Conservatives Eye O.C. Board of Education

A conservative political group is backing three candidates for the Orange County Board of Education, signaling an attempt to wrest control of the five-member panel from more moderate incumbents.

The Education Alliance, a Tustin-based group that grew out of the failed school voucher initiative three years ago, says it will help finance a candidate for each of the three seats up for grabs in the March 26 election.

“We believe this department is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with our education system,” said Mark Bucher, a Tustin businessman who heads the organization. “It is a redundant layer of bureaucracy that is imposing controls on our local school districts, and we don’t need that.

“All of our candidates would like to downsize the Department of Education.”

Current board members and education activists said the attempt to win a majority of seats on the county board is the latest in a growing national trend by conservative political and religious groups toward activism in local races, particularly school board elections.

Several voiced concern that the aim of groups such as the Education Alliance is actually to weaken the public school system.

“This is a very isolated group that is very much anti-public education,” said Elizabeth Parker, a Board of Education member for 14 years and one of two who is not up for reelection in March. As evidence, she pointed to the Education Alliance’s origins in the 1993 campaign for Proposition 174, which would have provided parents with vouchers to enroll their children in public, private or parochial schools, using tax dollars.

“They believe that the best way to get vouchers in and undermine the public schools is to be the policymakers,” she said. “I think they’re very much misinformed about who we are and what we do.”

Parker and others said the group’s involvement is likely to focus new attention on the low-profile county Department of Education, which runs schools for youthful offenders and special-education students, and provides support services to the county’s 27 school districts.

Most county residents never deal directly with the department, Parker said, largely because its functions involve behind-the scenes support for the school districts or providing service to small groups of students with special needs.

“Very few people know anything about us,” she said.

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In general, candidates backed by the Education Alliance support a back-to-basics approach to education that stresses traditional values instead of multiculturalism, Bucher said. They tend to be opposed by teacher unions and by candidates the unions support, he said.

The candidates also have tended to oppose exams such as the California Learning Assessment System, and support the idea of voluntary prayer in school and abstinence-only sex education programs.

The agenda is similar to those of several national Christian groups, including the Christian Coalition and the Traditional Values Coalition.

“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably is, in our view,” said Jean Hessburg, California director for People for the American Way, a liberal political organization. “It is no coincidence that these agendas keep turning up the same all over the country. It’s a targeted approach to the ultimate goal of dismantling public education as we know it.”

Bucher said his group, which first supported candidates for local school boards in 1994, is aimed at improving, not destroying, the public schools.

“The key thing that the alliance tries to do is be a voice for education reform,” he said. “We’re also very big on local control and the right of parents to make decisions for their children.”

Bucher said there is no connection between the religious right and the Education Alliance, which has no religious affiliation.

“I don’t even know the religious views of these guys who are running,” Bucher said. “I don’t feel that’s a major issue right now.”

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The three candidates--James Righeimer in Area 1, Eric H. Woolery in Area 3 and Ken Williams in Area 4--were even more adamant that the alliance has no religious ties.

“That’s a bunch of hogwash,” said Williams, a Villa Park physician. “When you get a group of people who share the same conservative principles, they immediately get attacked as the religious right.”

Righeimer, a Fountain Valley business owner who was also a founder of the alliance, said the organization has discouraged the involvement of religious groups.

“We really made that rule from Day One,” said Righeimer, who is Bucher’s brother-in-law. “I went to both public and private schools when I was growing up on the north side of Chicago and I really think you don’t want to get religion involved in a public school.”

The three alliance candidates worked together to produce their candidate statements, which vary by only a few words. The statements list their goals as shrinking the education bureaucracy, increasing privatization, opposing the “federalization” of education and setting rigorous curriculum and graduation standards.

All three take issue in their statements with the board’s decision several years ago to borrow $42 million to invest in the county investment pool, whose failure ultimately plunged Orange County into bankruptcy. The county Department of Education, the North Orange County Community College District and three local school districts borrowed a total of $250 million to invest in the ill-fated pool.

In addition, the statements of Righeimer and Williams say they will work to eliminate bilingual education.

“This just seems like a real opportunity to change the direction of the county board,” Righeimer said. “With three seats open, a change could finally happen here.”

In 1994, the Education Alliance spent about $36,000 to support nearly three dozen candidates for Orange County school boards. Twelve of the group’s candidates were elected, roughly doubling the number of conservative school trustees in the county, Bucher said.

The new trustees have been making their presence felt. In November, for instance, the alliance endorsed incumbent Trustee Maureen Aschoff in the Orange Unified School District. Aschoff campaigned and won reelection on themes of privatization, a return to basics and the end to “touchy-feely” programs that, she said, belong in the home and church.

Last week, Aschoff joined two other trustees in voting against accepting a prestigious Weingart Foundation grant of $25,000. The funds were to supply an on-campus facility for a popular program that provides medical, dental and counseling services for students living in an impoverished neighborhood.

The board voted 4 to 3 to accept the grant, but Aschoff and other members of the board’s conservative majority made clear that such aid will be scrutinized and likely rejected in the future.

The election for the nonpartisan Board of Education, with each race to be decided by a simple majority, will be held the same day as the primary elections for other offices.

In the Area 1 race, the candidates are Richard F. Avard, a Fountain Valley general contractor; Righeimer, who co-chaired the campaign to recall former Assemblywoman Doris Allen; and incumbent Felix Rocha Jr. of Fountain Valley, who is also running concurrently as a Republican candidate for the congressional seat held by Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

Those running in Area 3 are incumbent Joan S. Primrose of Anaheim, a former teacher; and Woolery of Orange, a businessman and certified public accountant.

In Area 4, the candidates are Brenda J. Bryant of Santa Ana, a teacher and administrator; W. Snow Hume of Fullerton, a certified public accountant; incumbent Dean McCormick of Santa Ana, a businessman; and Williams, a physician and advocate for conservative education issues.

Bucher said he does not yet know how much the Education Alliance is likely to spend in each of the three races.

Times correspondent Lesley Wright contributed to this report.