ELECTIONS / SCHOOL BOARD : Conservative Trustee May Be Joined by Others

Since her election two years ago, Ventura County School Board member Wendy Larner often has voted alone.

On issues ranging from sex education to a pay raise for the county schools superintendent, Larner has been the sole trustee opposing the four-member majority.

But she may not be alone much longer.

Three other candidates embracing some of the same conservative views as Larner are running for three available seats in November.

If even only two of them win, their viewpoint may hold sway on the county school board.

In Simi Valley, Walt Madrid, executive director of the conservative group Citizens for Truth in Education and a member of the local chapter of the Christian Coalition, is vying against incumbent Al Rosen and attorney Daniel R. Gonzalez.

Conservative Christian homemaker Angela N. Miller is opposing incumbent Juanita Sanchez-Valdez, and college teacher Jeffrey N. Moss is in the race for the seat representing the Oxnard and Ventura area.

And in Thousand Oaks, businessman Marty Bates is challenging incumbent Doylenne G. Johnson.

Bates shares certain views with Madrid and Miller that distinguish the three from other candidates in the field.

Of the eight candidates, they are the only ones who support Proposition 187, the ballot initiative that would ban illegal immigrants from public school classrooms.

The three share something else: They decided to run for the board after the firing of county schools Principal Dan Flynn.

The county board approves the budget and oversees policy for 17 county-run schools and programs serving youngsters who are severely disabled, who have run into trouble with the law or who have been kicked out of their home districts.

Flynn was principal of the three schools for youths who are in jail or juvenile hall when he ran in the June election against his boss, County Schools Supt. Charles Weis, for Weis’ job.

Flynn lost, but it wasn’t his defeat that galvanized his supporters to run for the county board. It was his firing by Weis less than three weeks after the election.

Although the superintendent said he dismissed Flynn solely because of poor job performance, many Flynn supporters suggested the firing smacked of political revenge.

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At the first board meeting after his dismissal, about two dozen Flynn supporters showed up to protest the action. Madrid, Miller and Bates were there.

Some political observers said the race amounts to a poll of the public’s views of Weis versus Flynn.

“This is a referendum on the firing of Dan Flynn,” said Michael Dunn, who represents Thousand Oaks on the county’s Republican Central Committee. “If you think that firing was justified, vote for Chuck Weis. If you think it was mean and uncalled-for, vote for Walt Madrid, Marty Bates and Angela Miller.”

Weis agrees that the board race seems to be partly about him.

“Somehow it seems they are trying to get back at me for doing my job,” he said.

After the firing, Flynn supporters turned their ire not only on the superintendent but also on the board, demanding that trustees overturn Weis’ decision.

But board members said their hands were tied.

While local school boards appoint their superintendents and also make decisions about firing teachers and principals, the county board has an elected superintendent who is solely responsible for personnel decisions.

Four months after Flynn’s firing, the issue is still fueling some candidates’ campaigns.

Angela Miller says one of her first tasks as trustee would be to review Flynn’s firing.

Both the Ventura County counsel and the state attorney general have issued opinions that only the county superintendent has jurisdiction over hiring and firing, but Miller wants to get additional legal interpretations.

Now a 43-year-old housewife, Miller formerly worked as a singer with rock ‘n’ roll bands. She left that career after experiencing a religious conversion, she said.

Like Larner, Miller opposes sex-education programs that include information about contraceptives.

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All the other candidates, including Madrid and Bates, say they favor teaching about contraceptives while also promoting sexual abstinence among youths.

Besides changing the sex-education program in county-run schools, Miller said she hopes to influence teacher training throughout the county.

The county board votes on grant funding for some of the hundreds of workshops the county superintendent’s office holds each year for public school teachers. Like Larner, Miller said she is particularly concerned about workshops on sex and AIDS education.

Miller is running against incumbent Sanchez-Valdez and the third candidate, Moss, in the race to represent the Ventura and Oxnard area.

Appointed to the board in 1993 to replace a trustee who resigned, Sanchez-Valdez, 64, is a retired educator. She taught for 10 years in private Catholic schools in Los Angeles and worked 21 years in the Oxnard School District, including as a principal and district administrator.

