EDITORIAL : UNFINISHED BUSINESS THE SCHOOL BOARD HAS TO PLAY CATCH-UP AFTER THE ELECTION.

VOTERS accepted a new burden when they approved Proposition BB, the $2.4 billion school bond issue on Tuesday's ballot, and now it's time for the Los Angeles Board of Education to show the right stuff by facing up to some difficult decisions the board postponed deliberately until after election day.

The delay was a political calculation to minimize the risk that unpopular decisions by the school board might anger voters and contribute to the defeat of the bond measure for campus repairs and improvements.

Here are some of the hot potatoes the board postponed:

A decision on construction of the Belmont Learning Complex, a proposed high school campus downtown near the Harbor Freeway. A bitter political fight is being waged, mostly behind the scenes, to stop the board from giving the go-ahead to the chosen developer.

If the board withholds final approval, it will be an admission that the district bungled the years of planning that already have gone into this project. But if that's the case, the board should admit the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

Ebonics. Board member Barbara Boudreaux is pushing for additional funding for teaching English through the use of ``ebonics'' or African-American speech. The board should put politics aside and reaffirm its commitment to giving all children a truly first-class education - despite pressure from groups that are less interested in tried-and-true teaching methods, and more interested in political posturing.

Domestic partners. The board is considering extending health-insurance benefits to the unmarried companions of district employees, at an estimated cost of more than $3 million a year, when the cash-strapped district cannot even provide children with enough modern textbooks and classroom instructional materials. The decision will show whether the board places a higher priority on its employees or the children.

In addition to those issues, another great concern at this moment is the selection of a new superintendent for the district. That decision will have a crucial effect on the quality of education for all children in the district's schools for years to come.

Nothing that the board members do is more important than the quality of education, and the board must bite the bullet and select a superintendent without regard for racial and ethnic politics, which some groups want to inject in the process.

The criterion must be the quality of education, period. We dare say there isn't a single parent, either Latino or Anglo or Asian or African-American, who is as genuinely concerned with the superintendent's ethnicity as with the quality of education that children get in district classrooms.

The board members must show the courage to stand up and make the hard choices despite the political consequences, just as voters did by agreeing to tax themselves for years to come as the price of better schools.