JEAN QUAN has hit the ground running in her new job as District 4's City Councilwoman. That should be of no surprise to anyone who has watched her over the years.

I sat with Quan at breakfast this week, and we talked about her new job, her priorities, and her perspective on all things Oakland.

Quan wore a blue business suit and a dash of lipstick. That's definitely more of a buttoned-down look than she had before, during her tenure on the school board, and she acknowledged that. Someone once told her that a little lipstick helps men feel less threatened by successful women, and she's taken it to heart as well.

Quan called herself a "pragmatic liberal," a pragmatic sobriquet if there ever was one in this budget-busting era. She reminded me that she's the first Democrat to hold Montclair's seat, both on the council and school board. But Montclair and many of its surrounding neighborhoods have changed, and her politics may be closer to the district's heart now than the retired Mr. Spees.

As you may recall, her mettle was sorely tested in a bruising fight that set her and her corner man Don Perata against David Stein and his corner man Jerry Brown. While she didn't win the first round and failed to get most of the media endorsements, she still won the match.

She attributes that victory to marching up and down the hills for 14 months knocking on every door in the district twice, while registering a thousand new voters in the process. You have to give her credit for her tenacity (and her hamstrings) and for building the kind of grass-roots organization that it took to win. She told me she never once doubted that she would.

Not surprisingly, as we talked about policies and priorities, our conversation had a way of always winding itself back to the schools and the kids. Perhaps it was by design, she was, after all, in sound-bite territory. Still, it felt genuine, and after 12 raucous years on the school board, she's earned the right.

Her first priority in the city's budget crisis, she said, is to fight for after-school programs, especially those for middle schoolers, and the recreation centers. She claimed that, historically, the council's played a bigger role in after-school programs, and she's hoping to get the council reps back to it.

There is state and federal money for this, she said, though most funding programs will end this year. She's been lobbying the mayor behind the scenes to save the after-school programs at the rec centers. The city's latest budget proposal includes some of what she's fighting for.

She feels that the parks have always had a constituency, but not the rec centers. "I'm trying to create a recreation coalition," she told me. Rec centers and after-school programs, she said, are essential for youth, and they can help reduce crime, dropout rates, etc.

It's this emphasis on youth that's won her many supporters, she explained; a nice chunk of them are "moms with masters degrees."

Quan was also out there leading the charge during the battle for the libraries a few months back, and she's out there this time again. She's planning a new ballot measure to fix the inadequacies of Measure O. The measure, she said, did not provide the necessary funds for what it promised. She is hoping to get it on the ballot in March. Meanwhile, she's been lobbying the mayor to stave off more drastic library cuts long enough "to let the voters decide."

I asked Quan if she felt there was a coalition building among the four women on the council -- herself, Jane Bruner, Desley Brooks and Nancy Nadel. They were all quite vocal in calling for an investigation of police tactics during the April 7 anti-war protest at the port. While not acknowledging that there was a budding female coalition, due to political differences, she did note a change in way some things are getting done at City Hall.

"The women are more process-driven," she said, referring to. "We ask a lot more questions, require more data ..." She says the council is more transparent now, as well, with more tolerance of argument and discussion.

As for the city's current budget crisis, she was minding her cards close to her blue blazer.

"There's still more bureaucracy to cut," she offered. "We have to operate with less overhead and more on the front lines." That means, she suggested, that we'll have to live with "less planning" for the time being.

(Considering some of our planning blunders, that might be just the ticket.)

Again she came back to the libraries, rec centers and after-school programs. "These things are as much core services as paving roads and fixing sewers," she told me.

She even suggested that there needed to be more greening of the schools, i.e. less asphalt and more play fields, and that the city and school district should work together on this. As for the cost: "I'm not going to accept that we can't do anything new because of money.

"We have to assess the values in our community," she added, "to see what's important to us."

In this regard, Quan says Oakland has had a "parks-vs.-schools" mentality for a long time. She wants to "generate a new sort of culture" between them. She called it one of her "missions" and acknowledged it was "going to be a long haul."

Yes, Jean Quan has hit the ground running. Even if you don't agree with her on the issues, she'll never short you on the effort.