2 of 3 School Board Incumbents Battle to Hang On to Their Seats

Two of the three incumbents seeking reelection to the Los Angeles school board April 14 have their work cut out for them as the campaign enters its final week.

Challenging them are well-known, well-financed candidates who enjoy the support of the powerful teachers union, and the two races have turned into hard-fought contests involving ample discussion of serious issues and a bit of raucous name-calling as well.

Incumbent Rita Walters, who was reelected four years ago with a whopping 92% of the vote, has been characterized by three challengers as an “arrogant” officeholder who has lost touch with community leaders and parents in her South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles district.

In a Harbor-area race, school board member John Greenwood is facing a spirited challenge from Warren Furutani, who is outspending him more than 2 to 1. Greenwood has gone on the attack, raising questions about his opponent’s duties at UCLA’s Asian-American Studies Center and criticizing Furutani for accepting $400 in campaign contributions from three men implicated in an alleged scheme to embezzle money from the school system.

The teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, which supported both Greenwood and Walters when they ran in 1983, has plunged in on the other side this time, primarily because of discontent over the stalemated salary negotiations that have dragged on since last June.

The union is seeking a 14% pay hike retroactive to the beginning of the school year, while the school system’s best offer has been for a 10% raise retroactive only to last November. The two sides had appeared close to an agreement earlier this year, but talks broke down when the board rejected the union’s demand for an agency fee that would require all teachers, not just UTLA members, to pay dues.

Walters and Greenwood, although supportive of many UTLA proposals in the past, were among the board members voting to reject the demand.

“I was disappointed when I did not get the UTLA endorsement,” Walters said. “The union is my real opponent in this campaign.”

UTLA has endorsed Furutani and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a well-known black leader who is executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

For these two challengers, the union support means money and other campaign help that can make a big difference in elections, such as those for the school board, in which voter turnout is typically low. According to campaign financial statements filed last week, UTLA has provided nearly $23,000 in cash and services to Ridley-Thomas’ campaign and more than $11,000 to Furutani’s.

Ridley-Thomas, by far the best-financed of Walters’ three challengers, said the UTLA endorsement is not simply a case of union sour grapes against incumbents. In the District 1 contest, he said, it is indicative of the growing “serious criticism” of Walters’ eight-year stint on the school board.

“She has failed us, and we’re deeply disappointed,” he said, noting low achievement scores among area students.

The union also refused to endorse a third incumbent running for reelection on the April 14 ballot--Jackie Goldberg--but in contrast with the other two races, the union is not supporting either of her opponents. Goldberg’s principal challenger in the downtown-Echo Park-Hollywood district is businessman Tony Trias, whom she ousted from the board in 1983 with UTLA’s help.

Goldberg has encountered sharp criticism from some parents for her support of high school health clinics that will make birth control information and contraceptives available, but union officials privately predict that she will defeat Trias again.

A candidate will win election next week if he or she can get a simple majority--50% plus one vote--of the ballots cast. If there is no winner, the two top vote-getters will appear in a runoff in June.

Here is a rundown on how the races in Districts 1 and 7 are shaping up:

District No. 1--Incumbent Walters, 56, the board’s only black, may be headed for a runoff as she takes on three opponents in her quest for a third four-year term.

She has been stung by charges that she has lost touch with parents and community leaders in the mostly black district, but she replies that Ridley-Thomas and others are upset that she has not catered to their requests for meetings on certain issues.

“There are a lot of community leaders who do support me,” she said.

Among them, she said, are Mayor Tom Bradley and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Staffing Plan

Walters said her authorship of the “C-average” rule, which requires students to be passing all their courses in order to take part in sports and after-school activities, was an important breakthrough to improve grades. She also cited her work to save the Watts Skills Center from closure and a priority staffing plan that she championed to put more teachers into inner-city schools.

With UTLA’s support, Ridley-Thomas, 32, has gone after Walters, criticizing her for low achievement-test scores among blacks at Jefferson, Fremont, Manual Arts, Dorsey and Crenshaw high schools. He also accused her of not cooperating with law enforcement, particularly the school system’s police force, in fighting campus violence.

According to Ridley-Thomas, who has been endorsed by Assemblywoman Maxine Waters and state Sen. Diane Watson, both Democrats of Los Angeles, Walters showed a lack of commitment to Los Angeles schools several months ago when she briefly considered running for the Los Angeles City Council’s 10th District seat.

Denying that, Walters replied that her period of exploration simply “gave more opportunity for egos to build up” among her challengers.

Statements Filed

With UTLA’s help, Ridley-Thomas has outspent Walters, $59,000 to $21,000, according to financial statements filed last week. But the incumbent entered the homestretch with $33,500 on hand, to only $3,300 for Ridley-Thomas.

A third candidate, Annie N. Richardson, 47, a former Walters loyalist, also criticizes the incumbent for considering a run at the City Council. Richardson, who has been involved with area parent and school groups for 15 years, favors more parental involvement in district programs aimed at improving student test scores.

She also contends that Walters and other school officials have been callous toward residents who are being displaced in some neighborhoods to make way for the new schools the administration is planning to build to alleviate overcrowding.

Dorothy Rugley, 51, an elementary school teacher in Compton who ran against Walters in 1979 and 1983, is also on the ballot.

She raises as issues the system’s inability to attract good teachers to the inner city, its neglect of its physical facilities and the constant problem of dropouts.

“I’m saying the same things I said eight years ago,” she said. “Nothing is happening in inner-city schools.”

District No. 7--There will be no runoff in this contest, because there are only two candidates: incumbent Greenwood, 42, of San Pedro and Furutani, 39, of Gardena. The district is culturally and racially mixed, stretching north from the harbor, through Asian-Pacific neighborhoods in Gardena and Carson and the predominantly black community of Watts and into South Gate, where an influx of Latinos is changing the city’s Anglo, blue-collar fabric.

Greenwood, a hospital administrator who is seeking his third term, said he has supported anti-gang and suicide-prevention programs for area schools.

“We need to teach our kids to say no to gangs, as well as to drugs,” he said.

He also points with pride to the upswing in test scores that has been reported at District 7 campuses in the last six years.

Public Rancor

Furutani, on the other hand, said Greenwood has added to the public rancor between the administration and the teachers.

“The Board of Education has been the antagonist with the most fundamental people in education, the teachers,” Furutani said. “I have an ability to communicate and work with people.”

Furutani, while endorsed by UTLA, said he does not necessarily support the 14% salary hike the union is seeking but said he is in favor of a “double-digit” percentage increase.

Greenwood has gone on the offensive recently against his challenger. For example, he said Furutani’s ballot designation, “university administrator/educator,” is misleading.

“The position carries no decision-making or administrative responsibilities,” Greenwood claimed.

“Anybody who knows my work knows I’m an administrator,” Furutani replied.

According to university officials, Furutani is the coordinator of student community projects at UCLA’s Asian-American Studies Center.

Greenwood has also demanded that Furutani return $400 in contributions he received from three men implicated in a reputed scheme to embezzle money from the school system. Two men who each gave $100, Henry Shimohara and George Nakahara, pleaded no contest last month to felony grand theft charges. A third man who gave $200, George Kobayashi, was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his cooperation with investigators.

Furutani has acknowledged receiving the $400 and has set the money aside. But he has resisted Greenwood’s demand to return the funds.