New L.A. Unified student board representative Frances Suavillo is sworn in on Sept. 3. (L.A. Unified)

High school senior Frances Suavillo has always believed education is a right and not a privilege.

She’s seen firsthand when it’s not. Born and raised in the Philippines until she was 9 years old, Suavillo saw deep-seated educational inequity in the Southeast Asian island country — how “money dictated who went to school and who didn’t,” she said. And in the years since she moved to the U.S. in 2010, that reality has only strengthened her resolve to lift and empower all students.

Suavillo, who attends Carson High School in Los Angeles, was sworn in Sept. 3 as L.A. Unified’s fifth student school board member since the board voted to revive student participation in 2014. Thirty-nine Associated Student Body representatives from 22 high schools across the district elected Suavillo to the seat in April, over six other finalists. She is replacing Class of 2019 graduate Tyler Okeke to represent more than 600,000 students: roughly 486,000 from traditional schools and more than 138,000 attending charters.

“At the end of the day, it all boils down to students,” Suavillo said. “The student board member gives that platform to students to take their own education into their own hands.”

Student representatives in L.A. Unified serve in an advisory role only, but can propose resolutions like any other member.

Former L.A. Unified student board member Okeke made waves in April, for example, when he brought a resolution asking the district to study whether it’s possible to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections. The resolution passed and is under review.

Suavillo doesn’t take the role lightly. Her first priority, she said, will be to ensure that the district is catering to and supporting English learners, who make up a quarter of the student body. Suavillo was an English learner for a year when she first enrolled in L.A. Unified nine years ago.

“I want to make sure that students have positive role models who look like them and who have had similar experiences,” she said. “I am excited about what is ahead.”

Frances Suavillo being sworn in on Sept.3. (L.A. Unified)

Student board members aren’t commonplace, especially at behemoth districts like L.A. Unified. At least four of the country’s 10 largest districts have a student board member, according to information available on their websites. The other three are all in Florida — Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Broward County Public Schools and the School District of Palm Beach County.

Suavillo chatted with The 74 this summer about her passions, aspirations, how she intends to connect with students, and her favorite Netflix binge. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

The 74: Tell me a bit about what education was like for you in the Philippines.

Suavillo: I was fortunate enough to go to a private school in the Philippines, but I know so many people who went through a public school education. And even in public school education, you had to pay for everything. Nothing was ever as acceptable as it is here in the United States.

What are your aspirations post-high school, and how does this position tie into that?

I’ve wanted to be a diplomat for so long. I want to be able to represent the country and help out with international affairs and public relations [mainly on immigration and education]. And being the student board member for L.A. Unified is a huge stepping stone for that future career goal. I’ll be able to improve my public speaking skills, be able to connect and network with different people that I’m not always exposed to. And that’s so important if I want to be able to make connections with people who are from completely different sides of the world.

Is your goal to go to college? Any top choices?

Yes. I want to be able to attend Harvard University, which is a big dream. I’m actually studying economics there right now; I’m in Boston for the summer. It gives me college credits, and can also qualify for high school credit.

Frances Suavillo on Harvard University’s campus this summer. (Frances Suavillo)

You’re going to be a new face for a lot of students. So in the spirit of that, what are some fun facts about you?

● Student group involvement: I’m part of the California Scholarship Federation [at Carson High School], and I’m also part of a club called Share the Love Club, which helps the homeless in the L.A. area. (Suavillo will remain president of both in 2019-20. She founded Share the Love).

● Favorite place to eat this summer: Cane’s Chicken Fingers. I’ve been wanting to try it and I put it off for so long, but I finally tried it in Boston and I’m in love with it.

● Favorite TV show on Netflix: I binge-watch Netflix seasons in a day. When the new Stranger Things came out, I was done in I think 14 hours.

● Favorite sport to play or watch: I’m a big fan of volleyball, especially high school volleyball for the Carson High team. The boy’s volleyball team is incredible — they won the city championship last season, and I’m so proud.

● Biggest role model: My great-great-aunt. She basically raised my dad in the Philippines and she helped raise us. She’s the reason why I am who I am today.

Tell me a little bit about your passion topics. What types of things can we expect to hear you talking about as a school board member?

I want to dedicate my time trying to help the English learner program, once being a part of it myself when I first moved to the United States. It’s very close to me. Even though [I was in the EL program] a short amount of time, it was my first real experience with the U.S. public school system, so my first memories tied in with the U.S. was the EL program.

What are you hoping to accomplish for English learners?

I want to help make sure that the EL program caters to what the EL students need in order to succeed.

One thing that I learned from current English learners is that [they] find it more beneficial for them to be included in regular English classes, rather than a class that is designed for English learners only. Being surrounded by people who speak the same language as they do gives them the incentive to continue to speak in their native tongue rather than practicing their English skills. It’s an idea that I want to bring up to the board.

● Read More: English learners in California remain at the bottom of state test scores with only a hint of progress — and it’s even worse in Los Angeles

What do your peers think about the current system, and what do they want you to focus on as a student board member?

Many of my friends who are now experiencing the college life, a lot of them come back and say that they feel like they are at a disadvantage — like they’re unprepared. I would like to bring that information to the board’s attention, to work to strengthen the college readiness programs that we already have through feedback from past L.A. Unified graduates. To see where our programs lack and where they need additional support to help students be college-ready.

I can say with confidence that I’ll make sure that they’re heard.

● Read More: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

How do you intend to conduct outreach and make sure that — to the best of your ability— you have a sense of what the student body cares about?

I’m fortunate enough to have many resources for that. In L.A. Unified we have a Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, which includes students from both middle school and high school now. And they’re kind of my advisors as well. I know that I can come to them and have them give me their 100 percent honest opinion about certain topics and certain concepts that I may want to pursue and bring up to the board. There’s also the email for the student board member [studentboardmember@lausd.net], where people can email me their opinions and their concerns and I can always look through that and try to reach out to as many as I can. And of course I have my own peers in my own school and the schools surrounding me that are easily accessible to me.

You’re a high school student. You have homework, exams, college prep. What’s the time commitment of this job, and how do you intend to maintain life balance?

From what Tyler Okeke told me, it takes a lot of dedication, commitment and passion. So I expect it to take a lot of my time as well. But [district officials] always tell me that my education comes first, so they’ve let me know that I don’t have to stay for the whole duration of the meeting. I know it’s going to be difficult having to juggle being a high school senior with all of the academic pressures of your senior year, and all the social pressures of senior year as well, and now this being added on to my plate. But I know that I’m doing this for a reason. I’m not someone who would choose to do something and then not put in 110 percent effort.

(Reporter’s note: An end-of-year meeting on June 18 lasted a staggering eight hours. Typically, school board meetings are around four or five hours.)

What’s some of the best advice you’ve received from a student board member?

The biggest thing that Tyler told me that stuck with me is, “Speak from your heart and do things that you’re passionate about and that you can honestly say you’re proud to do.” I think he did a great job with that in his year, and I can only learn from him. He’s incredible, and he’s a friend now to me. He’s done nothing but support me and guide me through it.

Frances Suavillo with last year’s student board representative, Tyler Okeke. (L.A. Unified)

L.A. Unified board members Jackie Goldberg and Richard Vladovic speak at the June 18 meeting. (Photo: L.A. Unified)

*Updated June 25

L.A. Unified board members passed the 2019-20 budget and accountability plan on Tuesday — but not before acknowledging that they are “unintelligible” documents that provide little insight into specific program and funding changes as the district looks to the next school year.

“None of the documents add up to anything you can count on,” board member Jackie Goldberg said, noting that she’d read “virtually every page” on three different occasions. “We need a new budget document that is useful, not only for us, but all of the public.”

The $7.8 billion operating budget and Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) —a three-year plan updated annually that outlines the district’s goals and actions for improving student outcomes — have to be adopted by July 1, per state law. Because of the looming deadline, board members said they’d approve both documents now and spend this year exploring ways to improve them. The board’s approval came one week after parents blasted district leaders for the documents’ lack of transparency.

Board member Scott Schmerelson cast the sole “no” vote on the budget.

L.A. Unified struggled to get its fiscal house in order this year, receiving threats of a possible fiscal takeover by the county because of its shaky finances. The approved budget now shows L.A. Unified operating in the black for three years — a sharp departure from a March budget update that estimated the district’s ending balance in 2021-22 would fall $749 million short of required reserve levels if new revenues, such as a hoped-for parcel tax, didn’t materialize. Voters resoundingly defeated the tax earlier this month.

