Anaheim’s Dark Horse Candidate for State Schools Job Is a Maverick

A little-known school board member from Anaheim surprised the education establishment last week by placing second in the primary for California superintendent of public instruction.

Katherine H. Smith beat the well-funded and better-known Assemblywoman Lynne Leach (R-Walnut Creek) and now faces state Sen. Jack O’Connell in November in the nonpartisan race to replace Delaine Eastin, who must step down because of term limits. Smith forced a runoff because O’Connell did not receive more than 50% of the vote.

“It’s a novelty,” said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Assn. “She was the one who all the political experts were just writing off.”

Now, they’re trying to figure out just who this underdog is, and they may be in for some surprises.

She’s a Goldwater Republican who says she knew and admired Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. She has pushed for the nationwide adoption of school uniforms and a moment of silence for students each morning.

She once proposed having children spring to their feet in respect whenever an adult entered the classroom. But she has also spent the last 20 years fighting for more liberal drug laws. If elected, she wants to improve education programs in California’s prisons.

Smith, a trustee in the Anaheim Union High School District, has the endorsements of both a conservative Christian group and a left-leaning Latino-rights organization.

“She’s the most conservative candidate on the ballot,” said Mark Bucher, founder of the Education Alliance, which received national attention in the 1990s for its campaign to put conservatives--often Christians--on school boards. “She’s a candidate that stands for back-to-basics values.”

But Smith, 61, has shown herself a strong advocate for Latino students, said Amin David of Los Amigos of Orange County.

“We’re a very liberal, progressive group, and she doesn’t seem to fit that mold, does she?” David said. “But on education, I think we can have a meeting of the minds.”

David said he grew to admire Smith when she opposed a proposal by fellow Anaheim board member Harald G. Martin.

Martin wanted to require students to show proof of legal U.S. residency or risk being turned over to immigration authorities. The motion died without a second.

“I’m an extremely different kettle of fish” from other education leaders, said Smith, a former fashion model who left college shortly before finishing and pulled her two children, now grown, out of public school in the 1980s to enroll them in Catholic school. “I’m a reader, a citizen-observer. I take things issue by issue and decide what is the right way to go.”

Most of Her Funding Is From Friends, Family

Smith, who has raised only $18,000, compared with the more than $2 million O’Connell has pulled in, said she would think hard before accepting money from any group. The only groups she said she would be completely comfortable taking money from would be law enforcement organizations.

Smith likes knowing that most of her contributions have come from friends, family and administrators in her school district. The California Republican Party will support Smith with mailers and ballot statements, spokesman Rob Stutzman said.

Though she spent little on her campaign, she said she was not surprised by her strong second-place finish. Early polling had shown she was popular, so she didn’t even stay up late Tuesday night to make sure she was in the runoff. She was tired, she said, and had to get up before dawn to feed her Shih Tzu Tiffy and fix breakfast for her husband Clarke, a doctor, before heading out to jury duty.

“I am not a politician,” she said. “I never will be.”

She’s mainly interested in the job as a bully pulpit for her ideas.

Some experts point out that the job she seeks offers little power for her to institute those ideas. The superintendent manages the Department of Education’s $47-billion budget and its 1,600 employees, and works with the Legislature to pass programs, said Plotkin, of the school boards association.

These are areas where her opponent, a former high school teacher and state senator from San Luis Obispo, has much experience. O’Connell wrote the legislation that led to smaller class sizes in primary grades and backed the new high school exit exam.

“I think support for Jack O’Connell will grow tremendously once people in the state really understand who she is and what her objectives are,” said Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers’ Assn. O’Connell has received thousands of dollars from teachers unions and individual school administrators and teachers. “He obviously wants to support the public schools.”

Eastin, the current superintendent, endorses O’Connell too.

Gale Kaufman, an O’Connell campaign consultant, said she doesn’t know much about Smith but suspects the two candidates have little in common.

Certainly, Smith’s interests are far removed from the test scores and carrot-and-stick accountability programs that have transformed public education in California in the last few years.

She advocates giving all districts the same amount of money per student. She thinks there is too much testing.

Her real passion is in symbolic programs--such as moments of silence and changes of dress--designed to bring about deeper transformations within individuals. Her mission statement, posted on her Web site, www.superkathy.com, is “to change behavior by changing attitudes.”

That’s what she said she has done with great success in Anaheim.

She was among the first school leaders in the country to push for school uniforms on public campuses, lobbying successfully for them in 1992 as a community activist in La Habra schools. She now wants to encourage schools statewide to adopt them.

She also wants all California children to begin each morning with a moment of silent reflection. She believes the practice, which she brought to Anaheim schools in 1999, promotes academic success and inner calm by giving children a moment to think about their lives and their priorities. She said the practice is not intended to encourage school prayer, but students are free to pray if they choose.

Other ideas include bringing lockers back to secondary schools so children aren’t forced to lug book bags around and issuing report cards for parents. The cards would offer a checklist of questions, such as “Did you make your child breakfast?” and “Did you read to your child?”

“I would lead by the virtue of my ideas,” she said.