COURTING GLENDALE MODERATES : CLINTON EXTOLS `FAMILY VALUES'.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

Saying he wants to put families first, President Clinton called Tuesday for television networks to provide three hours of children's educational programming each week and for new tax breaks for college students.

In an address at Glendale College, Clinton also championed school uniforms for students, curfews for teen-agers and restricting access to violent or sexually-explicit television programming.

The educational programming, Clinton said, is increasingly important at a time when parents are frequently too busy to devote enough attention to their children's schoolwork.

``I want to formally reissue an invitation to the people from the entertainment industry involved in television to come back to the White House before the end of July to discuss that,'' the president said. ``If you're here in school, going to community college for four hours a day, and your kids are back at home watching television, it wouldn't hurt to have at least three hours a week devoted to their education while you're here pursuing yours.''

Aides said it was Clinton's first major speech of the campaign season to focus on family values. Campaign spokesman Joe Lockheart said the pitch was aimed at courting moderate Republicans who live in communities like suburban Glendale.

Four years ago, it was GOP President Bush who latched onto the phrase ``family values.'' But on Tuesday Clinton attempted to turn the tables, appearing at a podium adorned with the phrase ``Putting Families First.''

But instead of focusing on the decline of families, Clinton talked about what could be done to strengthen families - and touted Glendale Community College as a model.

``Community colleges fill a need to strengthen the communities, to strengthen people's individual dreams and to help them build successful families,'' he said.

He promoted his proposal to guarantee not just 12 years of school for all Americans, but 14 years - that is, an additional two years for higher education or training.

He said his proposals for a $10,000 tax deduction for tuition, or a $1,500 tax credit for community college students, would give more people access to higher education.

Clinton said government needs to offer young people a ``basic bargain,'' giving them the opportunities they need to make it in the world, but making them responsible for seizing those opportunities.

He also talked of creating a country in which citizens could ``succeed at work and at home.''

``Any great society that forces people to make a choice in the end is going to fail,'' Clinton said. ``If you have to fail at home in order to succeed at work, we're in trouble.''

Clinton carried Glendale by 114 votes in 1992, marking the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had taken the city since Franklin Delano Roosevelt won his first term in 1932.

But while Republicans still outnumber Democrats in Glendale, some 40,000 immigrants have moved into the city in the past 10 years, transforming it from a suburb dominated by conservative whites, to a multicultural community with large Armenian, Latino and Asian populations.

Nowhere is the change more apparent than in Glendale's schools and community college, where the city's minority population was well-represented at Tuesday's speech.

Alice Ghademians, a 46-year-old Armenian immigrant and Glendale College student, said she was glad to hear Clinton acknowledge people like her who are juggling parenthood and school.

``We're trying to make it easier for students, so they won't be in the same position all of their lives,'' Ghademians said.

But Assemblyman James Rogan, R-Glendale, who is running for Congress in Glendale, questioned the president's sincerity on the family values issue.

``I think `putting families first' is a great campaign theme. It's been a Republican theme for years,'' Rogan said. ``The difference between the president's theme and the Republicans' theme is that the Republicans mean it.''

Rogan said Clinton took some very anti-family steps when he opposed a $500 tax credit for families and presented budgets that were billions of dollars out of balance.

``Does his rhetoric match his reality? For the last three and half years, the answer is no,'' said Rogan, who said he ran into Clinton by coincidence later in the day over lunch at the Rocky Cola Cafe in Montrose.

Heather Wenning, a 22-year-old Glendale College student, said she found Clinton's new focus on family issues somewhat suspect.

``It's kind of a little niche he can use to move towards the center,'' said Wenning, a political science major. ``I thought it was a little hypocritical.''

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Photo: (Color) President Clinton shakes hands with the crow d after speaking on families and education at Glendale Community College.

John McCoy/Daily News