‘Voters are tired of you’: A week after parcel tax defeat, LAUSD parents rail at district leaders during 2019-20 budget hearing

Before casting those votes during the marathon eight-hour session, the board also voted 4-3 to sunset the district’s contentious random student search policy by July 2020, following more than an hour of passionate testimony from parents, students and the community. Members approved a resolution as well opposing the California State University system’s recent proposal to add a fourth year of math or quantitative learning to admissions requirements. Speakers backing the resolution said CSU’s proposals would further limit college access to high-needs students.

● Read more: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

Board member Richard Vladovic said moving forward, there should be multiple sessions scheduled during the year to parse the upcoming year’s budget. L.A. Unified should “look at the outcomes we want in the district, and then we plan backwards,” he said.

LA School Report reviewed the budget, LCAP and other sources to try and discern what’s changing or staying the same from 2018-19 to 2019-20. Here’s what we know — and don’t know — about what to expect next year for high-needs students, teacher contract promises, lowest-performing schools and parent engagement efforts.

Funding and programs for high-needs students

Some key highlights:

1. Student Equity Needs Index (SENI) 2.0.

The district budget has set aside $262 million in 2019-20 to distribute funding to schools based on their rank in L.A. Unified’s revised Student Equity Needs Index, or “SENI 2.0.” The index considers school type — elementary, middle or high school — and factors such as asthma rates and injuries from gun violence, rather than just academic performance or income levels, when deciding where to channel the most money.

Next year’s SENI 2.0 allotment marks a sizable jump from the $25 million that was appropriated using the updated index in 2018-19. It’s not necessarily new money, however: the district told KPCC last year that it was distributing more than $240 million to schools using its old equity index.

How different factors are weighted in the SENI 2.0 index. (L.A. Unified)

All district schools except early education centers and those for adult education will get funding through SENI, with schools ranking higher on the index receiving more. For example, an elementary school determined to be in the “lowest” SENI rank category could receive up to $386 extra per pupil, while a “highest” rank school could get $725 per pupil.

Breakdown of SENI funding based on school level and rank. (L.A. Unified)

The district’s LCAP confirms that no schools in 2019-20 will receive “less funding” through SENI 2.0 than they did in 2018-19. Schools next year will also have more flexibility over how they spend their SENI funds, so they can better “address locally determined needs” for their most vulnerable students, such as English learners.

2. English learners.

The district will continue to implement its Master Plan, which includes growing its dual-language programs, expanding the state Seal of Biliteracy award to the fifth and eighth grades, and “providing targeted supports for newcomers,” district spokeswoman Barbara Jones wrote in an email. L.A. Unified recently implemented a strategy to develop individualized reclassification plans for English learners, with the hope of switching them to a “Fluent English Proficient” categorization before they enter middle school.

The goal is to have 22 percent of English learners reclassify in 2019-20 — the same goal as in 2018-19. About a quarter of L.A. Unified’s roughly 486,000 students are English learners.

See which schools offer dual language programs here. New programs are marked.

New help for LAUSD’s English learners: Individualized plans seek to boost graduation and reclassification rates

3. Special education students.

It was unclear to LA School Report from the budget and LCAP how programs and services are changing for special education students. A hearing on L.A. Unified’s special education plan and budget— which increased from $994 million to $1.03 billion for 2019-20 — was one of the last items on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, and generated no board discussion. The district serves more than 60,000 special-needs students.

Jones said four new schools — Vernon City, San Antonio and Hope elementary schools and Gage Middle School — are joining a pilot program that’s testing “inclusive practices,” which “means that students with disabilities are educated with their non-disabled peers to the maximum extent possible,” she said. The program started in 2014-15 and had 50 school sites participating by 2018-19, according to the LCAP.

January’s teachers contract also called for the creation of a task force to study special education teacher caseloads, though a start date wasn’t included.

4. Foster youth.

A key service for L.A. Unified foster youth, the Foster Youth Achievement Program,” is “not changing” in 2019-20, Jones said— though some advocates say that’s not entirely true.

The program focuses on boosting foster youth’s academic performance, largely through employing foster youth counselors. Jones said “the goal for next year is to provide local, integrated, specialized support services,” and ensure “that our students in foster care continue to be served effectively and consistently.”

The district has more than 7,000 students in foster care. The 2019-20 budget allocated about $15 million toward the program— a slight bump from roughly $14.1 million in 2018-19.

However, at least six state and local advocacy groups, such as Advancement Project California and Children’s Defense Fund — California, claimed at two board meetings this month that the program is in fact being “restructured” in 2019-20 so that counselors initially dedicated to foster youth will now also serve homeless students, youth exiting the juvenile justice system and other at-risk groups at designated school sites. They said this will more than double the number of students assigned to each counselor, from about 70 students to about 150. That data came from calculating the number of foster youth versus counselors in 2018-19 and comparing it to updated caseload breakdown sheets that the district reportedly provided to counselors in May, advocates told LA School Report.

The district will “say they’re trying to do a whole-child approach that’s more integrated at the school site,” Ruth Cusick, an education rights lawyer for Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm that’s also following this development, told LA School Report. “That’s why we’ve shared the unique needs of foster youth and how impactful it has been to have this dedicated team to focus all of their expertise and all of their work for the success” of those students.

● Read more: ESSA Says State Report Cards Must Track How Many Students in Foster Care Are Passing Their Reading & Math Tests and Graduating High School. Only 16 Do

5. Funding from one lawsuit ends — and another is in its last year.

The Reed Investment Schools Program is “discontinued” as of June, according to the LCAP. The program — based on a 2014 settlement — has provided 37 middle schools and high schools across the district (listed here) additional supports to improve staff retention and student outcomes, such as assistant principals, extra counselors, mentor teachers, special education support providers and “unique” professional staff development opportunities.

This staffing has cost L.A. Unified about $26.8 million annually, according to the budget.

In 2019-20, Reed schools will be “receiving SENI 2.0 funding instead of receiving staffing and professional development,” Jones said. So while those positions will no longer be mandated, school leaders will have “flexibility” to utilize that SENI funding to retain staff hired through the Reed program if they choose to do so.

Meanwhile, 50 high-needs “innovation schools” (a list can be found here) will receive their last year of mandated extra funding following a 2015 lawsuit against the district. L.A. Unified has given about $50 million a year to these schools since 2017-18 to support new and expanded programs and services for low-income, English learner and foster students. ACLU of Southern California has noted, however, that only 38 percent of the $50 million allocated in 2018-19 was used. L.A. Unified will reabsorb any money that isn’t spent by June 30, 2020.

6. Miscellaneous and districtwide.

The district is lowering the minimum student enrollment required to receive a middle school assistant principal for counseling services. In 2019-20, middle schools with 700 or more students enrolled will get that assistant principal, compared to the 800-student threshold in 2018-19. There is no change at the elementary and high school levels.

Arts programs, such as dance, general music and film, also appear to be unchanged going into 2019-20. See the programs offered at each L.A. Unified school here.

Teacher contract promises

The latest teachers contract, which was signed after the January strike and runs through 2021-22, is fully covered in the 2019-20 budget. Here are the additions expected:

● Average class sizes in grades 4 through 12 will be reduced by one student, bringing them back down to 2014-17 teachers contract levels. Average class sizes will be further reduced by an additional two students at 75 “targeted high needs” elementary schools and 15 middle schools. English and math classes in middle and high schools are also now capped at 39 students, per the contract. The cap pre-strike was 46 students, the teachers union has said.

● 150 new nurse positions. Where these nurses are placed will depend, for example, on how many students at a given school have diabetes or other “health-related issues,” Jones said. She added that campuses with athletic teams may also qualify for a school nurse based on the programs’ size.

● 41 new library positions in secondary schools. There won’t be a full-time librarian at every secondary school with a library this year, but the goal is to have one in each by the start of the 2020-21 year, Jones said.

● 17 new counselor positions. Their placements will be determined to “maintain a secondary school counseling services ratio of 500:1,” Jones said.

A list of specific school sites receiving these support staff does not appear available yet.

There are no raises scheduled for 2019-20. Under the contract, teachers received a 3 percent raise retroactive to 2017-18 and another 3 percent in 2018-19.

