Sex Education, Smaller Classes Are Top Issues

They’re talking class size reduction, parental involvement and school district reconfiguration. Equally present--but often downplayed--are their views on sex education, creationism and job training.

While not as sensational as national and state campaigns, Ventura County’s school board races are campaigns of a most personal nature: hardscrabble, grass-roots contests for the right to shape the education of 128,000 schoolchildren from Thousand Oaks to Ojai.

As in years past, the influence of religion plays a role in this year’s 10 community school board races and the campaign for the county Board of Education. But it’s far from the only issue.

* The November election could shift the Ventura County Board of Education’s balance of power, as four candidates are competing for two seats on the panel, which is now dominated by conservative Christians. The five-member board’s conservatives in recent years have increasingly clashed with County Supt. of Schools Charles Weis over issues ranging from AIDS education for teachers to the acceptance of federal grants for job training.

* In the Conejo Valley, six candidates are vying for the two spots now occupied by trustees Dorothy Beaubien and Dolores Didio. In the mix of issues are how best to use technology to benefit the district’s 18,574 students and how to put ever increasing numbers of students into the facilities, particularly in an era of smaller classes for the youngest students.

* With the departure of board President Judy Barry in the county’s most sprawling and arguably most tumultuous district--Simi Valley--nine contenders are grappling for three open seats. Improving the city-school board relations, possibly expanding class size reduction to a third-grade level and keeping the district’s $80.8-million budget in the black are hot topics.

* In the Oxnard Union High School District, where six schools are swelling beyond capacity with students, three new candidates are challenging incumbent board trustees Fred Judy and Steve Stocks. The five are debating issues of overcrowding after trustees voted earlier this year to put a $57-million bond measure on the November ballot to build a new high school.

* Student quality of life will be a priority in the Ojai Unified race where lawyer John Hartnett is trying to make morality in schools a campaign issue as he challenges incumbents Karen McBride and Tim Peddicord. Peddicord is concerned about easing tension between Latino and Anglo students at Matilija Junior High School.

All told, about 50 candidates are running in these races and in the contests for the Mesa Union, Santa Paula Union, Santa Clara, Pleasant Valley and Rio school boards. Uncontested races, such as those in the Briggs and Mupu districts, have been taken off the ballot.

Along with the crowded field is the prospect of big money, raised for the first time by the formation of a new political action committee called Citizens for the Preservation of Ventura County. The PAC’s chairman of the board is Christian radio mogul and millionaire Edward G. Atsinger III of Camarillo.

Without contributing a penny or endorsing a single candidate, the fledgling PAC is attracting attention and inspiring fear among some county politicians. In nonpartisan school board races, where $8,000 is a fat bank account, any significant PAC contributions could have a dramatic effect.

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“I think in every campaign for the last few years, there has been the worry that the campaigns were going to escalate, especially if you have an outside group that comes in and is willing to pour money into our elections,” said Simi Valley trustee Diane Collins.

This political season, PAC money “could be a significant issue,” she added. “In the past, these were truly local campaigns. The most you might spend was $5,000. If someone throws in maybe another $5,000, you double the cost of a campaign, and that could make a big difference.”

In the race for control of the 26 schools in Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park, the current board is almost evenly split among moderate conservatives--trustees Beaubien, Didio and Richard Newman--and conservatives--trustees Mildred Lynch and Elaine McKearn. With two seats up for grabs, the heading of the board could easily take a turn to the right or stay the course.

Contenders diverge on the issue of school-to-work programs, which prepare non-college-bound students for vocational careers. Contrary to the views of incumbents, school board aspirant Charles Rittenburg, 46, said he favors a “moving forward with basics” agenda before embracing school-to-work.

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Also running are Lutheran minister Elroi Reimnitz, 48; Newbury Park electrical engineer Paul F. Finman, 39; and Debra J. Lorier, 42, a homemaker and businesswoman.

The most substantial candidate differences are those of morality.

Rittenburg said he supports sexual education with an emphasis on abstinence, so long as parents can opt out of the program. That philosophy is similar to what is practiced by the school district and is favored by Didio, 63 and Beaubien 64, as well.

Rittenburg, an engineer, also backs what he calls “safe passage” for religious students--that is, an education in which a child’s faith is not “attacked, degraded or demeaned.” To that end, he said, both evolution and creationism should be approached in the classroom as theories.

On the evolution-versus-creationism debate, Beaubien and Didio part company with Rittenburg. No child should be chided or told their belief in creationism is wrong, they say, but evolution should be favored in classrooms.

Rittenburg said that his beliefs don’t make him a member of the religious right, however.

“The religious right issue is one of many tactics that can be used” to discredit candidates, he said. “I certainly don’t mind being identified as a Christian or a Republican, but the ‘religious right’ is a boogeyman, just like ‘Commie pinko’ was.”

Religion is also much in evidence in the race for the county Board of Education, which oversees the education of about 5,000 students who attend schools for troubled youths and special education and vocational programs.

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Both Janet Lindgren, who served on the Oxnard Union High School District Board of Trustees for 22 years, and Paul Chatman, the Ocean View School Board’s president, are running against conservative Christians--one an incumbent and the other a political newcomer.

Board member Wendy Larner, an Ojai homemaker who is defending her seat against Lindgren’s challenge, and Ronald Matthews, a 49-year-old Oxnard businessman, said they have entered the race in part to increase the role of parents in education.

