Board Candidates Support Conservative Tenets : Antelope Valley: Seven Christians seeking school district seats craft agenda that takes its cue from GOP’s ‘Contract With America.’

Emboldened by the success of a local school board in helping to bring down a controversial statewide testing program, a number of conservative Christian school board candidates in the Antelope Valley have banded together in hopes of reshaping public education from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Seven candidates in the Nov. 7 elections, running in races from the high school level down to the tiny Wilsona elementary school district, have crafted a common agenda for public campuses throughout the Lancaster-Palmdale area. Taking a cue from the Republican Party’s “Contract With America,” the group’s nine-point “Contract With Antelope Valley Families” enshrines conservative tenets ranging from opposition to teaching about sexual orientation and multiculturalism to support of campuswide moments of silence and “non-revisionist” history lessons.

The candidates hope to ride into office on the crest of the conservative tide that has moved national politics further to the right--largely as the result of influential Christian interest groups.

More specifically, the seven office-seekers showcase the aggressive effort by religious right activists to gain a political foothold in the arena of public education, which has triggered highly divisive battles in the so-called “culture war” raging across the country, from Vista, Calif., to New York City. In the Antelope Valley, conservative Christian school trustees spearheaded the rancorous campaign that ultimately killed the exams of the California Learning Assessment System, known as CLAS.

The slate of seven religious conservative candidates in the high desert includes Kevin Wright Carney and Irene Flores in the Antelope Valley Union High School District; Merle (Mel) E. Kleven and Andy Visokey in the Lancaster School District; Larry Logsdon and Kenneth White in the Palmdale School District, and Stella Montoya Hatami in the Wilsona district.

In two of the races, religious conservatives could retain or assume control of the board; in the other two, Christian right adherents could fully constitute the board minorities, making future takeovers possible.

Members of the loose coalition of candidates downplay their connection with one another and argue that they are being unfairly stereotyped as religious fanatics bent on Christianizing or destroying public schools.

“Because someone holds a specific faith in God or a specific belief, they’re automatically labeled a right-wing extremist, which is not what we are,” said Visokey, a leading member of the group and an incumbent up for reelection. “We hold a certain philosophical opinion that we don’t want to shove down people’s throats.”

But critics--including moderate conservatives--note that all seven have signed the “Conservative Platform for November 1995: A Contract With Antelope Valley Families,” a manifesto the group recently drafted in a few hours. Virtually all are members of the right-wing Antelope Valley Republican Assembly, which has endorsed each of the seven candidates (Visokey is the organization’s president).

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And most attend fundamentalist churches, including two candidates, Flores and White, who belong to Springs of Life Ministries in Lancaster, the church that produced the controversial, nationally distributed anti-homosexual video, “The Gay Agenda, “ which asserts that homosexuality is a sickness.

Springs of Life has also attracted notoriety as the church where televangelist Jim Bakker was re-ordained after the PTL scandal. More recently, one of its members traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, where he helped turn a school board election into a referendum over “the homosexual agenda.”

In the Antelope Valley, the seven school board candidates aim to build on the legacy of one of Springs of Life’s most prominent members, Billy A. Pricer, a former minister at the church.

Pricer now sits on the conservative-dominated Antelope Valley high school board and is running for the Assembly.

Backed up by two other trustees, Pricer, as president of the school board, helped bring down the widely hailed CLAS tests last year with accusations that the tests challenged morals, invaded privacy and had “a preoccupation with death and violence.” Under Pricer’s leadership, the board became the first in California to refuse to administer the exams; eventually, the state abandoned the program altogether.

In the upcoming elections, which will produce a trustee to replace him as well as fill another seat, Pricer has thrown his support behind candidates Carney and Flores, who would tighten the lock of religious conservatives on the board from a 3-2 to a 4-1 majority.

“I’m not out orchestrating anything,” Pricer said. “I think it’s just people in the Christian community wanting to get involved in the process because they see some problems.”

But the rising influence of religious conservatives has alarmed moderates, some of whom are actively stumping on behalf of other candidates.

“You call them the Christian right. I don’t think what they do is very Christian,” said Eve Wolowicz, a former president of the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly who left the organization to help found the more moderate Antelope Valley Republican League.

“I call them the radical right. When they talk about the three Rs, what they mean is the rigid radical right.”

Christian conservative candidate Flores, a homemaker, sings in the choir at the Springs of Life church and ran unsuccessfully for Lancaster City Council last year.

Carney, a sheriff’s sergeant, has contributed to Pricer’s Assembly campaign. Conversely, Pricer, a onetime sheriff’s deputy, has donated money to Carney’s election bid.

“He and I see eye to eye on many moral and political issues, and he’s a personal friend of mine. But people need to know I’m not Billy Pricer,” Carney said.

A Roman Catholic, Carney is the only non-Protestant of the seven signatories of the “Contract With Antelope Valley Families.” But he acknowledged that his views mesh well with the Christian conservative agenda.

“If someone were to ask me, ‘Are you a member of the religious right?’ Yes, I go to church, and yes, I am conservative,” said Carney.

Like most of the other candidates with whom he is allied, Carney wants the school system to stress “the basics,” to spend within its means and to keep out multiculturalism.

Indeed, two points in the “Contract With Antelope Valley Families” emphasize a suspicion of multiculturalism. The seven candidates call for “the continued teaching of non-revisionist American and world history” and the establishment of an “American Heritage and Patriotism Month throughout the Antelope Valley” to celebrate America “as one nation under God.”

The idea of a special American patriotism month was not only to highlight the country’s roots but came as a challenge to other months celebrating black and Latino history--widely accepted months of recognition in school systems throughout the state.

