A new era begins as pro-charter majority selects Rodriguez to head L.A. school board - LA Times:
A new era begins as pro-charter majority selects Rodriguez to head L.A. school board
T
he Los Angeles Broad of Education on Thursday selected charter school co-founder Ref Rodriguez as its president.
After the 4-3 vote, Rodriguez immediately called for unity. The votes backing him came from a bloc elected with the help of funding from charter school backers. The other three board members supported Richard Vladovic, who has served as president in the past.
After Rodriguez took the gavel, the board turned to another item of business: his emergency motion to put “students first.”
There’s more to the resolution than that, but that opening line to a set of action items suggests the previous leadership — including board members, the superintendent of schools and senior staff — missed the mark on the idea that the needs of students must be the top priority in the nation’s second-largest school system.
The resolution was a main order of business during the first board meeting of the seven-member body that will, for the first time, have a pro-charter school majority. Also spending big in this year’s elections, the most expensive school board races in the nation’s history, were employee unions, whose candidates lost.
The charter-backed bloc consists of newcomers Kelly Gonez and Nick Melvoin, elected in the May general election; longtime incumbent Monica Garcia, reelected by winning a majority in the March primary; and Rodriguez, who was not on the ballot this year.
The first order of business Thursday was the swearing-in of the three election winners, something that took place at the Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts just north of downtown. Then the board convened at the nearby district headquarters to elect a president.
The students-first resolution would require L.A. schools Supt. Michelle King to provide a “student impact statement” for any item that comes before the board. The statement must show how any measure would affect “outcomes by low-income students, English learner students, foster youth, African American students and special education students.”
