Canyon Bond and Schools Generate Heat : Teacher contracts and how to manage financial concerns dominate the spirited campaigns for seats on several local education panels.

They control budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. They engage in often-bitter battles over salaries and contracts that cripple school operations for months at a time. They literally hold the future of local education--and thus, the future of the county’s children--in their hands.

They are the trustees of local school boards, and sometimes their election campaigns seem unimportant to voters without school-age children. But parents, teachers and other educators know that the intensity of their races often makes that of larger campaigns pale by comparison.

While each district has its own concerns, several key issues have characterized the tone of campaigns in several Orange County districts. Financial concerns are generally No. 1 on the list; in many districts, incumbents have cried that their hands are tied by dwindling budget allocations from the state and challengers have countered that the incumbents are guilty of fiscal malfeasance.

Most campaigns have also emphasized the issue of teacher contracts. In just about every district with a hot race this year, stalled contract talks and teachers’ job actions have enraged parents, who in many cases complained that recalcitrant school boards failed to step up the pace of negotiations and that children have suffered as a result.

The answer, some parents have argued, is to wipe out the old school boards and start with a fresh panel.

Voters will render their verdict Tuesday in 12 school districts and two community college districts.

Of the 12 elementary, unified and high school districts, five have been particularly hard-fought, and often bitter, campaigns: the Tustin Unified, Fountain Valley, Ocean View, Huntington Beach City and Anaheim Union High School districts.

Parent activism and sniping among candidates has been greatest in Huntington Beach, where voters will decide on board members in both the Huntington Beach City and Ocean View elementary districts.

In the Ocean View race, the four candidates elected--at least two of whom will be new members--will be faced with problems that have divided trustees during the past year. Two board vacancies are being created, as trustees Janet Garrick and Elizabeth Spurlock decided not to seek reelection. Two others, board President Charles Osterlund and trustee Carolyn Hunt, are seeking new terms.

Both will face tough challenges--nine opponents have come forward to battle for the open seats, with most blaming the current board for continuing fiscal problems that could result in a $1-million budget shortfall next year and could force the board to go ahead with the school shutdowns that were proposed in June but delayed because of vehement protests.

Bitter labor unrest that resulted in teachers boycotting extracurricular activities and slow progress in desegregating heavily Latino Oak View school--under threat of a clampdown by the state Department of Education--have also been key issues in the Ocean View campaign.

In the adjoining Huntington Beach City district, the race for three seats has aligned two nine-year incumbents trumpeting their records against a dissenting trustee and three challengers assailing the status quo and proposing new ideas.

As in Ocean View, the challengers have highlighted a mounting financial crisis in the face of calls from parents and teachers to spend more on educational programs and on poor relations with teachers, who picketed and staged work slowdowns last year to protest prolonged contract negotiations.

Perhaps most notable about the campaign, however, is that the candidates uniformly avoided discussing the controversial resignation of Supt. Diana Peters last summer. The most important issue facing the board after the election will almost certainly be hiring Peters’ successor.

The race has been so hard-fought that incumbent Robert Mann and challenger Shirley Carey have each spent more than $10,000 on their campaigns, relatively hefty sums for a board campaign in an eight-school district.

In the Anaheim Union High School district race, six challengers and one incumbent vying for the three open seats have spent about $20,000 on street placards and publicity. The candidates have criticized the current board for allegedly caving in to district demands and have accused the board of being irresponsible in handling the district’s $106-million annual budget.

In Tustin, the school board race has been made controversial by the candidacy of former Supt. Maurice A. Ross, who resigned last year, citing philosophical differences with the present school board. While Ross has said he merely wants to continue serving the district he ran for 13 years, his critics argue that his candidacy is an attempt to regain lost power and fear that his election would upset a tenuous peace between the board and the teachers union in the once-chaotic district.

In Fountain Valley, much of the campaign has focused on possible health hazards from electromagnetic fields generated by power lines near many of the district’s schools--much to the dismay of the incumbents. Current board members argue that the campaign issue of electromagnetic fields has become a smoke screen obscuring the district’s more pressing problems, such as the fiscal difficulties that led to this year’s shutdown of Fountain Valley Elementary School.

Other districts in which school board elections will be held are Fullerton Joint Union High School, Laguna Beach Unified, Placentia Unified, Saddleback Valley Unified, Fullerton, Savanna and Westminster. Elections will also be held for the boards of the Rancho Santiago and North Orange County community college districts.

Lisa Mascaro, John Penner and Shannon Sands contributed to this report.