Reading between the lines on school board races

Attentive readers may recall this column’s mighty contribution to last year’s school board race: We asked each candidate to perform a simple algebra problem.

The reason: The Los Angeles Unified School District has problems teaching kids algebra, and we reasoned that those ultimately in charge of policy should be able to tackle an equation.

Interestingly, the candidate -- Monica Garcia -- who solved the problem the most quickly won the race. And the candidate who botched the problem?

Better luck next time, sir.

We are trying a different tack this year, and instead are asking each candidate in the four L.A. Unified school board races about the books they are reading and their all-time favorite.

Why?

Well, why not? If a candidate said his or her favorite is “Archie Comics Love Showdown,” isn’t that something you’d want to know before voting?

Besides, isn’t a main purpose of school to teach kids to read? And isn’t a kid who loves to pick up a book perhaps less likely to pick up, say, a gun?

Each candidate was informed of the question ahead of time to give him or her time to stew. You decide if the answers are honest or calculating.

District 1

Incumbent Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte didn’t return e-mails or calls to her office or campaign. So we’ll assign her a book: “Encounters With the Archdruid,” the excellent John McPhee profile of the late environmentalist David Brower.

Johnathan Williams, co-founder of the Accelerated School in South Los Angeles, said he’s working on “The Audacity of Hope” by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

“It’s a recurring theme in my life -- when we started the Accelerated School, a lot of people said you can’t build an excellent school in our neighborhood,” Williams said. “It’s an inspiring book, and pushes us to think about the underlying values we share.”

His favorite book is the novel “Native Son” by Richard Wright. The book is the story of a young black man who accidentally kills a white woman in 1930s Chicago and is ultimately executed. Williams, who is black and grew up in east Long Beach, said he first read it in middle or high school and took it as a cautionary tale.

District 3

Incumbent Jon Lauritzen recently finished “1776” by David McCullough. The historical account of the American revolution, Lauritzen said, resonated with him because “you can win and establish new ideas and actually change things.”

His favorite book: “Arrows Into the Sun,” a novel by his father, Jonreed Lauritzen, who published 17 books in his lifetime. The novel is set along the canyon country of the Arizona-Utah border where Lauritzen grew up, and involves a young Navajo who befriends a Mormon girl -- although it was all strictly platonic, Lauritzen says.

Hearing that Lauritzen enjoys historical fiction, particularly about the West, this column immediately assigned him Larry McMurtry’s cattle drive epic “Lonesome Dove,” which as everyone knows is simply the best novel ever written.

Challenger Tamar Galatzan, a city prosecutor, said she recently finished reading “Curious George Feeds the Animals” to her children. It’s the story of monkey George’s visit to the zoo -- the irony! -- that in this column’s view is nowhere near as gripping as “Curious George Goes to the Hospital.”

Galatzan also is working on “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, a book that provides outside-the-box ways for looking at economic problems. One might imagine that would be useful at L.A. Unified, with its $8-billion budget.

The verdict on her favorite: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee. “Any prosecutor who isn’t inspired by it -- there’s probably something wrong there,” she said.

Another challenger, Louis Pugliese, a Cal State Northridge lecturer, said he’s boning up on school policy and recently finished perusing the No Child Left Behind Act. He’s also sleeping well.

His favorite: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. It has helped him, Pugliese said, with perspective should he lose the election. “After the dust settles, there will still be opportunities out there,” he said.

District 5

Yolie Flores Aguilar, chief of the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council, is reading two books at the moment: the nonfiction “The World Is Flat” by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and Alice Hoffman’s novel “Here on Earth.”

Aguilar described “The World Is Flat” as providing good lessons about the importance of education in the emerging borderless world economy, while she likes “Here on Earth” for the story of one character, a young girl, who goes from being unfocused to engaged in life because of her interest in a horse and a boy.

She had an unusual choice as a favorite: the dictionary. Aguilar said that she grew up a Spanish speaker and that having a dictionary available became essential. “I always want to know that I’m getting it right and using the right word for the right message and context,” she said.

Bennett Kayser, a teacher, is working his way through “The City at Stake: Secession, Reform and the Battle for Los Angeles” by Raphael J. Sonenshein, a Cal State Fullerton professor. The book focuses on city politics in the late 1990s along with some thoughts on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- who has endorsed Kayser’s opponent.

A scary tale of book-burning and mind control, “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, is Kayser’s favorite. “I have always enjoyed science fiction, especially a book that was written over 50 years ago that predicted ATMs and flat-screen televisions surrounding a room,” he wrote in an e-mail.

District 7

Richard Vladovic, a retired school superintendent, reeled off a list of several books he’s reading about education, including “Beyond the Classroom” by Laurence Steinberg. The book is about a nationwide poll of students and what does -- and does not -- motivate them.

A self-described voracious reader, Vladovic said he recently finished John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town,” a nonfiction account of a young baseball player who ends up on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.

Vladovic likes Grisham because his books are about “trying to make things right.”

Neal Kleiner, a retired teacher, said he’s working his way through a mystery novel at the moment -- Peter Abrahams’ “Oblivion” -- but that the two books that had the greatest impact on his life are “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque and “Native Son.”

The first taught him lifelong lessons on the grave consequences of war. Kleiner, who is white, said that “Native Son” was an eye-opening account on race.

Jesus Escandon, a union organizer, said he’d get back to us with his list. He didn’t. So this column assigns him “Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children” and looks forward to receiving his book report.

Next week: Revenge of the streetcars.

steve.hymon@latimes.com

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What’s next for the city’s plan to revitalize the L.A. River?

The public will get a chance to scrutinize the master plan for the river at three public meetings this month, and then it will go to the City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for approval in the spring.

The plan can be read online at www.lariverrmp.org. The gist of it is that the city wants to build parks and housing along the river, possibly remove some of the concrete embankments, restore habitat and clean up the putrid water quality.

On that note, you may want to ask city officials what they think of the county’s spraying of herbicides along the Arroyo Seco -- a tributary to the river -- for weed control, as we reported last week. Some quick Googling by this column found that Black & Decker makes seven versions of electric weed and grass trimmers, but maybe dousing the creek in potentially toxic herbicides is easier.

The public meetings are:

Saturday: Hollenbeck Middle School, 2510 E. 6th St., Boyle Heights, 10 a.m.

Feb. 27: Canoga Park High School, 6580 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park, 6:30 p.m.

Feb. 27: Metropolitan Water District boardroom, 700 N. Alameda St., downtown L.A., 6:30 p.m.