CANTER OFFERS OLIVE BRANCH TO FORMER FOES LAUSD TRUSTEE REACHING OUT.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Staff Writer

After injecting nearly $3 million into the most vitriolic school board race in Los Angeles history, Marlene Canter has spent the first three months on the job reaching out to some of her fiercest campaign opponents.

No. 1 on the list: United Teachers Los Angeles, the powerful teachers union that invested more than $500,000 in an unsuccessful campaign to re-elect Valerie Fields to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

``Because the teachers union was not supportive of me, I think the hardest I had to work was to re-establish myself with teachers as an advocate of theirs,'' said Canter, the wealthy Westside businesswoman whose former company, incidentally, specialized in teacher training.

Canter has faced scant controversy during her first 100 days in office. But what has become clear is that the woman who ran an aggressive campaign has traded in her campaign tactics for an olive branch.

``She's reaching out to all segments of the community, and she's brought a lot of enthusiasm to the job,'' said Virgil Roberts, co-chair of the Los Angeles County Alliance for Student Achievement, a nonprofit education advocacy group.

But in only three months, Canter has cast few headline-catching votes. In September, she joined the board majority in supporting a last-minute motion to spend $20 million in discretionary funds to hire library staff and secondary school counselors.

Canter also roiled the UTLA when she commented that the vote was the right thing to do because students don't have a lobby. Union President Day Higuchi said some teachers were offended because ``they felt she was saying teachers don't care about their students.''

``I didn't mean it at all to be disparaging to the unions,'' Canter later explained. ``I just felt that whenever I have an opportunity to vote on putting resources directly into the schools that will directly impact the children, I want to do it.''

Still, Higuchi said, the union and Canter have made progress since the mudslinging that marked the 4th District seat campaign. And the alliance with teachers is a critical one for Canter, especially now that she oversees the human resources committee in charge of recruiting and training teachers and administrators.

Already, Canter has asked the union to form an advisory group to work closely with her.

``I think we treated her roughly. There was more than enough on both sides to make people angry at each other,'' Higuchi said. ``But that was then and this is now. I think people need to have an opportunity to form a relationship.''

Canter says her job is not to micromanage the district but rather to help staff members do their job - and hold them accountable once the job is done. One of her top priorities is to hire more principals and teachers.

That's something she can monitor as chairwoman of the district's newly created human resources committee. At the committee's meeting last week, Canter created a task force to look into the process now used to choose principals and another to look into salary schedules.

Lynda Levitan, 31st District PTSA president whose son attends El Camino High School in Woodland Hills, part of Canter's district, said training and having solid elementary school administrators is a key element to building better-performing schools. She said she's eager to see what Canter can do.

``Maybe it's too early for us to make a judgment call about her,'' she said. ``I think we need to give her a chance to get her feet wet.''

Canter maintains that the reform board has worked hard to bring new and qualified people to the district. ``When you're looking at the district from the outside in, all you see is a faceless bureaucracy,'' she said. ``In my first 100 days, I met a lot of very committed, talented and smart people. It isn't faceless at all.''

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