● Read more: With High School Counselors Badly Outnumbered, Innovative Nonprofit Steps In to Offer Smart College Advising to Low-Income Students Across the Country

● Read more: A look into the LAUSD, UTLA contract deal ending the 6-day teacher strike

Supports for lowest-performing schools

The district states in its LCAP that the following resources are being provided this summer and during the 2019-20 school year for “Comprehensive Support & Improvement (CSI)” schools — the 110 schools within L.A. Unified boundaries that were identified by the state early this year as struggling to adequately serve students.

1. Summer programs. The district is offering a four-week program that includes “focused academic intervention in English Language Arts or mathematics for academically at­-risk students in grades K­-8,” according to the LCAP. There is also a 24-day summer program for high schoolers running currently from June 19 to July 24 to “recover credits and make progress toward graduation.”

More information is available here and here.

2. Title I Intervention Program. School sites will receive per pupil funding from the federal program that benefits high-poverty schools, allowing them flexibility to focus on math, English language arts or credit recovery based on students’ individual needs.
3. Social-emotional learning. L.A. Unified advisors or staff will identify and grow “age-appropriate” programs that —among other things — help students manage their emotions, establish positive relationships and set goals.

Of the 110 identified schools, 88 are district schools and 22 are charters. You can search for your school here or within this EdSource database.

For the first time in six years, California names its lowest-performing schools — & here are the 110 district and charter schools in LAUSD that require intervention

Parent engagement efforts

Responding to a question about parent frustration over the current budget and LCAP, Jones said the district has “committed to … a more transparent process for the next school year.” She added later that Superintendent Beutner plans to meet with central parent committees such as the District English Learner Advisory Committee and Parent Advisory Committee quarterly “at a minimum” in 2019-20.

He’s met with them three times since becoming superintendent in May 2018, she noted.

For parents interested in getting more involved, 2019-20 also marks the first full year that parents can volunteer at a school without paying a $56 fee for fingerprinting and background checks after the board voted to waive the fee last November. More information available here.

● Read more: LAUSD ends fees for parent volunteers

*This article was updated on June 24 to clarify that while next year’s SENI 2.0 allotment marks a sizable jump from the $25 million appropriated in 2018-19, the district had already been giving comparable funding to schools using its old equity index. Scott Schmerelson’s “no” vote was also added.

*This article was updated on June 25 to add more information on advocates’ concerns about the Foster Youth Achievement Program, a quote from Public Counsel’s Ruth Cusick and the annual cost of the Reed Investment Schools Program.

Parent Luz Maria Montoya addresses the L.A. Unified school board on Tuesday. (L.A. Unified)

*Updated June 17

Parents blasted L.A. Unified officials at a school board hearing this week — one even bursting into tears — offering an angry glimpse into the fractured trust between the community and the district just one week after voters overwhelmingly rejected a new parcel tax.

Many of the more than 20 speakers at Tuesday’s four-hour session expressed ongoing frustration with the ambiguity of L.A. Unified’s $7.8 billion operating budget and Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), a three-year plan updated annually that outlines the district’s goals and actions for improving student outcomes. Tuesday’s meeting was the first since L.A. Unified’s bid for a $500 million-a-year “Measure EE” parcel tax failed at the polls, and was also the first time the finalized 2019-20 budget and the LCAP were formally presented to the public. The board will vote on both next Tuesday.

“All of the voters are tired of you,” parent Luz Maria Montoya said in Spanish. “We don’t know what work you are doing.”

Some parents said district documents don’t clearly explain changes to student programs and services for next year. Others added that there isn’t transparency or robust “monitoring” of how L.A. Unified’s expenditures, such as professional development and training for teachers and principals, yield actual results for students. Montoya, for example, called district services for English learners and special education students “an embarrassment.” A few also accused L.A. Unified officials and principals of keeping parents out of budget and policy discussions — treating them “as sheeps, as herds,” as one speaker said— rather than welcoming them to the table as a partner.

“We have a lot of barriers” to knowing what’s going on, said parent María Daisy Ortíz, who addressed the board in Spanish. “We want to work with you, not against you. But respect us. … No one returns the wasted time to our children.”

Parent María Daisy Ortíz waves around district documents during Tuesday’s school board hearing on the budget and LCAP.

Ortíz had brought parts of the 112-page LCAP plan with her, noting that much of it feels like a “copy and paste” job. She waved the papers in the air, her voice rising. “Please don’t deceive us with false data that are doctored, because truly, that is why Measure EE did not pass,” she said.

Juanita Garcia, a grandmother of three children with special needs, broke into tears when recounting the difficulty she’s had getting help and answers from the district after one of them was injured in January. “Up to today I have not received a report,” she said in Spanish. “Is that what we call accountability and responsibility?”

District 4 Board Member Nick Melvoin addressed the lack of public trust at Tuesday’s meeting, peppering in some concerns of his own.

“I’ve asked ad nauseum for a document showing changes [to programs or investments] and have not received anything for months,” Melvoin said. “We’re not showing how this budget reflects our shared values or strategies for improving outcomes.”

Melvoin also acknowledged Tuesday that he didn’t think the budget presentation helped quell ongoing skepticism of “how we can balance our budget every year and yet cry poverty.” Melvoin’s comment was underscored by the 2019-20 budget showing the district operating in the black for the next three years despite ongoing threats beginning late last summer that deficit spending could force a county fiscal takeover if L.A. Unified began dipping into mandated reserves.

In addition to the frustrated comments of parents during the public hearing, two district-wide parent advisory groups — the District English Learner Advisory Committee and Parent Advisory Committee — offered more formal feedback to the board on the LCAP’s six goals. They are: 100 percent graduation, proficiency for all, 100 percent attendance, parent, community and student engagement, ensuring school safety and basic services.

Some of the key suggestions included:

● Having a strategic plan for how English learners will catch up on instruction time lost during January’s six-day teacher strike.

● More counselor focus on A-G requirements, which students need to meet to be eligible to apply to the state’s public four-year universities.

Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

● Attendance incentives that celebrate not only students with the highest attendance, but those who are “most improved.” “The kids at the end of the [attendance] spectrum, we really need to boost them up,” Parent Advisory Committee chair Paul Robak said.

● Making parent workshops accessible via Skype to boost access.

Superintendent Austin Beutner agreed with parents Tuesday that, “We have to become better program evaluators … focused on what the students’ achievement is in the schools.” His office sent out a statement during the meeting calling for “a new approach” to the LCAP.

In response to a question from LA School Report on why the parent committee presentations and public comment were scheduled only a week before the budget vote, a district spokeswoman said in an email that the two parent advisory committees held 11 total meetings “from January to June, and comments from those meetings were shared with the Superintendent a month ago. Feedback from [both] was incorporated in the LCAP, specifically the continuation of desired programs and the increase in school site autonomy and staffing.”

While parents have voiced concerns about transparency, accountability and parent engagement for years, the 2019 teacher strike and resounding parcel tax defeat could signal that the district and the board need to pay closer attention to stakeholders’ concerns as they campaign for more investment in the schools. The parcel tax’s demise, as observers have noted, was a reminder that the outpouring of support during January’s teacher strike is not unconditional — especially when it comes to money.

Los Angeles voters roundly defeat parcel tax, leaving LAUSD on shaky financial footing

Even without the tax revenue, the latest budget shows sufficient revenues for the next three years. That’s a sharp departure from a March budget update that projected the district’s ending balance would fall $749 million short of required reserve levels by 2021-22 if voters didn’t approve the tax. The district now estimates having a $10.5 million surplus in 2022. School officials said they managed that swing in their projections without the parcel tax money after finalizing some health care savings, receiving a state waiver that excuses L.A. Unified from paying penalties for its administrator-teacher ratio and enacting other budget realignments.

By projecting that it won’t dip into its mandated reserve in the next three years, L.A. Unified no longer appears to be under direct threat of a county takeover. Fiscal experts installed in January by the county Office of Education will stay with the district in an advisory-only role until at least December, Chief Financial Officer Scott Price told the board Tuesday.

Chief Financial Officer Scott Price presents the 2019-20 budget to the board.

But it’s not an all-clear. L.A. Unified still projects it will continue spending about $500 million more a year than it takes in. On top of signing a teacher contract in January that it can’t fully afford, it also faces growing pension contribution costs and declining enrollment — an estimated 14,656 fewer students next year — that lowers its state funding.

Down the line, upcoming health care and labor contracts could increase spending and push 2021-22 budget projections back into the red, a district spokeswoman confirmed in an email to LA School Report Wednesday.

