Decision ’93 / A Look at the Elections in Los Angeles County : Los Angeles School Board : 6th DISTRICT : Q AND A

CONTENDERS

Richard David Bieber, 40, of Northridge is a self-employed electrical contractor. He has studied liberal arts at Santa Monica College and architecture at UCLA and completed a semester at sea as part of the Chapman College World Campus Afloat program. He has never before run for public office.

Eli Brent, 67, of Northridge is president of Associate Administrators of Los Angeles. He started teaching in Los Angeles Unified School District in 1951 and 10 years later became a school principal. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a doctorate in educational administration from Brigham Young University. This is his first bid for public office.

Julianna Korenstein, 49, of Tarzana was elected to the Board of Education in 1987. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Cal State Northridge and previously was a substitute teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District before starting a private tutoring service for students who had dropped out of school. She later worked as an educational specialist at Chatsworth High School.

Lynne Kuznetsky, 47, of Encino teaches second and third grades at O’Melveny School in San Fernando and counsels children with behavioral problems who attend alternative schools. She holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in educational psychology from Cal State Northridge and is a licensed marriage, family and child counselor. She has never before run for public office.

Campus Safety

Q. How can we economically increase safety on our campuses?

Bieber: Our school campuses have become the battlegrounds through the formation of gang factions that have no place in advancing society, let alone the schools. To increase safety, we must take back control of our school grounds as well as the students that attend them. There may not be an economical way to do this, but I feel that the recent admittance of metal detectors to the school system, however unfortunate the need be, is a good first step.

Brent: The Board of Education must establish clear guidelines for student behavior and the consequences for breach of such behavior. School police, when assigned to schools, should be in full uniform at all times in order to act as a viable deterrent to crime and vandalism.

Korenstein: There can be no price put on the safety of our students. In 1989, I initiated the Task Force on School Safety. One of its recommendations was the placement of metal detectors on every high school campus. Unfortunately, the majority of the school board opposed this at the time, but in light of the two tragic murders at Reseda and Fairfax, action has finally been taken. I wrote the first motion requiring automatic expulsion for students who bring guns to school, and I also introduced curriculum to help students avoid handgun violence, which is now being piloted in 21 schools.

Kuznetsky: We can economically increase safety on our campuses by creating clubs and organizations such as “Guardian Angels,” to instigate and promote personal involvement and in some instances, acquire local police enforcement to allow our children a safe environment while not wasting money geared for education on “policing” our schools. Just a program such as Guardian Angels allows students to become an integral part of the campaign for safe schools and gives the children an opportunity to make decisions and build self-esteem. Lack of self-esteem among our children is ruining their opportunity for a safe learning environment. This program will allow children to believe in themselves, serve to have parents participate and get involved in their children’s education and safety. Many retired policemen can act as security guards and they could be used on campus.

District Breakup

Q. Are you in favor of a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District? If so, should there be a Valley-wide district or even smaller entities within the Valley?

Bieber: I am in favor of whatever is best for our children. If that means that the LAUSD must come to terms with its own failure, and decides to break up, then do it and be done with it, and move on. If this indeed happens, I envision an imaginary dividing line running at the top of the Santa Monica Mountains creating a Valley district. The demographics attest to the ethnic mix here in the Valley and we can meet any “quota” that is required.

Brent: Our students can no longer wait. The Board of Education, through its non-action and refusal to meet its responsibilities, has forced the public to take the extreme action to “break up” the school district. I have been appointed to Sen. David Roberti’s commission and support his position. We cannot afford to lose another generation of students.

Korenstein: Our school district is in drastic need of reform. I cannot speak for the rest of the city, but I believe it is essential that we create one integrated Valley-wide district and move forward on a systematic plan to involve parents, teachers, principals and the community in decision-making for their individual schools.

Kuznetsky: I would like to see the LAUSD decentralize into six or seven smaller districts with no more than 100,000 in each district. This would be beneficial to all. By decentralizing the district, it would give more parents easier access to their children’s school. There should be a district office in each district where parents could go if they have a larger concern than can be dealt with at the school. Each school would have an advisory council made up of teachers, parents, students and principal. Each school could make its own decisions about the curriculum, etc.

Breakup Motivation

Q. Do you believe the breakup movement to be motivated by race?

Bieber: Absolutely not.

Brent: No. The motivation for the “breakup” of our school district comes from fear for the safety of students by parents and students. It also stems from a lack of confidence in the current Board of Education.

Korenstein: Absolutely not. The Valley student body population is more than 73% minority. The issue here has nothing to do with race. It’s about how we can make our schools work better. The movement to break up the LAUSD is motivated by the need for reform and restructuring. In the face of the threat of a voucher system, downsizing the LAUSD may be the only way to help preserve public education.