Although she said she also wants to investigate whether the board could expand its powers over personnel matters, she said her main interest in serving as trustee is the disabled and troubled children in county-run schools.

“I’m interested in children with problems,” she said.

Sanchez-Valdez said her 24 years in this county help make her an effective trustee.

Miller moved to the county from Los Angeles in 1990, while Moss, a Los Angeles native, came from Santa Barbara to Ventura one year ago.

Moss has received the endorsements of the county’s Unity Pride Coalition, a liberal gay-rights group, and the Ventura County Federation of School Employees, the union representing about 200 educators at the county-run schools.

Besides teaching part time at Cal State Northridge, Moss is working toward his Ph.D. in education at UC Santa Barbara. He also has 20 years’ experience working with nonprofit groups for the disabled.

One of his goals, he said, is to ensure that the county schools office and local districts are not duplicating each other’s efforts in areas like special education and drug-use prevention programs.

He emphasizes that he has no specific agenda to push on the county board. “I don’t believe in any one philosophy,” he said. “I’m here to represent the people of this district.”

And he said he decided to run partly out of a concern that conservative Christians may take control of the board.

The same concern helped motivate Gonzalez in Simi Valley to enter the race for the seat representing that area.

But the 39-year-old attorney, who was endorsed by the union of county schools employees, shares at least one goal with the more conservative candidates: He believes county trustees should show more independence from Weis.

“I think they basically rubber-stamp a lot of policies that come across their desk,” Gonzalez said.

A past board president of the Simi Valley Free Clinic and past president of the Simi Valley Bar Assn., Gonzalez is now a vice president of the Ventura County Mexican-American Bar Assn.

If elected, Gonzalez said he would try to get businesses, police and churches more involved in county schools to help steer youths away from crime and into jobs.

Also in the Simi Valley race are incumbent Rosen and candidate Madrid.

Elected in 1989, Rosen, 67, has 12 years’ experience as a substitute and full-time teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Rosen said he wants to be reelected because of his long experience in education. “I spent so many years in the system,” he said. “I’ve lived education.”

Like Moss, Rosen said he wants to eliminate duplication of programs between local districts and the county superintendent’s office.

And while he denied charges that the board lacks independence, Rosen said he has a great deal of confidence in Weis and other administrators in the superintendent’s office.

Although the county schools office has become a favorite target of some conservatives, the third candidate in the Simi Valley race--Walt Madrid--said he is enthusiastic about some programs run by the county superintendent, like the training of principals.

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Active in conservative groups, Madrid sides with the conservative Christian movement in his support of taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school tuition and other issues. But he differs in his support for teaching students about both contraceptives and sexual abstinence.

Madrid, who works as a purchasing agent for a Westlake Village military hardware company, is also distancing himself from the furor over the firing of Flynn, even though it was that issue that sparked Madrid’s interest in the county school board.

“I’ll probably get condemned for this,” he said, but county trustees should put the Flynn episode behind them. “That has to do with the prior board.”

If elected, Madrid said, he would try to keep voters better informed about the board by holding regular meetings for constituents.

Bates is making the same campaign pledge in Thousand Oaks.

Contending that trustees have done a poor job of representing voters, Bates said he would meet with interested residents before all board meetings.

Owner of two small companies that market high-tech devices used in medical care, Bates, 57, said his business experience would help him guide the board’s review of school budgets.

Like Larner and Miller, Bates said he is interested in reviewing the teacher-training workshops run through the county schools office.

Students need to learn more of the basics in reading, writing and arithmetic, he said. And teacher training may be the place to start with this change in emphasis. “Those are the areas everyone complains about. So those are the areas where we need to give teachers information.”

Bates is challenging incumbent Doylenne Johnson, who was appointed to the board six years ago and who ran unopposed in her first election.

Although she now works full time as a supervisor at the Broadway department store at The Oaks mall, Johnson was for many years a homemaker who volunteered with the local and state Parent-Teacher Assn.

She said she takes a special interest in the students served by the county schools.

“Children at risk are the faceless children of the community,” she said.

Johnson said she was also concerned about Flynn’s firing. But she said trustees “are caught between a rock and a hard place” because of their inability to act on personnel matters.