But Lindgren, 68, and Chatman, 51, said they believe their opponents want to impose their conservative views on county schools.

“It is very obvious that the majority of the board is trying to force their personal values on the entire county,” said Chatman, an Oxnard businessman, who is head of the Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross.

The board’s current majority is in the throes of overhauling board policies, a move which critics say could restrict the authority of Weis, who is also an elected official.

But Larner, whose district includes Ojai, Camarillo, Fillmore, Santa Paula, Piru and Somis, said the board’s conservative majority is merely trying to gain more oversight over the $39-million county superintendent of schools office.

“For some reason, it is politically incorrect to not agree with the superintendent,” said Larner, 53, who was one of the targets of a recall campaign last year after she voted with board President Marty Bates and board member Angela Miller to ban Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care from teacher training workshops.

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Both Lindgren, a Camarillo resident, and Chatman said they are running in part to help restore cooperation between the superintendent and board.

“I think a lot of time is being wasted,” said Lindgren, who has criticized the board majority for running up a $36,000 legal bill--$6,000 over budget--with its plans to revise the panel’s policies.

Although the county superintendent of schools office performs a variety of administrative functions for the county’s 21 school districts, individual districts set their own policies and make the decisions that affect students in their schools.

Nevertheless, Weis said he believes the conservative Christian candidates think the board has more influence over individual county districts.

“I really do believe that they believe this board is some sort of mega-board or super board that is supposed to guide other boards,” Weis said.

Matthews, who holds views similar to the board’s existing majority, is vying with Chatman for a seat now occupied by John McGarry, who is retiring.

Matthews declined to say whether he had received donations from Citizens for the Preservation of Ventura County.

“I would prefer not to answer that,” Matthews said.

About donations from that conservative Christian PAC, Larner said: “I don’t know what the future holds.”

In the east county’s most contested race--that of the Simi Valley School Board--there are fewer religious undertones.

Moderates Debbie Sandland, 42, and Diane Collins, 51, are both running for reelection on fiscally conservative platforms and with the hope of expanding class-size reduction, now implemented in first and second grades, to third grade as well.

Sandland, a registered nurse, favors reinstating free home-to-school busing--which was ended during 1994 budget cutting. Collins, an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles, said she is concerned about facilities issues raised by smaller classes.

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Seeking to oust the incumbents or snatch the seat vacated by board President Barry are businessman and former trustee Doug Crosse, 49; homemaker and PTA member Janice DiFatta, 44; homemaker Nan Mostacciuolo, 41; physician Caesar O. Julian, 67; teacher Steven Steffek, 52; attorney Randy Sundeen, 40; and homemaker Elizabeth Walbridge, 39.

The budget-minded Mostacciuolo, a mother of four, said she is running on a platform of making the school district and its complex finances more understandable and accessible to parents.

“Parents are the school district,” said Mostacciuolo, who also favors sex education and opposes drug-sniffing dogs in schools as an infringement on civil liberties.

Long involved in the Parent-Teacher Assn., DiFatta favors calling a truce in the bickering between trustees and City Council members and returning to traditional teaching methods.

“I’m OK with sex education if it’s not too explicit,” she said. “I would support an abstinence-only curriculum.”

As Oxnard and Camarillo-area voters decide the fate of the $57-million school bond measure to build a new high school in Oxnard, they will also choose among five candidates for two spots on the Oxnard Union High School District board of trustees.

Annette Burrows, 42, a Camarillo resident who is director of career planning at Cal Lutheran University, is vying for one of the seats held by incumbents Stocks, 71, a former principal at both Channel Islands and Oxnard high, and Judy, a 56-year-old marriage and family counselor.

Building a new high school would only temporarily solve Oxnard’s overcrowding problem, she said, so the district should also consider other solutions such as having students attend school in shifts.

Burrows, who said she also wants to make schools safer, said she was concerned that trustee Judy had shot a former Oxnard policeman last year near a bar in what he said was self-defense.

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“I find it appalling that someone who is on a school board carries a gun,” Burrows said.

Citing a lack of evidence, the Ventura County district attorney’s office did not charge Judy in the shooting, and Judy maintains Donald Jones was stalking him.

Judy said that he does not usually carry a gun and that the incident “was a self-defense kind of thing.”

Other candidates include Art Hernandez, a 39-year-old Oxnard businessman and Rio School District board member, and Don Miller, a 64-year-old retired high school headmaster.

Candidates for two seats on Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley School District board are pitching their ideas on how to continue making improvements to school facilities, despite the fact that voters have now four times rejected a $55-million bond measure for that purpose.

With three candidates in the race, teacher Virginia Norris will try to oust either businessman Robert Rexford or Ricardo Amador from their seats. The candidates say class size reduction has further stretched limited space, making the board members’ work more difficult.

In Ojai, challenger Hartnett, a 53-year-old attorney, said he will emphasize the need for teachers to stress morality in the schools in his campaign for a seat on the Ojai Unified School District Board.

Running against incumbents McBride, a homemaker, and Peddicord, a 45-year-old junior high school science teacher, Hartnett said teachers need to act as moral role models.

“I think they should relate to kids in a moral way,” said Hartnett, adding that he supports a time set aside for students to pray to the God they believe in.

Peddicord said he believes teachers already do a good job of reinforcing proper behavior. “Morals start in the home and in the church, and schools can be there to reinforce commonly agreed-upon moral conduct, like honesty, integrity and hard work,” Peddicord said.