May 5, 1993

After the most fiercely disputed campaign in memory, New Yorkers turned the city's community school board elections yesterday into a referendum on sex, lies and ideology. Some voters expressed fears that the schools taught too much about sex, too quickly. Others warned that without a housecleaning, more lies and corruption like the bribery scandal that erupted last week in District 12 in the Bronx would further weaken the system. And others anguished about a takeover by what they described as extremists.

On his second day as a student at Morehouse College, Michael Davis found himself called onto a stage with the director Spike Lee to address what many students took to be a serious problem at the school: Mr. Davis's presence there. Thus began Mr. Davis's career as the only white student at Morehouse, the elite black men's school here whose graduates include Mr. Lee and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

THE National Basketball Association playoffs, which started last Thursday and will last through mid-June, are more than a showcase of the players' athleticism, grace, muscle and trash-talking, more than a display of slam dunks, three-point shots, behind-the-back passes and reverse layups, and more than a clinic of savvy coaching maneuvers and last-second stratagems. They will be a nightly tribute to the shaved head, for it seems that basketball players have embraced the shorn look more than any other athletic group or any other profession.

The Government's main economic forecasting gauge plunged 1 percent in March, the biggest drop since the middle of the 1990-91 recession. It was the latest report to raise questions about the strength and durability of the economic expansion.

Smarting from losses in early battles with Congress and from criticism of his first 100 days, President Clinton conceded today that his White House was "out of focus" and that his staff needed to be better organized. Mr. Clinton, overburdened by his own crowded agenda, admitted his dissatisfaction in remarks to reporters in which he outlined a new effort to focus his Administration.