Kuznetsky: I hope the breakup movement would not be motivated by race. The district is made up of 85% Asian, African-Americans and Latinos at the present time and only 15% Anglo. If there was a breakup, there could be families with ethnic groups in each district. Each school and district should have a budget according to the pupils and need of the students. I would like to see this issue to be an education issue and not one of race.

LEARN Proposals

Q. Do you support the LEARN proposals to decentralize decision - making to the school site?

Bieber: The current board, as well as past boards, have been unwilling to make the hard decisions to keep our kids and schools safe. In following the “Band-Aid” approach for years, they have created the mess we now call public education. Now there is this proposal to give all the marbles to the one group who should probably not have to deal with all aspects of our children’s lives--school administrators. I can see the need for different schools in different areas having the need to “personalize” the education, given the circumstance, but the LEARN program assumes that the parents will always want to be involved, and I already know from experience that after the shine wears off, the parents’ participation will disappear, and the school administrators will be left holding the bag.

Brent: Yes. We must empower parents, teachers, school principals and students to be responsible and accountable for their education. The schools belong to the public and the public must take control back.

Korenstein: I believe that the best way to improve our schools is to allow people direct access to decision-making. The more we get away from bureaucratic control, the more opportunity we will have to bring in new ideas and energy to solve the problems facing our education system. However, I am very concerned about how the ongoing funding and expansion of LEARN’s proposals will be provided. $2.9 million has been offered to fund a one-year program covering 30 to 50 schools. Even if this money were sufficient for one year, we need to seriously address where the rest of the money will come from to reform all of our over 800 schools.

Kuznetsky: The LEARN initiative has many good points and endorses districtwide restructuring process. I feel it has the right functions: student learning and assessment, accountability, education development, parent involvement, social services, school to work transition, school facilities and finance. All of LEARN could be accomplished utilizing the program in smaller districts where it would work better. Also, how would the money be funded for this program? It is privately funded at the present time. It will only be tried in 30 schools for one year. I feel it needs more than one year to see if it is feasible. Thirty schools are not 640 schools. Will it work in all 640?

Pressing Issues

Q. What is currently the most important issue in Los Angeles public education?

Bieber: The fact that a lot of the kids now attending, for one reason or another, are not getting a usable education. Not every child is college material. A great many show the aptitude for trades and services, but we don’t give them the chance to explore that aspect of themselves, to their later benefit. Is it any wonder these kids feel disenfranchised?

Brent: Safety, restructuring and quality education for students. Our society depends on an informed and literate electorate. Public schools are our only hope to achieve the promise of our society.

Korenstein: School funding is the issue facing our public schools today in addition to the questions of restructure and reform. California ranks 41st in the nation in terms of per capita spending on education. We spend an average of $4,100 per child per year. By comparison, the sates of New York and New Jersey spend $8,600 and $9,900, respectively. We should be willing to demonstrate a similar commitment to the education of our children.

Kuznetsky: The most important issue is the mismanagement of the second largest school district with much waste at the top when money can be spent on children, teachers and the curriculum. If the district was divided, there would not be as much management waste and not as many people would be needed, and many jobs could be re-evaluated. Also, safety is another big issue.

Valley Issues

Q. Besides air conditioning and year-round schools, are there such things as Valley school issues that are different from the problems affecting all Los Angeles schools?

Bieber: I don’t believe so and haven’t heard of any.

Brent: We all want the same quality education without fearing for the safety of our students. Parents throughout our city want the same. These issues cross ethnic and social lines.

Korenstein: Yes. One issue of extreme importance to the Valley is our lack of sufficient representation on the school board. Due to the recent redistricting by the City Council, the San Fernando Valley lost a Board of Education seat.

Kuznetsky: Air conditioning is badly needed in some schools that have to go through the summer and if these schools do not get air conditioning, they need to go back to regular schedules and not go to school in the summer.

Personal Priorities

Q. What would your highest priorities be as a board member?

Bieber: My background is business and management. My interest is our children and their advancement of their future, as well as society in general. If we don’t teach them the basics, we are in for a very bumpy ride. Education is the key, lifelong learning is the goal, and this is what advances us all. Education must also include the arts and music, because this is what gives us our civilization, our humanity and we have lost sight of this in favor of getting everybody into college as an academic, and this has proven to be unrealistic.

Brent: Re-establish confidence in our school district by taking positive and decisive action that places safety and quality education as a top priority. Students, parents and school staffs must understand what the rules are and be held accountable to those standards. It is time to “Take Back the Schools.”

Korenstein: My highest priority, in addition to advocating a greater statewide commitment to better funding for our schools, is to increase school safety. Our kids need and deserve to have the most secure environment in which to learn.