At Tuesday’s meeting, President Mónica García said she “loved” the idea of “a weekly or monthly budget conversation so that more people understand the full picture.” Newly elected member Jackie Goldberg also suggested compiling public feedback on different parts of the budget in the months leading up to the final version.

When Goldberg served on the board three decades ago, members would “pick a different topic [within the budget] each month in March, April and May and invite the public — all our labor partners, everybody — to come and say, ‘What you’re doing with the budget is this,’ or, ‘We’d rather you do that,’” Goldberg said. “That helped encourage people to feel like there was much more transparency.”

Speaker Juan Godinez hopes any progress forward will be sincere.

“If we are partners, let’s have parent engagement because the district wants it,” he said. “Not because a law tells you to have it.”

This story was updated on June 17 to correct the misspelling of Nick Melvoin’s name.

Before I began my service on the L.A. Unified School District Board of Education in 2006 as just the third Latina elected in 155 years, questions about whether Latino/a students could succeed academically were answered only by assumptions due to our lack of representation.

Since my first election, I have done my best to listen to all diverse voices, including the call from Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander and Arab Middle Eastern Muslim South Asian communities for L.A. Unified to do more for its 85,000 students (18 percent) of Asian descent.

In Board District 2, we responded by creating dual-language immersion programs, naming schools after historic local community leaders like Young-Oak Kim and Sammy Lee, and holding roundtables with neighborhood partners from Chinatown, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Bangladesh and more.

This past year, we heard a bold message from our community partners — now is the time to disaggregate data in L.A. Unified.

Data disaggregation is the primary civil rights issue in education for the community. Without inclusive demographic data and disaggregated reporting showing disparities in higher- and lower-performing groups, the model-minority myth that all Asian students are doing well persists, and groups of students of color continue to be viewed as monolithic.

On a practical level, I think about the Mien student who has no box to check on enrollment forms. I think about the immigrant student from Ghana whose life experience is vastly different from that of African-Americans. I think about the bilingual Portuguese-speaking student grouped in with Spanish-speaking English learners.

We know that is not equity. Kids far too easily fall through the cracks when we do not seek to understand, value and embrace their diversity.

Our conversations with community partners led us to present the “Everyone Counts: Increasing Equity for All of Our AANHPI AMEMSA Students and Employees” resolution, which the board unanimously passed on May 28.

Passage of this resolution will not only make L.A. Unified the largest school district in the nation to institute data disaggregation policies for all students of color, including Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander and Arab Middle Eastern Muslim South Asian students, but will make ours the most progressive urban school district in the nation on race and ethnicity.

I am grateful to my fellow board members and our community partners who joined in to ensure the passage of this resolution and to make all our communities feel seen and heard. No one should feel invisible, because everyone counts.

Mónica García is president of the Board of Education at L.A. Unified School District.

LAUSD special education teacher Gloria Ramirez at Wednesday’s news conference after Measure EE’s defeat, with Mayor Eric Garcetti, left, Superintendent Austin Beutner, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl.

One day after voters overwhelmingly rejected a $500 million-a-year parcel tax, Los Angeles city and school leaders sent a message to voters: We’ve heard your concerns. And we’re going to keep fighting to fund our schools.

“This is just the beginning of our fight,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said as he launched into Wednesday’s news conference. “When I took on this challenge just about a year ago, I knew it would not be easy. Decades of underfunding, strained relationships with those who work in schools, not enough progress in helping all students succeed and a lack of trust by many in the community. This can’t be fixed overnight.”

About 54 percent of Los Angeles voters on Tuesday voted “no” on Measure EE, which would have taxed residents within L.A. Unified boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property to fund L.A. schools and secure the lower class sizes and additional nurses, counselors and librarians promised in January’s $840 million teacher contract. But the district couldn’t sway opponents who doubted the district’s accountability with new money and demanded reform first.

Tuesday’s results marked “the lowest percentage of voters in support of a school district parcel tax within the last five years,” Vote No on EE spokesman Matt Klink tweeted Wednesday, citing the California Taxpayers Association. The measure needed 66.7 percent approval.

• Read more: Los Angeles voters roundly defeat parcel tax, leaving LAUSD on shaky financial footing

• Los votantes de Los Ángeles rechazan rotundamente el impuesto a las parcelas, dejando al LAUSD en una situación financiera complicada

Beutner said those who fought for the tax are resolved, however, to “get back up and keep moving forward,” with the next step being “to take the fight to Sacramento” and lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature for more funding.

With more than 40 people behind him at the podium, Beutner thanked a slew of colleagues and Measure EE advocates and cheerleaders, including:

• Union leaders from United Teachers Los Angeles, Service Employees International, the Teamsters, Building Trades, Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, School Police and the California School Employees Association.

• Community organizations including Community Coalition, InnerCity Struggle, SCOPE, Korean Resource Center, Power California, CHIRLA, Great Public Schools Now, Speak Up and Parent Revolution.

• The charter school community “whose schools serve kids and communities with great needs.”

• The business and philanthropic community. “You helped make clear the children in our schools are your employees of the future and the future of Los Angeles rests in their hands.”

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl — whom Beutner introduced as his “partner in this work,” shaking hands with him at the podium — also acknowledged that the Measure EE campaign faced various roadblocks.

“We knew when we began this that there were aspects that made this an uphill climb,” Caputo-Pearl said. “A tight timeline that we needed to do to try to get resources to our students as quickly as possible. Many of the most affected people — students and undocumented parents — not being able to vote.

“But we did it anyway,” he continued. “And I would do it anyway again.” He echoed Beutner in saying, “We’re ready to keep the fight going. The battle for the soul of L.A. … is just beginning.”

Mayor Eric Garcetti, who played a key role in cementing January’s teacher contract, even went so far as to call the day “historic … a moment in which you see the reflection of the face of our city.”

“On a day which I know we’re supposed to be down, I can’t help but still be extremely hopeful,” Garcetti said. Those who supported Measure EE “collectively believe that education is something we collectively have to own. … [This is] a new chapter of finding what we agree on first instead of what we disagree on first.”

He added: “Absolutely, I’ll leave it up to the analysts, to the political professionals to analyze what happened last night. But I’ll tell you this: This coalition is something I am proud to have been a part of long before January, to have strengthened this year through this measure, and to keep marching forward with together.”

The parcel tax’s downfall sparked a question during the follow-up Q&A as to whether L.A. Unified would be able to submit a budget to the county by the July 1 deadline that fulfills the county’s requirements. County overseers have threatened a takeover if L.A. Unified can’t prove its solvency over the next three years.

“By law, we have to make sure that we can get through the next three years with the resources that we think we’ll have,” Beutner said. “And we’ll be able to do that.”

Heads up, @lacoeinfo: "We will be able to do it." — @LAschools Superintendent @AustinLASchools tells the post-vote news conference that #LAUSD will be able to meet its financial obligations for the next three years. pic.twitter.com/lPrSxiIyUw

— LA School Report (@LASchoolReport) June 5, 2019

Wednesday was a day of reflection across L.A. Unified and in the broader education community. Here are some of the highlights of reactions and takeaways from Tuesday’s election:

— “We heard you, Los Angeles. You want more conversation. You want more evidence that change and skin is in the game. … Friends, we must be learners.” — Board President Mónica García at Wednesday’s news conference

— “Today is a hard day, but educators face and overcome obstacles every day. … We will pick up the pieces and fight even harder, because our students deserve it.” — Special education teacher Gloria Martinez at Wednesday’s news conference

— “I intend to show up [for the kids]. We intend to be back again, and to try to be more persuasive.” —  School board member George McKenna at Wednesday’s news conference

— “Despite this campaign falling short, I sincerely hope that the historic coalition that came together to support this effort — a partnership between labor and charter schools, the district and the city, parents and community advocates — doesn’t collapse in the face of a setback, but rather doubles down on our efforts to support our schools. Let’s ensure that yesterday is not the end, but just the beginning of a united front — one that must turn our eyes to Sacramento and Washington to demand that they invest in our district’s students. It is also incumbent on this coalition to learn the lessons from yesterday’s defeat — most notably that voters believe L.A. Unified needs to do more to reform and improve outcomes for kids in addition to seeking increased investment.” — Statement by school board Vice President Nick Melvoin

— “The Los Angeles County Office of Education is disappointed that Measure EE did not pass. … While progress has been made and actions have been taken to improve the district’s fiscal condition, the County Office of Education remains concerned with the continued use of one-time funding to cover ongoing expenditures. Put simply, LAUSD needs to stop spending more than it receives from the state and federal government, which it does every year. The County Office team is committed to continuing to work with LAUSD as they develop the district budget for 2019-20.” — L.A. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo in an email to LA School Report  

