Meet the candidates for the District 5 L.A. school board seat
The 10 candidates running to fill a vacancy on the Los Angeles Board of Education all want increased funding for local schools, but they differ strongly on other issues, including the growth of charter schools and the leadership of L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner.
The special election, which takes place Tuesday, will fill the seat left open last July when Ref Rodriguez resigned after pleading guilty to violating campaign finance laws.
No candidate claims to be against charter schools, but perspectives vary on these privately operated campuses, which are mostly non-union. Charters compete with district-run schoolsfor students — and their growing numbers in a school system with declining enrollment have been a flashpoint issue. Some candidates favor a moratorium on new charters. The most critical of charters are Jackie Goldberg and Rocio Rivas; the most supportive is Allison Bajracharya.
All the candidates have ties to children in local public schools — in Goldberg’s case, her grandchildren. But the parents of school-age children — Bajracharya, Rivas, Cynthia Gonzalez, Nestor Enrique Valencia and Heather Repenning — assert this as a particular qualification.
Jackie Goldberg, 74
Jackie Goldberg (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
Chairwoman of the city’s local hiring working group
After establishing herself as a teacher in the Compton school district, Goldberg, who lives in Echo Park, served two terms on the L.A. school board, ending in 1991. She later served on the L.A. City Council and in the state Legislature. In her current job, she oversees efforts to help former inmates and the formerly homeless find city jobs. Goldberg says the district should do much more to raise revenue but also can find ways to make change without more funding, such as by moving more authority to parents, teachers and administrators at schools. She also says that more thoughtful effort is needed for the reform of student discipline policies — which emphasize counseling over punishment — to be successful.
What she thinks about:
- The state of the district: She believes it is reasonably strong “given that it is so underfunded” and that the district’s budget is further challenged by declining enrollment, for which she holds charters substantially responsible. She says more work needs to be done to ensure that all children graduate from school knowing at least two languages.
- Charter schools: She supports a moratorium on new charters and says existing charters need more stringent monitoring — fiscally and educationally — at the state and local level.
- Austin Beutner and the school board: She opposed hiring Beutner: “I’m old-fashioned. I think educators should run school districts, not finance managers.” She also says that he’s been too secretive and did not do a good job managing events leading up to the teachers’ strike. All the same, she says, “I’m not coming on the board to fire him. My goal is to see if we can all work together.”
Endorsements and funding: The teachers union and its parent organizations have poured more than $570,000 into an outside campaign on her behalf. Her own campaign has raised about $200,000. Many other unions and a long list of current and former public officials and activists have endorsed her.
