Petition Drive a Success; Vote on Trustee Set : Education: Board critic David Montgomery gains enough signatures to force a Nov. 3 special election. He will challenge Charlie Chung, who was appointed in May.

ABC UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT — A petition drive has forced a special trustee election in November that will pit the school board’s appointee against a union-backed board critic.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education ordered the election in the ABC Unified School District after certifying this week that 670 voters, about 40 more than necessary, signed the election petition.

Parent and board critic David Montgomery, who organized the petition drive, immediately announced plans to run for the unexpired term of former trustee Dean Criss, who died in March.

“I’m very pleased. We accomplished what we wanted to,” Montgomery said of the petition effort. “We are exercising the right that was given to us by law to challenge the board’s decision.”

One of Montgomery’s opponents will be Charlie Chung, the choice of a majority of board members. The board appointed Chung to the board May 5 after interviewing 11 applicants, including Montgomery.

Chung served almost two months but stepped down this week, as required by law, after the county ordered the election.

Candidates have from July 13 through Aug. 7 to file for the seat on the seven-member board. The top vote-getter in the Nov. 3 election will serve until November, 1993.

The campaign heated up even before it officially began.

First Montgomery complained that the board failed to give fair consideration to him and other candidates when they picked Chung. “Because I’ve been critical of them, they’re trying to find ways to not have to appoint me,” Montgomery said after the board selected Chung. “Obviously they’ve put on someone who doesn’t know that much about the issues. It sounds like sour grapes when I say that, but I don’t mean that to be. I feel I’m more qualified.”

Montgomery, 41, served on a district advisory committee and has criticized district plans to raise money by leasing some properties to commercial and residential developers. He has also accused a majority of board members of being uncommunicative and of not sufficiently challenging the decisions of Supt. Larry Lucas and top administrators.

Montgomery’s sometimes combative attitude toward district officials helped win him past endorsements from the district’s labor unions, which have been embroiled in contract disputes since last fall. Union support in the November, 1991, election, however, was not enough to push Montgomery into office. Montgomery finished sixth among nine candidates; Chung was not a candidate. All four incumbents retained their seats in the school system, which serves Cerritos, Artesia, Hawaiian Gardens, and parts of Lakewood and Norwalk.

The ABC Federation of Teachers has already pledged renewed support for Montgomery, a painting contractor with six children, ages 6 to 16. The board should have appointed Montgomery or someone else who ran for office last November, union Co-President Joan Elliot said.

“We felt that Mr. Montgomery was more qualified because he ran a campaign and addressed the issues that were out there,” Elliot said.

Chung owns a Cerritos real estate company and also works as a fiber-optics engineer for GTE-West in Pomona. The 50-year-old Korea native chaired a district advisory committee of Korean parents and has two daughters attending district schools.

Board members praised him as a bridge to the Asian community when they appointed him. About 35% of the district’s 21,500 students are Asian. Koreans make up the largest Asian group and fastest growing ethnic group in the school system.

Although he has never run for office, Chung quickly showed that he was ready to do battle. Shortly after Montgomery submitted his petition, Chung and his wife, Sue, went to Montgomery’s Cerritos neighborhood to distribute flyers urging voters to withdraw their signatures.

“The reason I started this is I got a few calls from voters,” Chung said. “They say that Montgomery said he didn’t have an open interview” for the board vacancy.

“These are false statements. I explained all the true facts and they say, ‘I didn’t know that.’ So they said they want to remove their names from the petition.”

Officials said 45 voters wrote to the county registrar asking to have their names withdrawn, which could have jeopardized the petition’s success. But voters cannot remove their names once organizers submit a petition to the registrar, said Matthew Spies, business services coordinator for the county education office.

Chung criticized Montgomery for forcing a special election during one of the district’s tighter budget years. Chung’s flyer echoed that theme, reading: “It is wrong to spend $100,000 of taxpayers’ money because of one person’s bruised ego.”

Montgomery responded that Chung misled voters by claiming that a special election would be so costly. County officials said the election will cost about $27,000. Chung said he got the higher figure from an early district estimate.

Montgomery also accused district officials of encouraging voters to withdraw their signatures, a charge the district denied. The district sought a legal opinion on whether voters could withdraw their signatures but only to answer inquiries, spokeswoman Helen Fried said.