— “We are deeply disappointed that Los Angeles voters did not support efforts to increase education funding for L.A. kids. Our parents worked very hard to pass this, and we will not give up efforts to lift California from its abysmal position near the bottom of states in education funding. I know that we can do better, and our kids deserve more.” — Speak UP founder and CEO Katie Braude, via Speak UP

— “We’ve had some pretty big battles over charter schools in the last six months, and it’s worth noting that the voters were watching. And what they saw was a battle over a technocratic school model — not a battle over educational quality. This was a battle about politics and not kids. … It was simply scapegoating one category of public schools in order to serve another. That may serve some narrow political interest groups, but it certainly doesn’t serve kids.” — Ben Austin, executive director of Kids Coalition

— “What the resounding vote shows is that the business community needs to have an important role in these conversations and not be treated as an afterthought. We are committed to sitting down with the district to help figure out what’s next. … But it’s not just a money question. There are larger, reform-related questions that the district frankly is failing to address that need to be front and center before we request to open up the pocketbook again.” — Matt Klink, spokesman for Vote No on EE campaign

— “California’s public education system is in desperate need of more funding, which is why CCSA supported Measure EE. While we are disappointed with today’s results, we will continue to find common ground in our fight for more equitable funding for all public school students in Los Angeles and across the state.” — Statement by Myrna Castrejón, president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association

— “We are deeply disappointed with the results of yesterday’s special election. Measure EE provided an opportunity for Los Angeles voters to demonstrate an investment and commitment to our students and teachers. … E4E-Los Angeles will continue to uplift the voices of our members in their schools, district and union to ensure that more funds are generated for our highest-need students.” — Statement by Ama Nyamekye, executive director of Educators for Excellence-Los Angeles

— “The main lesson I would say is that education policy cannot be determined based on what we read off Twitter. The national conversation about teachers and teacher pay does not reflect what voters actually do. … All that disconnect played out in the election yesterday.” — Chad Aldeman, senior associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners

— “It leaves Mr. Beutner without a clear mission moving forward. He was seen as someone who was going to contain costs and bring more efficiency to the system. Since the teacher strike is over, and Measure EE [didn’t] pass, it’s not quite clear what particular strength he has.” — John Rogers, professor of education, UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, to EdWeek

Measure EE Fails: The Challenges Facing Los Angeles Unified School District Students and Schools Are Now Even Greater #measureee #education https://t.co/SK2GEpxJoi pic.twitter.com/QgBEiws9Bw

— Families In Schools (@FamsInSchools) June 5, 2019

https://twitter.com/longdrivesouth/status/1136295665208684544

I heard from a lot of people who said something like this…. https://t.co/B8Wb4aAZq9

— Susan Shelley (@Susan_Shelley) June 5, 2019

Yesterday's #MeasureEE election result was disappointing, but what's not disappointing is that our community is taking bold steps to build the civic power necessary to create real transformation in South LA.

That's what keeps this movement going and we must continue fighting. pic.twitter.com/hEBIaxld2H

— Community Coalition (@CoCoSouthLA) June 5, 2019

The defeat of #MeasureEE was a huge victory for taxpayers. Jon Coupal will discuss what this victory means today during the 2:00 o’clock hour on the @johnandkenshow https://t.co/4wsYRC7xTk

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) June 5, 2019

We are disappointed that #MeasureEE did not pass. This would have provided over $500M in funding annually to public schools in Los Angeles. https://t.co/onLssDOTTj @LASchools

— KIPP LA Public Schools (@KIPPLASchools) June 5, 2019

Mayor Eric Garcetti announces January’s teacher strike deal, with union President Alex Caputo-Pearl, left, and  Superintendent Austin Beutner. All were banking on Measure EE to help pay for that contract. (Photo: Mayor Eric Garcetti Twitter page)

*Updated June 5

Los Angeles voters decisively defeated a parcel tax that would have sent $500 million a year to schools, according to unofficial results by the county registrar.

Measure EE, which would have charged residents within L.A. Unified boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property for 12 years, fell more than 20 percentage points below the 66.7 percent voter threshold required for the tax to pass. About 45.7 percent of the 304,321 voters who cast ballots as of Tuesday night approved the measure, while 54.3 percent opposed.

Voter turnout stood at 12.2 percent of the district’s 2.5 million registered voters — slightly above average for special elections and surpassing last month’s school board race.

As the polls closed Tuesday night, United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl told a group of parcel tax supporters in Boyle Heights that Measure EE marked a win for public education whether it passed or failed. “The city of Los Angeles is talking about what it, as the city, can do for public schools,” he said.

L.A. Unified — along with UTLA — had touted the tax as indispensable for securing the lower class sizes and additional nurses, counselors and librarians promised in this winter’s $840 million teacher contract, which district officials say is unsustainable with current revenue levels. Opponents of the tax cited concerns about poor accountability and oversight of taxpayer money.

“Achieving a two-thirds vote is a high bar for a reason, but the fact that we got 54 percent of the vote just shows how thoroughly wrong Measure EE was,” Matt Klink, a spokesman for the Vote No on EE campaign, told LA School Report Wednesday morning.

We did it!!! 100% of precincts reporting. 54%N 46%Y. We did it. #VoteNoOnEE

— Vote No on Measure EE (@NoOnMeasureEE) June 5, 2019

The district now has to send its 2019-20 budget to county overseers by July 1 — without a new local revenue source. The county has threatened a takeover if L.A. Unified can’t prove its solvency over the next three years. District projections show L.A. Unified spending $577 million more than it will take in next year alone and falling some $700 million in the red by 2021-22.

Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County’s superintendent of schools, wrote in a statement to LA School Report Wednesday that the L.A. County Office of Education “is disappointed” that Measure EE did not pass. “Put simply, LAUSD needs to stop spending more than it receives from the state and federal government,” the statement read, adding that, “The County Office team is committed to continuing to work with LAUSD as they develop the district budget for 2019-20.”

• Read more: ‘Very much’ the same thing: LAUSD continues to struggle to stay afloat as it waits for new revenue, latest financial report shows

While L.A. Unified anticipates millions in savings through reductions in central office and health care costs, Measure EE’s defeat leaves the district on shaky financial footing as it prepares for next school year.

What happened?

Passing Measure EE was always an uphill battle.

Parcel taxes aren’t commonplace. Only about 9 percent of school districts — most clustered in the Bay Area — have passed or renewed parcel taxes in the past five years. Measure EE would have been L.A. Unified’s first parcel tax. The only other one that made it to the ballot failed in 2010. Parcel taxes are unique to California, primarily serving as a fallback for cash-strapped districts that aren’t getting enough funding from the state.

Measure EE proponents hoped the car honks, picketing and social media love that marked January’s six-day teacher strike would translate to an outpouring of support for the tax. February polling had found more than 80 percent of respondents saw some level of need for more investment in L.A. Unified. “Residents and voters are more inclined to support the school district today than any time in the past,” Fernando Guerra, a Loyola Marymount University professor, told LA School Report last month.

The “Yes on EE” campaign had enjoyed high-profile backing from Mayor Eric Garcetti — an instrumental figure in getting the teacher contract approved — and at least four Democratic presidential candidates. It out-fundraised the opposing “No on EE” campaign almost 5-to-1, with more than $9.3 million in outside expenditures, according to city ethics commission data.

But it wasn’t enough to convince residents who didn’t trust the district to be a good steward of the parcel tax money.

There was ample skepticism that the $500 million flowing into L.A. Unified’s general fund annually would be spent on ballooning employee pension and health care costs instead of in the classroom. There was dissatisfaction with the proposed nine-member independent oversight committee, which was outlined in a school board resolution that critics said could have been easily ignored. And there was frustration with low achievement scores in the district despite taxpayers’ past investments — five construction bonds totaling $20.6 billion since 1997, for example. The Measure EE tax would have cost most homeowners between $100 and $450 per year.

#MeasureEE lost very, very badly. Wrong year, #LAUSD. The economy is good, but you totally misread the anger of the voting public.

— Carol May (@ridgeley) June 5, 2019

The lesson of ##MeasureEE’s defeat is not to give up on @LASchools. It’s to reflect then chart a #KidsFirst path forward. Bring together business, unions, reformers, parents, students & teachers. Build a broad coalition to fund #LAUSD and reimagine public education.

