Mixed Signals Sent in School Board Races

Two newcomers could usher in a new era of civility on the county school board, which has been marked in recent years by highly publicized squabbling, officials predicted Wednesday.

“I would hope there’s not more conflict,” said Janet Lindgren, who ousted conservative trustee Wendy Larner on Tuesday. Winning a second seat on the contentious board was social conservative Ron Matthews, who defeated Paul Chatman, a moderate Ocean View district trustee.

Dominated by Christian conservatives in recent years, the board majority has feuded with County Schools Supt. Charles Weis and with more moderate board members over whether to accept federal grants and whether to allow speakers from AIDS Care and Planned Parenthood to train teachers.

“All of this controversy has been a distraction,” Weis said. “My hope is that the County Board of Education will go back into relative obscurity.”

It is time, he said, to cease bickering in favor of educating the 5,000 students at county-run schools.

The mixed-bag election left intact a conservative Christian majority, but shuffled the players.

Voters also sent conflicting signals to school board contenders in some of the county’s other dozen school board races, embracing a few Christian conservative candidates while rejecting others.

Incumbents swept the election in the Conejo Valley, besting well-financed conservative contenders.

The verdict was also split on the influence of a recently formed conservative political action committee, Citizens for the Preservation of Ventura County, which pumped money into school board and city council races.

The PAC, founded by Camarillo resident and Christian radio mogul Edward G. Atsinger III, spent nearly $60,000 on contributions, mailers and for consulting and start-up fees. About $35,000 went directly to 11 candidates or was spent on their behalf for campaign mailers. Most of the PAC-backed city council candidates failed, while Matthews and a candidate for the Pleasant Valley school board won.

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Neither Atsinger nor his representatives could be reached for comment.

Voters traded Larner’s insistence on local control of schools for Lindgren’s pledge to listen to parents and staff before reaching decisions in the county school board race. Matthews’ fiscal conservatism won over Chatman’s anti-religious right campaign.

Although Matthews was strongly backed by the Atsinger-supported committee, he is widely viewed as less dogmatic than Larner. A political neophyte, Matthews has vowed to emphasize reading, writing and phonics over less-traditional teaching styles.

“My strength, I believe, is my conservatism,” the businessman said. “I think that those who voted for me are churched people . . . who are tired of the way things have been going, when a student can graduate with a sixth-grade reading level.”

The financial officer for Camarillo’s United Methodist Church, Lindgren credited her election to grass-roots support from people fed up with Larner’s “narrow agenda.”

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In the sprawling Thousand Oaks school system, incumbents Dolores Didio and Dorothy Beaubien vowed to find the room needed for class size reduction and pledged their support for technology in the classroom.

Bolstered by vocal and financial support from the teachers union, the two fended off four challengers--including engineer Charles Rittenburg and homemaker Debra J. Lorier, both of whom were accused of being aligned with the religious right.

In the process, Beaubien and Didio preserved the moderate majority of the five-member panel.

“I think voters sent a message that they don’t want special interest groups with special agendas,” said Beaubien. “They’re happy with the schools they have . . . although there’s always room for improvement.”

Challenger Lorier blamed her loss on union politicking and “religious bigotry.”

The lack of civility was also an issue in the Simi Valley school board race, where two incumbents and seven challengers battled for three seats.

Casting himself as a mature peacemaker who could help unite the quarrelsome Simi Valley school board, physician Caesar O. Julian led the vote-getters. A unified school board is essential to attracting top-notch teachers and a new superintendent, he said.

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Moderate incumbent Diane Collins also stressed her ability to get along with a diverse group of people in her successful bid for reelection.

Collins touted herself as a candidate willing to make tough decisions about district reconfiguration and use of facilities. In upcoming months, the board could decide whether to move sixth-graders into middle school and whether to reopen four campuses leased to outside groups.

Adamantly opposed to district reconfiguration is trustee Debbie Sandland, who holds a razor-thin lead over homemaker Janice DiFatta with some absentee ballots yet to be counted.

A supporter of neighborhood schools, Sandland said there is not a single defining issue facing the board, but rather a number of ongoing decisions: hiring a new superintendent, implementing class size reduction and constructing a Wood Ranch school among them.

In Camarillo, Virginia Norris, 45, a first-time candidate, said two slate mailers paid for by Citizens for the Preservation of Ventura County may have helped her place first in the Pleasant Valley elementary district race.

Sidelined for seven weeks while recovering from surgery, she said she spent only $50 on her race and hardly campaigned at all. Ricardo Amador also won a seat, but another incumbent, Robert Rexford, lost.

Rexford, an evangelical Christian, said Norris improperly injected religious conservatism into the race by stating in her sample ballot statement she favored sexual abstinence and opposed condom distribution in schools and “textbooks promoting homosexuality.”

“These were not issues I felt were appropriate in Camarillo for elementary school kids,” he said. “They brought fire and brimstone into the discussion.”

In Camarillo and Oxnard, voters also elected to the two-city Oxnard Union High School board incumbent trustee Steve Stocks, 71, a retired principal, and Art Hernandez, 39, a trustee in the Rio Elementary District.

The Oxnard high school district voters also overwhelmingly rejected incumbent trustee Fred Judy, who shot a former Oxnard policeman last year near a bar but was not charged with a crime.

The 14,000-student Oxnard Elementary School District overwhelmingly returned incumbent Susan Alvarez for a second term. Francisco Dominguez, executive director of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, was also elected.

Times staff writers Daryl Kelley and Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this story.