PTA Ousts Temperance Crusader : Beverly Hills: Trisha Roth’s anti-alcohol tactics are called ‘antagonistic.’ She vows to continue her campaign.

Trisha Roth found that her intemperance on temperance can backfire when her colleagues in the El Rodeo School PTA voted to oust her from office last week because her crusading had become “antagonistic.”

The dispute, months in the brewing, came to a head at a general meeting Thursday of the Beverly Hills school’s PTA. By a 40-13 vote, the membership removed Roth from her post as the organization’s historian--the one who tallies the hours that members have volunteered and maintains reports.

The vote was ordered by the state PTA last Monday. Roth had refused several requests to resign.

“(We) felt she had breached our trust and confidence and continued to be antagonistic toward the rest of the group,” said Lillian Raffel, treasurer for the PTA of the Beverly Hills school.

But Roth, whose anti-alcohol stand was featured prominently in her unsuccessful bid for the Beverly Hills City Council last spring, says she’ll keep pushing elsewhere. Even if she’s not welcome at the PTA, she’ll continue to stage alcohol-free parties for teen-agers and protest the granting of liquor licenses, she said.

The battle began in April when Roth spotted six bottles of vintage Mouton Rothschild in a silent auction at an El Rodeo PTA carnival. She complained to organizers and school officials that it violated PTA rules and glorified alcohol to children.

No such message was meant, said PTA President Patti Tanenbaum, whose husband, Robert, was one of the two incumbents to defeat Roth in the council race. But she said Roth’s conduct was a “hasty and irrational” outburst and an embarrassment to the hard-working carnival volunteers.

Roth called on city and county officials to investigate. The El Rodeo PTA executive committee asked her to resign, she refused, and the controversy bubbled up to the district PTA level.

In June, the 33rd District of the California Congress of Parents, Teachers and Students vindicated Roth, ruling that the auction did violate the state Education Code as well as PTA guidelines that “money should not be raised through any activity that includes the sale of liquor.”

But it also recommended that Roth resign because she is “venting personal grievances” and “is not willing to put the (carnival) incident aside and continue to work with El Rodeo PTA.” Failing that, the school’s PTA board could vote to remove her, the district decided.

Roth appealed the findings to the state PTA. In the meantime, at a breakfast hosted by Tanenbaum, Roth was left out of ceremonies to install the new PTA officers.

After a four-hour session last Monday, the state PTA concurred with the district’s recommendation and ordered a vote on Roth’s fate. Members could vote to remove her or put her on probation--which would have meant a state PTA representative sitting in on the monthly El Rodeo meetings to monitor Roth’s behavior.

“Trisha kept insinuating members of the PTA and the (executive) board were not for drug and alcohol programs,” said Treasurer Raffel. “Frankly, that’s insulting and very presumptuous. It’s almost as if she’s accusing us of giving drugs and alcohol to children.”

But Laurie Albert, a chairwoman of the school PTA’s legislative committee, said, “This was the best example of down and out in Beverly Hills--rich kids with nothing better to do than lynch someone.”

“The punishment does not fit the crime,” said Albert, who spoke in Roth’s favor before the vote. Probation would have been an appropriate middle ground, she said.

Roth said she has written to the national PTA, objecting that the state hearing offered no opportunity to “face (her) accusers and cross-examine.” Instead, both sides presented their witnesses separately.

Although she doesn’t question Roth’s intentions, Raffel does question her methods. “People like to be educated, and not confronted.” But Roth said her crusade will not fizzle, although “I will consider modifying my approaches.”