County School Officials Split Between Divergent...

At a state conference this week in Long Beach, school board members from Ventura County are learning how to support school-to-career programs, AIDS education, and diversity in teaching.

But down the road in a nearby hotel, some of their counterparts--among them two Conejo Valley trustees and one outspoken county school board member--are discussing opposition to such programs.

For the first time, the right-wing Claremont Institute is joining with the Conservative School Board Caucus to sponsor an alternative school board conference for trustees who share their conservative views.

Both events are taking place simultaneously, so board members must chose to attend workshops at one seminar or the other.

Conejo Valley Unified School Board member Elaine McKearn said she chose the new conference because of her experiences at the California School Board Assn. conference last year.

“It was mostly a lot of concentration on politically correct things: diversity in instruction, how to teach, getting money from the government for grants, Goals 2000, that kind of thing,” McKearn said. “It was just their political swing on things--I couldn’t swallow it.”

Joining McKearn is fellow Conejo board member Mildred Lynch and Ventura County Trustee Wendy Larner, who said she plans to attend parts of both conferences.

The trio’s attendance at the meeting comes as conservative forces are gaining more seats on school boards here. Earlier this week, three conservative members on the county school board joined in rejecting a $500,000 federal School-to-Work grant to prepare students for jobs after high school. That vote essentially denied grant funding for school districts across the county.

The Claremont Institute has distributed materials criticizing School-to-Work for allowing government intrusion into schools, saying that the program will force children into careers as early as kindergarten and will keep a computer database of children’s achievement.

Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Charles Weis, who is attending the California School Board Assn. conference, said many of the Claremont Institute’s allegations are untrue, including those about School-to-Work.

He said bringing both sides together to resolve their differences would serve children better than having a separate conservative meeting.

“Their thrust is that elected board members who believe what they believe don’t hear any contradictory information,” Weis said. “They don’t learn anything new. It’s an interesting tactic. Any time we segregate and separate we lose something.”

Sponsors of the Claremont Insti tute seminar said they expected about 75 to 100 participants at their conference. Natalie Williams, director of the institute’s educational affairs, said only certain school board members, whose names are listed on the institute’s database, were invited to the conference, but anyone who wanted to pay the $65 fee could attend.

The seminar, which ran Thursday and today, features about 10 workshops including topics such as charter schools, School-to-Work and “AIDS and Sex Education: Information or Indoctrination?”

Arizona Secretary of Education Lisa Graham is the keynote speaker.

The school board association conference is much larger, offering more than 150 workshops over four days. About 2,500 people are expected to attend.

Topics include incorporating technology in the classroom, handling resistance to HIV/AIDS prevention programs, bringing more girls into classroom discussions, as well as a variety of management and teaching issues ranging from keeping children off drugs to strategies for school bond elections.

Speakers include the first black female astronaut, who was a product of public schools; a weekly columnist for the Seattle Times who founded a child abuse prevention group; and the Walt Disney Co.’s Outstanding Teacher.

Organizers of the conference said they wished that the conservative gathering had been scheduled at another time to give school officials a chance to attend both.

“I think it’s a shame for the children that any conference would be scheduled in direct conflict with this one,” said Sherry Loofbourrow, the association’s former president. “All of the children are better served when we all come together. We don’t need to think alike, but we need to understand more completely what the community’s perspective is.”

Claremont conference organizers did request that a conservative caucus be put on the association’s agenda, but conference organizers said the schedule of events already had gone to print when the request was made.

Association officials said they would consider the proposal at next year’s conference.

County school board member Larner, who is shuttling between the two conferences, said the Claremont seminar might send a sign to school board association officials.

“I hope they will see that they really need to broaden their viewpoint,” she said.