Think school board races are sleepy? Not in Los Angeles, where big bucks and attack ads are flying - The Washington Post

Think school board races are sleepy? Not in Los Angeles, where big bucks and attack ads are flying - The Washington Post

School board races are ho-hum, right? Not in Los Angeles, where big bucks and attack ads are flying

If you think local school board races are sleepy electoral exercises, you have not been paying attention to Los Angeles.

A majority of seats on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education appear on Tuesday’s primary ballot. Millions of dollars in campaign contributions are flowing in. Some candidates have been attacked with false accusations, and, in one campaign, anti-Semitic propaganda.

The key issue: charter schools, and whether voters will elect a board that wants to help them expand in the district — or a board that does not.

More than $7 million has poured into campaigns — with most of it going to three candidates who support charter schools. Millions of dollars have come from people and groups outside California who support the expansion of charters, which are publicly funded but privately operated, and want to see them spread nationally.

Pro-charter forces are being funded substantially by a retired California businessman named Bill Bloomfield, according to the Los Angeles Times. He has spent nearly $2 million to help candidates who are pro-charter school. But in a letter to the Times, he said he was not acting as a “surrogate” for the political arm of the California Charter Schools Association, the Advocates. Instead, he said he was acting to help children.

Candidates who do not support the expansion of charter schools are funded largely by United Teachers Los Angeles. Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl has repeatedly called out “billionaires” who, he said in CONTINUE READING: Think school board races are sleepy? Not in Los Angeles, where big bucks and attack ads are flying - The Washington Post