Kuznetsky: My highest priority as a board member would be the children and their education and safety. I would make it my concern to push for legislation for funding for safer programs for our schools, metal detectors, more guards on campus, education programs for students and parents and after-school sports programs.

Union Influence

Q. Do you believe the teachers union, or any other employee group, exerts too much influence in the district?

Bieber: The school board should be responsible to two, and only two groups: the parents and the kids. To have board members who are beholden to the teachers union, or worse, to have a candidate running for this office who is president of the administrators union is, to me, unconscionable.

Brent: Yes. The leadership of the teachers union has been allowed by the present Board of Education to exert dictatorship powers over decision. When one group is able to “buy and sell” members of the Board of Education we have machine politics and all the extortion it exerts.

Korenstein: It is always difficult to balance the interests of every group involved, but the district has worked hard to listen to the concerns of students, teachers, parents and administrators to ensure we create an effective agenda for our schools. Teachers, working so closely with our children, have a very important role to play. We must ensure, however, that all employees of the district can participate in helping to restructure L.A. Unified.

Kuznetsky: Yes, I do believe all these unions, whether it be teachers or administrator’s union, do exert too much influence and then it becomes a pull on both sides when children should be thought of first.

Teacher Contract

Q. Do you support the teacher contract offer crafted by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown?

Bieber: If that’s the best he could do, fine. But at what expense? So now the teachers have their money, but as I understand it, 2% will come from the “teaching materials” column. To me, that means that they will not go on strike and can go to work, but the tools for the job may not be available. Mr. Brown would have gained more points by seriously looking into the runaway spending of his cronies up in Sacramento.

Brent: No. The proposed contract is in conflict with everything LEARN stands for. It also directly takes monies from the schools and mortgages the present and future education of our students.

Korenstein: Although the offer put together by Willie Brown involves some very painful sacrifices, financially the district has no other choice. It would have been unthinkable to have gone through a strike at this point in L.A.’s history--recovering from the riots and awaiting the next jury decision in the Rodney King case. We need to work together to make sure that the state and the federal government make an investment in our future--our children’s education.

Kuznetsky: I would have liked to have seen a better contract for teachers, but I did support it. It is very hard for teachers’ pay to be cut, especially at this time. Many have to take two jobs to make ends meet and many spend their own money for materials for projects in the classroom. Because they care about the children, it is my hope that the contract, as is, will be good for all concerned.

Accessible Condoms

Q. Do you support the availability of condoms and other contraceptives on high school campuses?

Bieber: I am a realist. There are real issues here, and they transcend religion and what one would like to believe. AIDS is real, and deadly. Teen pregnancy is real, and creates a situation that drains valuable resources that are needed elsewhere. The fact of the matter is that some teen-agers will, at some point, whether they are ready or not, experiment with sex. And since the fact is that most parents cannot or will not discuss anything regarding sex and pass along the information to their progeny, the next best place is the school, not their un- or misinformed peers.

Brent: Yes, but only in a controlled and organized manner.

Korenstein: The school-based health clinics have proven very effective in providing a variety of services, including providing condoms and contraceptive information with parental permission. Given the terrible number of AIDS-related deaths, I believe that it is essential that we take action to protect our students from the threat of AIDS. Unfortunately, we cannot ignore the fact that many teen-agers are sexually active. At the very least, these teens, with their parent’s consent, need information and access to contraceptives and condoms which could save their lives.

Kuznetsky: Many teen-agers feel AIDS and pregnancy cannot happen to them. It only happens to others. We need programs or classes in our schools that should be given about AIDS where students can become more informed. I feel condoms especially need to be available on high school campuses for students at the health center.

Redistricting Plan

Q. Do you agree with the school board redistricting plan passed last summer by the Los Angeles City Council?

Bieber: A gerrymander by any other name is still a gerrymander. This is one of the problems of the board. Too much self-interest instead of interest where it ought to be--the education of our children.

Brent: The redistricting plan is the result of the Board of Education not being responsive to the public. The result of this action, however, has left the Valley with less representation. The movement to “break up” the Valley grew out of deep frustration that our elected officials have lost sight of their responsibilities to the public.

Korenstein: I do not agree with the redistricting plan which has unfairly reduced Valley representation. The Valley represents one-third of the district’s overall population, but has only one of the seven seats on the board. All LAUSD voices need to be heard if we are to move forward on school reform.

Kuznetsky: I feel the redistricting plan passed by the Los Angeles City Council took away a representative and seat from the school board in the Valley.