“We should recognize black people for what they’ve done. The Hispanics, the Latin Americans--they should be acknowledged,” said Flores, a Latina. “But when we implement something like total black history month or Latino month, I think we’re separating cultures instead of bringing everyone together.”

“I don’t think there’s strength in diversity. There’s strength in unity,” added Carney. “I don’t think anybody should renounce where their ancestors came from, but we need to concentrate on the fact that we’re all Americans no matter the color of our skin.”

The originator of the American Heritage/Patriotism Month is Visokey, who spearheaded creation of such a month in the Lancaster School District, where religious conservatives are poised to take command of the board.

So far, Visokey and trustee Greg Tepe have formed the minority on the school board; Visokey has earned praise--and the endorsement of the local teachers union--for being open and reasonable.

But both he and Tepe predict that the board will tilt further to the right if Visokey wins reelection and conservative candidate Kleven also gains a seat.

With a newfound religiously based majority, the board may re-examine such issues as sex education on campus and the inclusion of an invocation before official meetings, Visokey and Tepe said. As a trustee, Visokey successfully introduced a tape by Christian counselor James Dobson, stressing abstinence, into the supplementary material for the state-mandated junior high school HIV/AIDS curriculum.

Several of the seven Antelope Valley conservative candidates contend that sex education belongs exclusively in the home.

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Moreover, the No. 1 point in the “Contract With Antelope Valley Families” attacks head-on the issue that has mobilized Christian right groups across the nation: homosexuality. The contract opposes any “proposal that sexual orientation be affirmed and included in all public school curriculum.”

“I don’t believe it’s normal. I believe it’s a handicap,” Flores said. “I would never discriminate against them. But I don’t want them bringing that into the schools.”

For Kleven, there is no compromise on that item, although he may not fight so fiercely for other elements of the contract, such as a campuswide moment of silence.

“Gay and lesbian lifestyles are not the moral equivalent to heterosexual relationships. I’ll go to the wall on that one if that issue comes before the board,” said Kleven, a field supervisor who ran unsuccessfully in 1993.

Even Larry Logsdon in the Palmdale School District, who is possibly the most moderate of the seven contract signatories, agreed that a discussion of homosexuality has no place on public campuses.

“That contract is basically where mainstream America is coming from,” said Logsdon.

Logsdon does not identify himself with the Christian right, although “some of our values are the same.”

“I do not want to impose any religion in the schools. I believe in separation of church and state,” he said, adding that the “Contract With Antelope Valley Families” might have been even more conservative, with sections opposing abortion, had it not been for his involvement in the group.

Logsdon also opposed the school voucher initiative two years ago, a ballot proposal most Christian groups favored. Kenneth White, the other contract signer in the Palmdale district, supported the measure--and has kept his three children in private religious schools, despite his candidacy for the public school board.

White said the absence of his children from district schools would help him act more objectively as a trustee, and that he comes into constant contact with public school students as a football and baseball coach.

“I’m dealing with them, dealing with their parents, and I’m constantly hearing their frustration with the shortcomings in the system,” he said.

Though the election of both Logsdon and White would not create a majority on the board, opponents of the religious right warn that such efforts come to fruition over time.

“People should regard one or two candidates running for seats this year as building blocks for the religious right to take control in the following election cycle,” said Matthew Freeman of People For the American Way, a Washington-based liberal watchdog group that monitors such elections.

“One school board member can go a long way,” Freeman said. “They can be a rallying point for religious right members in the community; they can press some of their issues around the edges [of regular policy debate]; they can use their forums to get their issues in the media.”

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In the tiny Wilsona district, home to just three schools, the board already has one Christian conservative trustee, Sharon Toyne, who has endorsed candidate Stella Montoya Hatami, one of the contract signatories.

“I’m a church member, and I am Christian . . . [but] I don’t think that’s the issue,” Hatami said. “I’m just an individual.”

But some observers feel that Toyne’s presence and perspective have already led to more fractious meetings, and that the addition of a like-minded trustee could further disrupt the business of running public schools that benefit youngsters of all backgrounds and faiths.

In their “heart of hearts,” Toyne and Hatami want to improve education for the students, said Patricia Tomlinson, president of the Wilsona Education Assn., which for the first time ever made formal endorsements in a school board election this year (for Hatami’s two opponents, both incumbents).

“The problem is that they’re so narrow in their viewpoints that it makes it extremely difficult for us to have dialogue,” Tomlinson said. “To have more than one member on your board from either end [of the political spectrum] creates a lot of imbalance.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Conservative Platform

A Contract with Antelope Valley Families

As conservative candidates for the various school boards in the Antelope Valley we ascribe [sic] to and will work toward the following:

* Opposition to the proposal that sexual orientation be affirmed and included in all public school curriculum.

* The return of local control by the reduction of state and federal controls on public education.

* An awareness of parents’ rights and student responsibility in public education.

* An American Patriotism and Heritage Month throughout the Antelope Valley, during which we may reaffirm our patriotism and celebrate those who lived and died for the United States of America as “one nation under God.”

* A daily moment of silence at the opening of each school day and event of function.

* A return to the teaching of genuine basic skills as the foundation and prerequisite to all critical thinking skills, as well as all spoken and written communication skills. These basic skills will include, but are not limited to, grammar, spelling, vocabulary and primary mathematical functions.

* The continued teaching of non-revisionist American and world history.

* Safe schools where students will have a hazard-free learning environment.

* School uniforms for students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Signed by candidates Kevin Wright Carney and Irene Flores, Antelope Valley Union High School District; Andy Visokey and Merle E. Kleven, Lancaster School District; Larry Logsdon and Kenneth White, Palmdale School District, and Stella Montoya Hatami, Wilsona School District.