— Ben Austin (@iambenaustin) June 5, 2019

• Read More: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

In a recent poll of 400 L.A. Unified potential voters, 44.3 percent said they didn’t think district students “get a high-quality education.” About 36 percent said they did.

Source: Probolsky Research

“We could give them $500 million a year or $5 billion a year, and they still have no plan on how to fix themselves,” Valley Industry and Commerce Association President Stuart Waldman told LA School Report in April.

Legal challenges during the campaign further muddied the water. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in early May filed a lawsuit claiming Superintendent Austin Beutner had altered the parcel tax language after the school board approved it — a change that the organization believed could subject a larger proportion of residents’ properties to the tax.

The same organization also filed a complaint in late May alleging that L.A. Unified’s Measure EE advertisements broke campaign finance rules.

What’s next?

L.A. Unified by July 1 must submit its 2019-20 budget to the county. That budget needs to show the district with a “rainy day” minimum reserve of at least 1 percent of its total expenditures for each of the next three years. If it doesn’t, the county has said it would consider installing a fiscal adviser with “stay and rescind power.” This means he or she could rewrite budgets and overturn school board decisions — but could not change union contracts.

Less immediately, the district will now also have to find another avenue for covering the third year of the teacher contract, which is slated to cost $228 million.

Chief Financial Officer Scott Price told the school board in March that “we need to increase revenues.” While Measure EE was L.A. Unified’s most immediate shot at new funding, the district has been trying to save money. Its planned central office reductions will save $85.8 million over two years, and a newly implemented Medicare plan will shave $50 million a year off L.A. Unified’s more than $1 billion yearly health care bill. The district is anticipating some extra funding as well from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state budget, though that budget isn’t final yet.

L.A. Unified will also once again ask the state to waive a $105 million penalty on districts that have too many administrators compared with teachers, and pursue potential real estate sales or leasing opportunities that could generate $100 million, Price noted at the March board meeting.

Jackie Goldberg, the newest board member, told LA School Report before her election that reviewing the budget was one of her top priorities. “I’m going to sit down with the budget folks and tell them what I understand the budget to be and hear what they think it is, so that we can begin to reconcile some of the differences of opinion about what state the budget’s in,” she said.

L.A. Unified could try for another parcel tax down the line. If it’s during a main election year, like 2020, voter turnout could be higher. There is also a statewide “Schools and Communities First” split roll tax initiative on the ballot in November 2020. If approved by voters, it would tax commercial and industrial property according to their market value, raising an additional $6 billion to $10 billion a year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. An estimated $1.4 billion would be allocated to K-12 schools and community colleges in L.A. County.

“We’re going to keep going forward” if we fail on EE, Beutner had told LAist before Tuesday’s vote. “Because we have the broadest, deepest, most diverse coalition in support of public education in a generation.”

* This article has been updated to include comments from Vote No on EE spokesman Matt Klink and L.A. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo, and to add the link to the Spanish translation. 

Source: Probolsky Research.

L.A. Unified’s proposed $500 million annual parcel tax is unlikely to pass next week if low voter turnout trends continue, a new independent poll finds.

The poll, conducted by Probolsky Research, shows that if June 4’s special election sees “high” turnout, or 17 percent of the district’s 2.5 million eligible voters, the parcel tax could be on the cusp of meeting the two-thirds majority required to pass. But with a “low” turnout of 8 percent — which falls just below the reported turnout for the recent Board District 5 school board race — the odds decrease.

The Measure EE tax would charge residents within L.A. Unified boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property, generating an estimated $6 billion over 12 years for district schools. The tax’s supporters, who include district officials, the teachers union and Mayor Eric Garcetti, see Measure EE as a necessary investment in the public schools. L.A. Unified also can’t currently afford its $840 million teachers contract — signed after January’s strike — and has to fix its grim budget projections to appease county overseers who have threatened a fiscal takeover.

The tax proposal has attracted a swath of vocal advocates and opponents. Yet there’s been scant publicized polling on resident sentiment leading up to the vote, said Adam Probolsky, the polling firm’s president. The last poll of likely L.A. voters on a parcel tax was conducted in February on behalf of the district.

“When we see this vacuum, this data void [on] something that so many people really care passionately about … we really think the public should know about it, see it, be able to digest it,” Probolsky said. He noted that the polling was done in the public interest and that the organization, which is nonpartisan and isn’t linked to any Measure EE campaigns, did not receive funding for the poll from an outside source.

Probolsky Research conducted the poll on May 16 and May 17 with 400 likely L.A. Unified voters who were identified with “random sampling methodology to ensure that the demographic proportions of survey respondents match the composition” of likely voters, according to the poll’s stated methodology. Half of the respondents were interviewed by phone; half took an online survey. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points for results based on the full sample. (Read more about how the poll was conducted here.)

The takeaways

If 17 percent of registered voters in L.A. Unified cast a ballot, 61.8 percent would likely vote “yes” and 32 percent would vote “no,” the poll found. But 6 percent were a “firm unsure” — making a “yes” vote attainable if campaigning leading up to the election sways the bulk of undecided voters to approve the measure.

If only 8 percent of voters turn out, polling predicted that the best-case scenario for the parcel tax — if all of the “unsure” voters got on board — would be a 62.5 percent approval rate. This would fail to meet the 66.7 percent threshold.

Source: Probolsky Research

An earlier February poll conducted on the heels of the teacher strike found 72 percent and 69 percent of L.A. Unified residents approved a 16 cent per square foot parcel tax in higher and lower turnout cases, respectively.

Fernando Guerra, a professor and founding director of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, which conducts the L.A. Votes exit poll, agrees that turnout is paramount to the tax’s success. Special elections typically draw 10 percent or less of eligible voters because they don’t line up with regularly scheduled elections.

“Residents and voters are more inclined to support the school district today than any time in the past, so that bodes well,” he said, citing an LMU survey. “All it is is about turning out the vote.”

Next week’s election is likely to attract more voters than a school board race because a parcel tax has “a very direct impact” on individuals, Guerra said. But he added that the parcel tax is still facing “a double degree of difficulty” as a special election.

“There needs to be an incredible effort to inform voters, No. 1 that there’s an election happening, and then obviously for the proponents, to inform them of the importance of voting ‘yes,’” he said.

Board President Mónica García told LA School Report earlier this month that this was the primary focus of L.A. Unified’s information campaign. The district’s job “is to make sure that our school community [is] having a conversation about impact, [about] ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on EE,” she said. “What is it? What does it mean? How does it impact the world of choices?”

Newly seated school board member Jackie Goldberg has also made Measure EE her main focus since her board win. She promoted it on election night and at her swearing-in ceremony.

● Read more: June’s parcel tax to fund schools takes center stage after Jackie Goldberg’s LAUSD board win

There have been impassioned arguments for and against the tax. Some of that energy draws from local exasperation with the low achievement scores plaguing the district. When the poll asked the same people who had weighed in on the parcel tax whether they believe students attending L.A. Unified schools get a high-quality education, 44.3 percent said “no” while 35.8 percent responded “yes.” The remaining 20 percent were unsure or refrained from answering.

Source: Probolsky Research

Many of those who said they are voting “yes” see new taxpayer revenue as instrumental in moving the needle. “Education requires and deserves a lot more support at this point in time,” one potential voter told Probolsky Research.

“It takes money to do everything great,” another Measure EE backer said.

Some of those polled who voted no, however — the vast majority of whom denounced any more taxes in general — said it wasn’t their job to fix the district. “We’re putting out more money than we should be for the education that the kids are getting now,” one respondent said.

“I think L.A. Unified School District is poorly run, poorly managed, and I’m not voting for it,” another stated. This belief mirrors one of the major arguments of the Vote No on EE campaign, which is spearheaded by business and taxpayer organizations who say the district is unaccountable and are demanding reform before further investment in the school system.

Yusef Robb, the campaign manager for Yes on EE, had not seen the poll and declined to comment on its findings. But he emphasized that there’s strong support for the tax.

“LAUSD politics can be quite dramatic and quite divisive, but on Measure EE there is unity amongst all quote-unquote sides for this measure, because it’s not a political statement,” Robb said. “It’s about investing in the basics of our education system.”

The low turnout trend

The latest example of the lower turnout trend in local special elections was the May 14 runoff for school board, where 9.2 percent of Board District 5’s more than 314,000 registered voters cast ballots, according to the county’s election certification on Friday.