Bilingual Education

Q. Do you support bilingual education?

Bieber: The language currency of America is English. I support the teaching of English toward making it the first language. I would like to see a program put in place that makes English, as part of the ongoing learning process, part of the homework for the student to teach his parents the language. This would not only reinforce the use of English, but the side benefit is that the parents will also be brought up to speed, and this can only benefit us all as a community. I might add that I am fluent in Spanish, and read other languages, as well.

Brent: I support educational goals that will meet the diverse needs of our ethnically diverse student population. I especially support English as a Second Language for students and adults.

Korenstein: Bilingual programs have been shown to be very effective in improving all language skills and giving immigrant children crucial support in making the transition to English as quickly as possible. Bilingual education helps to keep students from falling behind in other subjects while they are learning English, but this must be couple with ongoing testing to ensure that students are moved into the mainstream at the earliest opportunity.

Kuznetsky: I feel bilingual education is a very important part of the school curriculum. But many students are kept in bilingual programs longer than needed. Most students do not need to be in the bilingual class up to the fifth or sixth grade. They can and should be mainstreamed out as soon as possible so they don’t lag behind in school.

District Management

Q. Do you believe the school district to be mismanaged?

Bieber: That is one of the reasons for my running for this office. I have watched the school board meetings from time to time on television and have come to the realization that for the most part, these folks don’t have a clue. I’m sure they mean well, but their experiment has gone awry. If the way these meetings are run is any indication of the overall operation of the board, is it any wonder? Services are overpaid, materials are not negotiated for best price, and the list goes on and on. Some teacher-friends of mine showed me a recent pay stub, and it indicated that nobody knows how to run or set up a decent accounting program to pay the teachers in a manner that can be understood by a person of reasonable intelligence, let alone someone with two master’s degrees. It boils down to the the business of the school board is not being attended to, and a few people have taken a part-time job and turned it into a full-time career for no reason.

Brent: I believe the current Board of Education has effectively destroyed our school district with their micro-management of our district. By non-action in crucial areas such as curriculum, safety, morals and values, they have ignored their responsibilities and in effect threatened the well-being of our students.

Korenstein: A school district of this size--larger than many states--has little chance of functioning rationally and effectively. We need to cut down the bureaucracy and increase local control. To try to address some of the problems posed by such a large district, the LAUSD Board of Education has just initiated a massive audit to study and make recommendations about how the district can be better managed.

Kuznetsky: We need to cut through red tape and take power away from centralized bureaucrats and the mismanaged school district and give power back to individual communities to work together to improve local schools. I believe this can best be done through decentralizing districts with no more than 100,000 students in each district using the LEARN initiative, which I feel would be best implemented in a more efficient way in smaller districts. We have to stop thinking about ourselves and risk taking a chance to improve our schools. I do not want to see another generation of children lose to a failing school system.

School Attendance

Q. Do your children attend public or private schools?

Bieber: My children attend public school, as did my wife and myself.

Brent: My children attended 12 years of public school in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the San Fernando Valley.

Korenstein: My three children have attended public school in the Valley, and my youngest son is currently in public high school here. I also want my new granddaughter to be able to get a quality public education in an atmosphere free from violence.

Kuznetsky: My daughter attended the Los Angeles Unified School District.

School Bonds

Q. Do you support efforts to make school bond measures passable by a simple majority?

Bieber: No.

Brent: Yes.

Korenstein: Yes. We are in desperate need of more funds for our schools. The only way to accomplish this is to change the two-thirds requirement on passage of school bond measures to a simple majority.

Kuznetsky: Yes, I feel we need to construct a bond to be passed in Los Angeles, develop a way for allocation and quick distribution of state bond funds, allow funds to be used to open closed schools and provide for construction of new schools, which we have not had for years and desperately need.

Transfer Policy

Q. Do you agree with the “opportunity transfer” policy that allows students with discipline problems to switch campuses?

Bieber: No. By taking the child out of his/her environment and adding the stress of a new one, this cannot be justified. We need to look at the problems causing the discipline problem in the first place. This may mean integrating of social services into the mix, but we must get to the root of the problems and solve them with more than just “Band-Aid” fixes.

Brent: No. Those students need alternate schools/classes that are apart from the regular schools. Students who have demonstrated a chronic pattern of negative or violent behavior need to be removed form those students who want to study and achieve a quality education. It is not fair for a student to come to school with a sense of fear for his/her personal safety.

Korenstein: No. I have fought against this policy, which simply shuttles violent students from school to school without addressing the real causes of the violence, or providing a program to help these kids directly. I have just brought forward a motion to create a task force to review and correct the misuse of this policy.

Kuznetsky: The policy needs to be looked at more carefully. There is no problem transferring students, but there is with transferring discipline problems without attending to the problem in every way we can. This keeps going on where the student is continually transferred because no one wants to bother with him/her--just push them on to another to take care of it. Therefore, I am not for it.