EDITORIAL MONEY TALKS SPECIAL-INTEREST CASH FUELS LAUSD REFORM BATTLE.

THE job of Los Angeles Unified School District board members is only part time, and it pays but $24,000 a year -- hardly the most desirable office in a region that routinely bestows six-figure salaries upon its public officials.

And yet the position is so highly coveted that campaigns for it command millions of dollars in special-interest contributions.

That ought to tell you something.

School board members have a lot of power. They also control the flow of a lot of money, like the $19 billion in construction bonds and billions of dollars more in payroll and contracts.

No wonder, then, that United Teachers Los Angeles has already kicked in $900,000 in anticipation of the March 6 school board election. It wants to make sure that its candidates -- candidates beholden to the union and its interests -- remain in control.

And understandably so.

Less than two weeks ago, the school board agreed to give all L.A. teachers a hefty 6 percent, one-year pay hike that will cost the district $200 million more than it had budgeted for.

It pays to have friendly folks in power. And it pays doubly to have friendly folks indebted to you at the other side of the collective-bargaining table.

But it doesn't pay, for the rest of us, to have a single special interest so firmly in control. As we've seen with the school board's consistent resistance to reform, entrenched powers aren't much predisposed toward change or toward empowering communities.

Yet for school board challengers to have a fighting chance against UTLA-bankrolled candidates, they need massive amounts of cash of their own. Sadly, it takes special interests to defeat special interests.

Richard Riordan proved as much when, as mayor, he funded a slate of reform-minded candidates who were briefly able to wrest control of the LAUSD away from the old guard. And now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is trying to do the same, having contributed $975,000 to some of the reformers running in the March election.

All these massive expenditures are worrisome, as is the return that the special interests who fund the mayor's efforts will no doubt expect from him. But in an imperfect world, it's the best bet for saving the LAUSD.

That's why voters can do no better than to back all four of the candidates most committed to change in next Tuesday's election -- Tamar Galatzan, Johnathan Williams, Yolie Flores Aguilar and Richard Vladovic.

It's also why this is an election no one can afford to sit out. There's too much at stake -- as the special interests know all too well.

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