Turnout for that race was lower in predominantly minority, lower-income neighborhoods —a general election trend that’s exacerbated by special elections. For example, in the northern part of Board District 5, which is whiter and more affluent, turnout stood at about 10 percent, compared to 4.2 percent in the southern part of the board district, which is almost entirely Latino and lower income, according to initial precinct-by-precinct data.

Across L.A. Unified, at least 4 in 5 students are from low-income families. Nearly three-quarters are Latino.

Suggestions to boost turnout in local elections have included allowing 16-year-olds and undocumented residents to vote in L.A. Unified’s elections and curtailing campaign habits of targeting people who already vote consistently.

There are also steps already being taken. L.A. County in March 2020 will start using “vote centers” instead of neighborhood polling places and offer same-day voter registration. L.A. Unified will line up its elections with even-year primary and general elections next year as well.

Guerra said he believes the most effective way to increase turnout and empower voters is to just never hold special elections — period.

“We need to do a much better job in creating elections that matter and getting rid of the obstacles to participate,” he said. “Having too many elections dilutes that effort.”

Read more of our coverage relating to the parcel tax:

● June’s parcel tax to fund schools takes center stage after Jackie Goldberg’s LAUSD board win

● ‘No plan on how to fix themselves’ — Business leaders say LAUSD is undeserving of $500M parcel tax after years of little reform and accountability

● Whether for or against a parcel tax, parents and advocates want more money for schools — but they don’t yet trust LAUSD to be a ‘good steward’

● ‘Very much’ the same thing: LAUSD continues to struggle to stay afloat as it waits for new revenue, latest financial report shows

● The L.A. teacher strike may be over, but observers warn there’s no ‘clear path forward’ for how the school district can afford its new contract

Superintendent Austin Beutner, left, and Jackie Goldberg, who won Tuesday’s school board election, visit Micheltorena Elementary School on Wednesday morning. Both are actively campaigning for the Measure EE parcel tax.

With Tuesday’s school board election delivering a decisive win for public education firebrand Jackie Goldberg, next month’s parcel tax vote is now center stage.

L.A. Unified’s next election — less than three weeks away on June 4 — will ask residents within district boundaries to support Measure EE, a tax of 16 cents per square foot of developed property to raise about $500 million annually for the district. L.A. Unified is projecting insolvency in three years and is at risk of a county takeover if it can’t stay out of the red. If Measure EE passes with at least a two-thirds majority vote, it would start generating revenue later this year.

Goldberg, whose campaign mantra underscored investing in public education, quickly rallied her supporters Tuesday night to get out the vote to pass Measure EE. “We need a movement to make the changes we need,” Goldberg, who was backed by United Teachers Los Angeles, said Tuesday night in a video posted by Kyle Stokes of KPCC and LAist. “And that’s why, as soon as this campaign ends, we’re starting tomorrow on EE.”

Board President Mónica García had told LA School Report on Monday that the first priority for the new board member would be helping to get the measure passed. “There’s an opportunity to help us get her supporters out for Measure EE. There is an opportunity for that person to support more dollars going to school sites,” García said. “So that person gets to choose: Do we want to strengthen bureaucracy, or do we want to continue on the path of empowering leaders in the field?”

Congratulations @Jackie4LAUSD on your victory last night. I look forward to working with you to give all our kids a quality education. Let's start with passing Measure EE! @VoteYesOnEE

— Mónica García (@Monica4LA) May 15, 2019

The parcel tax has been a unique point of common ground for UTLA and the district, which have long clashed over whether L.A. Unified is in financial crisis. Measure EE is the current epicenter of a movement to boost L.A. schools’ funding after years of systemic underfunding at the state level. Calls for more money intensified leading up to January’s teacher strike and continued throughout the school board race. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was instrumental in ending the strike, has also been campaigning for the parcel tax.

The six current board members unanimously approved Measure EE in late February. The tax is progressive, meaning businesses and corporations would shoulder the brunt of the tax burden. Most homeowners would pay between $100 and $450 per year; Measure EE would not interfere with existing or new rent stabilization ordinances. There would also be exemptions for senior citizens and those relying on disability payments.

The tax would be in effect for 12 years.

“Whose schools? Our schools!”@ericgarcetti joins @PeteButtigieg in pushing Measure EE, a parcel tax for education funding. pic.twitter.com/ImLhvNHu72

— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) May 9, 2019

Passing Measure EE is not a slam dunk, however. A less costly parcel tax already failed to pass in 2010, and the school board removed another from the ballot in 2012. A February poll on the heels of January’s teacher strike showed roughly 70 percent approval for a per-square-foot parcel tax, just above the two-thirds vote required to pass.

Measure EE has also faced staunch opposition, notably from business and taxpayer organizations who say reform has to come first and who don’t believe the ballot language will ensure revenue is spent in the classrooms.

Board District 4’s Nick Melvoin told LA School Report last month that people’s reservations about district accountability aren’t “crazy.” To help assuage concerns, the board passed a separate resolution that would establish an independent taxpayer oversight committee for the parcel tax revenue.

But he added that he reminds residents who are voting next month “to be honest with themselves about where they stood during the strike.”

“There are a lot of people who were yelling … to do whatever the teachers wanted and not wanting to listen to the other side, which was that we didn’t have the money, who now are saying, ‘Well, I don’t support the tax.’” he said. “To say, ‘Give the teachers all that they want’ and then say, ‘Oh, but we’re not going to support you in the parcel tax’ is kind of contradictory.”

The latest contest to Measure EE is a lawsuit filed last week from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to block the tax. The suit says Superintendent Austin Beutner ordered a significant change to Measure EE’s ballot language — from encompassing all “habitable main square footage” to “all buildings or structures erected on or affixed to the land” — after the board had already voted on it. That change could subject a broader range of properties to the tax, going “beyond the scope of what the board voted for,” Pasadena-based attorney Kevin Moore told LAist.

A board resolution passed that same day confirmed the tax would exclude parking lots and garages. A judge nonetheless allowed the lawsuit to move forward, with a hearing date set for June 6 — two days after the vote. The hearing would reportedly determine if June 4’s election results should be certified.

#Update: Hearing from @NoOnMeasureEE campaign that a judge is allowing @HJTA’s lawsuit to move forward. Hearing date set for June 6 — 2 days after parcel tax vote — to determine if #lausd election results should be certified. pic.twitter.com/oo4M29zVif

— Taylor Swaak (@tswaak27) May 9, 2019

Measure EE supporters like García don’t appear fazed. “Measure EE, board races, the work that L.A. Unified does is very, very important,” García said Monday. “The Olympics are coming in 2028; those are our third-graders. The class of ’32 is coming as of July 1; they’re in our kindergarten. I think I would just encourage all parts of civic life to recognize the impact that L.A. Unified has on our families and our community.

“When we get it right, we change the world,” she added. “And so I know the best is yet to come.”

The voter registration deadline for this election is May 20. For more information, click here.

Esmeralda Fabián Romero contributed to this report.

Read more of our coverage relating to the parcel tax:

● ‘No plan on how to fix themselves’ — Business leaders say LAUSD is undeserving of $500M parcel tax after years of little reform and accountability

● Whether for or against a parcel tax, parents and advocates want more money for schools — but they don’t yet trust LAUSD to be a ‘good steward’

● ‘Very much’ the same thing: LAUSD continues to struggle to stay afloat as it waits for new revenue, latest financial report shows

● The L.A. teacher strike may be over, but observers warn there’s no ‘clear path forward’ for how the school district can afford its new contract

(Photo courtesy: Jackie Goldberg Flickr)

*Updated May 15

Jackie Goldberg will rejoin L.A. Unified’s school board after a decisive win Tuesday in the Board District 5 runoff election.

Goldberg, who represented the board district three decades ago, clinched 72 percent of the vote while former mayoral aide and L.A. Unified parent Heather Repenning took 28 percent, according to semi-official results announced by the county late Tuesday. The Los Angeles Times reported that Repenning had called Goldberg to concede.

“I do believe in the deepest part of my heart that it was the strike of the teachers … who woke up the public to what has happened to public education,” Goldberg told the Times. She was United Teachers Los Angeles’ pick and has aligned with the union on calls for new funding for district schools and increased scrutiny of independent charters.

She quickly rallied her supporters to continue to fight for schools by getting out the vote to pass Measure EE, the parcel tax on the June 4 ballot that would raise $500 million a year for L.A. Unified schools.

