Petitions Lag in Effort to Recall 2 on School Panel : Education: Organizers seek to oust county board members Angela N. Miller and Wendy Larner. Lack of signatures is attributed to summertime lull.

Supporters of campaigns to recall two members of the Ventura County Board of Education are struggling to gather the needed signatures with little more than two months left before their filing deadline, officials said Tuesday.

About 7,500 signatures have been collected against county school board member Angela N. Miller, half of the estimated 15,000 needed to qualify her recall election for the March primary ballot, organizer Dick Weston-Jones said.

A current tally of signatures gathered in a separate effort to oust board President Wendy Larner was not available Tuesday, campaign Chairman Rudy Petersdorf said.

But roughly 3,000 signatures--about one-fifth of the 15,000 needed--had been collected in a count taken a month ago, Petersdorf said. Weston-Jones and Petersdorf said they had expected a summertime lull and predicted that collection of signatures will pick up significantly in coming weeks.

“The big push, we have known all along, will be in September and October,” Weston-Jones said. “The first three months of our campaigns came during the summer, which are absolutely the worst months to do it.”

Recall opponents, however, said the lagging efforts indicate that the petition drives have lost steam and that Ventura County residents, for the most part, are not concerned by recent controversial actions taken by Larner and Miller.

“Recalls usually get off to a real good start and then start to wane,” said Michelle Erich, a spokeswoman for Citizens for Accountability in Public Education, a group that formed to oppose efforts to remove Larner and Miller.

“I would be very surprised if they are able to complete the required signatures in time.”

Opponents of Larner and Miller began organizing recall campaigns after the pair voted on March 27 to suspend the use of Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care speakers at teacher-training seminars.

Thousand Oaks Trustee Marty Bates made the third vote in support of the ban, but has not been targeted for recall.

Recall supporters also contend that Larner and Miller are illegally trying to wrest authority away from Superintendent of Schools Charles Weis and are harassing him in an effort to get him to step down.

Separate campaigns to recall Larner and Miller were formed because county school board trustees are elected from separate districts. Miller’s district represents the city of Ventura and Larner’s area includes Ojai, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru and Camarillo.

Organizers began gathering signatures in June and have until Nov. 8 to complete petition drives to qualify for the March ballot, said Bruce Bradley, the county’s assistant registrar of voters.

If they miss that deadline, they will not be able to get a recall vote on the ballot until the November, 1996, presidential election, he said. Despite the lagging collection efforts, Bradley said both campaigns still have plenty of time to gather the required signatures.

He noted that proponents of a plan to develop Weldon Canyon as a landfill successfully gathered 30,000 signatures in just three weeks last year. Chances of meeting the deadline for the recall effort would improve, however, if the group hired professional signature-gatherers, he said.

“It depends on the effort you put into it,” Bradley said. “If you’re going to keep it strictly a low-key, volunteer affair, then getting the signatures will be pretty hard to achieve.”

Weston-Jones said he is confident of meeting the goal. A drive to collect signatures during the Ventura County Fair was successful, he said, and volunteers will continue to pass out petitions at supermarkets, fairs and other gatherings.

Recall petitions are now available at the Ventura Bookstore in downtown Ventura, he said. But opponents of the recalls say they also are doing their homework. They operated a competing booth at the fair and are passing out hundreds of flyers and brochures outlining Larner’s and Miller’s positions, Erich said.

One of those flyers takes direct aim at Weis. It states that opposition to Larner and Miller is being spearheaded by Weis, a charge that recall organizers have denied.

The accusatory pamphlet also states that Weis “has been investigated by this year’s Grand Jury and found to have misused funds.” Petersdorf called the statement “an out-and-out lie.”

The grand jury said educators should look into possible problems at county-run schools. The Ventura County district attorney’s office declined to open a full investigation into alleged misuse of funds at Gateway Community School and McBride School because no criminal wrongdoing by Weis or his staff was found, Petersdorf noted.

“He and his office were cleared of any charges,” he said. “This is part of their campaign to harass, intimidate and vilify Weis.”

But Erich said she stood by the brochure and the decision to link Weis directly with the investigations.

“Since he runs those schools, we felt that it was an accurate statement,” she said. “His name is not separate from his function as superintendent.”