The Money In LAUSD5’s Mouth
From Los Feliz to Southgate, voters need to show up on Tuesday to fill LAUSD’s swing school board seat with Jackie Goldberg.
The fifth LAUSD Board District is wedged in the middle between educators and privateers; between board members ensconced by financiers interested in charter schools as a lucrative investment (Garcia-Melvoin-Gonez), and a couple old-time school superintendents (Schmerelson-McKenna-(Vladovic)).
The last dude from LA Board District 5 was so focused on securing the approbation of his Charter paymasters that he transformed a perfectly legal if ginormous monetary contribution to his own campaign, into a felonious obfuscation of monies and manipulators. The whole quagmire of the last election for this school board seat extracted such a toll on integrity, truth and democratic representation, that this week’s choice ought to be plain to bear: stay far away from the dirt, influence peddling and crooks that sullied LAUSD’s recent past elections.
Tuesday presents two clear ideological extremes, between the civil rights activist,Jackie Goldberg and the Charter acolyte, Greenwood-Bajracharya. In between where once were more than a dozen candidates, remains now just eight in the wake of several who endorsed Jackie Goldberg, stepping aside in deference to LAUSD’s immediate, time-sensitive need for Goldberg, the battle-tested legislator.
Among the top seven fundraisers are two quite similar political functionaries, Repenning and Ortiz. Both – and to a lesser extent the Arts Commissioner Valdez, have all simply gained appointment to a political position as part of a political, self-sustaining, patronage machine. They are cringingly light on knowledge of Education and embarrassingly laden with massive, mechanized, quid-pro-quo gifts. Acceding to this machinery of bully-pulpit kingmaking betrays the vast awakening of public consciousness regarding peril to our public education system through privatization, hard-won just these six weeks past during January’s UTLA strike.
Similarly candidate Cubas is a charter-lite version of Greenwood-Bajracharya, CONTINUE READING:The Money In LAUSD5’s Mouth – redqueeninla
