,” he said. “Most people who come have an ax to grind of some sort.”

Didio said a strict interpretation of state open-meeting laws prevents trustees from discussing issues raised by the public that are not on the meeting agenda.

“This is a meeting in public, not a public meeting,” she said, reminding the public that while they are allowed to watch the board meetings and speak, they are not full participants in the meeting of the elected board.

While the board applies a strict interpretation of open-meeting laws in some cases, it also has recently conducted open “study sessions” about special education and a possible bond issue without specifying the session topics in published meeting notices. The board uses a conference room next door to its main meeting chambers for the study sessions, which sometimes are scheduled in a building with locked doors. Aside from a single reporter, no members of the public attended the meetings, which touched on topics of significant community interest.

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Whether they are “public meetings” or “meetings in public” or public meetings that are actually pretty private, the board’s gatherings every two weeks begin with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. That is usually followed by presentations of awards to everyone from principals and maintenance men to Boy Scouts.

Critics like Carpiac say all the plaques and award certificates are more evidence the board is a largely ceremonial body with little desire to grapple with important issues.

But Beaubien said the honors are well-deserved and an important way of counteracting the negative images of schools and youths often found in the media.

“Our kids do a lot of good things,” Beaubien said.

The meetings aren’t televised, and aside from the award recipients, who often leave after picking up their booty, there usually is not much of a public turnout.

“That’s the only reason our meetings are shorter” than the City Council’s and Planning Commission’s, Trustee Mildred Lynch said. “The public isn’t there.”

To keep things interesting, the board members, especially Newman, often resort to humor, bantering about everything from Lynch’s heart medicine to the supposed sacrilege of moving Lincoln’s birthday on the school calendar.

Even the school district’s supposed calm can be a source of jests, with Supt. Jerry C. Gross half-jokingly quoting the opinion of management guru Peter Drucker that “well-run organizations are often boring.”

There is more to the school board’s duties, though, than attending the open meetings, Beaubien said. The trustees spend a lot of time visiting campuses, talking to parents, teachers, students, and district staff members, and generally staying aware of what is going on in schools, she said.

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In addition, the board spends much time meeting behind closed doors, where it interviews job candidates and discusses labor contracts and student disciplinary matters.

“When we are in closed session, once in awhile, we have a little heated discussion, but in my mind, that’s the place to have it,” Beaubien said.

Anyway, trustees said, the ultimate measure of the school board is not in how the panel conducts itself, but in the performances of students and teachers.

“I think we’re doing the job,” Beaubien said. “We see it in the test scores. We see it in staff morale.”

Said Newman: “I think you have to look at results, overall results. . . . I think this school system is very, very good. We produce a lot of quite well-educated students in this district.”