“We need a movement to make the changes we need,” Goldberg told supporters Tuesday night in a video posted by Kyle Stokes of KPCC and LAist. “And that’s why, as soon as this campaign ends, we’re starting tomorrow on EE.”

Goldberg is expected to swing the board toward a more pro-union majority as members contend with the district’s deep ideological divides on charters’ future role in public education, its growing need for new revenue sources and a lack of consensus on how to improve student learning.

Goldberg has said that a main driver of her running for school board was keeping the seat away from charter school proponents. UTLA poured $1.28 million in outside expenditures into her campaign as of May 10, according to city ethics commission data.

Superintendent Austin Beutner, whom Goldberg has criticized for his “lack of transparency,” tweeted his congratulations Wednesday morning. “Congratulations to Jackie Goldberg on her successful campaign to represent the students, families and communities we serve in Board District 5,” he wrote. “I know Ms. Goldberg will be a strong advocate for students and I look forward to working with her.”

Beutner and Goldberg visited Micheltorena Elementary School together early Wednesday — Goldberg’s first school visit as “board member-elect.”

Thank you to the wonderful students and staff at Micheltorena Elementary School for the warm welcome with Board Member-Elect Jackie Goldberg. pic.twitter.com/FslJmuN9yq

— Austin Beutner (@AustinLASchools) May 15, 2019

Voter turnout as of Tuesday night stood at 7.69 percent, marking a notable dip from March’s 10.7 percent showing in the primary election. School board elections typically have lower voter turnout. A total of 24,159 ballots were processed and counted, the county reported. Of those, Goldberg took 17,218 votes to Repenning’s 6,824.

SEMI OFFICIAL FINAL: #LAUSD District 5 Special Runoff Election update now posted: https://t.co/eMl4O2DW8R …

122 of 122 precincts reporting. 7,174 precinct ballots and 16,985 mail ballots reporting.

Jackie Goldberg 71.62%; Heather Repenning 28.38%

— Dean Logan, RR/CC (@LACountyRRCC) May 15, 2019

Elections results won’t be official until the county registrar certifies them, which is scheduled for May 24 “barring any unforeseen circumstances,” a county spokesman told LA School Report on Tuesday. After that, Goldberg will join the seven-member school board, which decides on policies, budget and approval of charter schools in L.A. Unified.

Throughout her campaign, Goldberg touted her deep roots and connections in L.A. education and politics. Goldberg taught in the once infamously embattled city of Compton for 16 years before an eight-year tenure on the school board from 1983 to 1991. She also served on the L.A. City Council from 1993 to 2000, then in the state Assembly from late 2000 to 2006. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, respectively. Goldberg lives in Echo Park, in the northern, more affluent part of Board District 5, known as BD5. She is married to longtime partner Sharon Stricker, with one adopted son.

Goldberg nearly won outright in the March primary, which came just weeks after January’s six-day teacher strike where she’d been a prominent face on the picket lines and had criticized charters. She secured about 48 percent of the 33,777 primary votes cast, despite a crowded 10-candidate race. That was just shy of the more than 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. Repenning had received about 13 percent of the vote, narrowly beating Huntington Park councilwoman Graciela Ortíz.

As Goldberg read the semi-official results Tuesday night — showing a similarly gaping lead — her supporters cheered, chanting, “Yes we did.”

The moment Jackie Goldberg wins the seat for Board District 5 pic.twitter.com/nk62C9tf8F

— Dorany Pineda (@DoranyPineda90) May 15, 2019

As the new board member, Goldberg will represent nearly 100,000 traditional and charter school students, who have not been represented on the board since former member and education reformer Ref Rodriguez resigned last July following money laundering charges. BD5 enrollment is nearly 90 percent Latino, with about 67,000 students attending school in the more immigrant-heavy, lower-income southeast region. Seven schools in BD5 were recently identified in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state, and all seven are in the district’s southeast section. Nearly 4 in 10 of the board district’s elementary and middle schools are in the lowest categories in both math and reading on the state’s dashboard.

Goldberg is white and doesn’t speak Spanish — something that 84 percent of BD5 parents in a recent poll said was an important characteristic for their next representative.

Serving minority students and boosting student achievement weren’t the central tenants of Goldberg’s platform. She directed her energy on demanding enhanced charter school scrutiny and accountability, along with calls to tax the wealthy to mitigate statewide underfunding of schools. Goldberg’s positions align with UTLA in many cases: She believes L.A. Unified’s “fiscal cliff” is an exaggeration, supports the $500 million Measure EE parcel tax, opposes categorical cuts to costly pensions, and denounces the idea that more funding should be tied to higher accountability standards.

(1/2) Title I — and public education, in general — has been chronically underfunded.
We need to work with government leaders to identify strategies for developing new permanent funding streams to improve education funding.https://t.co/GlFSzZO4fp

— Jackie Goldberg (@Jackie4LAUSD) March 21, 2019

(For more on Goldberg’s platform, read this in-depth profile, our Q&A on her Day 1 priorities and our candidate forum coverage.)

On Monday, Board President Mónica García told LA School Report one of her top priorities for the new board member was expanding equity. “Some places have been served very well, some places have not,” García said, noting that she’d ask the newcomer: “Are you going to support increased equity in supporting the highest-needs schools, or are you going to perpetuate a system that allows only for some people to get the highest services that the district offers?”

Former BD5 board member Yolie Flores in a Monday op-ed added that the new representative has to make “an explicit commitment to addressing the unique socioeconomic challenges” within L.A. Unified, such as addressing the “unacceptable third-grade reading proficiency problem” and supporting “the expansion of dual-language instruction.”

• Read more: Commentary: An open letter to LAUSD’s school board candidates before Tuesday’s vote — and a plea to address Board District 5’s educational disparities

Much of that is on Goldberg’s radar. When asked, she said she backs bilingual education expansion and more equitable supports for English learners. She believes undocumented immigrants should be allowed to vote in school board elections — something already happening in San Francisco. In a February interview, she also suggested ideas for improving reading, such as getting “rid of hours of testing-based curriculum and have [teachers] actually teach kids to love reading, by giving them fun books to read, to enjoy and to talk about in class” and doubling up the number of teachers and teaching assistants based on a school’s budget.

One of her Day 1 priorities is visiting school sites in the southeast too. “I’m the least familiar with them,” she told LA School Report in March. “That’s really the best way to know what’s going on in the district — to get up out of your chair and go visit schools.”

Goldberg was endorsed by the CHIRLA Action Fund, which supports immigrant rights, as well as prominent Latino political figures Hilda Solís, an L.A. County Supervisor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, and activist Dolores Huerta. Other backers include the California Federation of Teachers, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and state Superintendent Tony Thurmond.

Her most powerful ally, however, has been UTLA, which poured $1.28 million into her campaign before Election Day. Repenning, conversely, was heavily backed by SEIU Local 99 — a union representing non-teacher staff such as cafeteria workers — which spent about $1.1 million supporting Repenning and about $140,000 opposing Goldberg.

Both SEIU Local 99 and the California Charter Schools Association Advocates, which didn’t endorse any candidate this election cycle, congratulated Goldberg on her win in press releases sent out Wednesday morning.

Goldberg’s ties to UTLA largely cost her the Los Angeles Times’ endorsement, which went to principal Cynthia González in the primary and Repenning in the runoff.

To view the election results, go here. To see when the county will be updating results, go here.

To look back at our past BD5 coverage:

• Pre-election rundown: Where Jackie Goldberg and Heather Repenning stand on hot-button issues in LAUSD’s school board race
• Goldberg and Repenning find little to disagree about in their last forum in LAUSD Board District 5’s southeast section before Tuesday’s vote
• Heather Repenning enters the school board runoff vowing to address the need ‘to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD’
• More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years
• New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5
• Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.  
  

  ---

  *This article has been updated with Wednesday morning’s school visit and quotes.

Tuesday is the runoff election to fill the school board seat in L.A. Unified’s Board District 5.

The person elected — either teachers union favorite Jackie Goldberg or former mayoral aide and parent Heather Repenning — will become part of the seven-member school board that decides on policies, budget and approval of charter schools in L.A. Unified, which is the largest school district in California and second-largest in the nation.

The District 5 board member represents students enrolled in schools located in parts of the southeast of Los Angeles — minority, low-income communities including the cities of Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate and Bell — and in more affluent, whiter neighborhoods northeast of downtown, including Highland Park, Echo Park, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock and Los Feliz. The board district, known as BD5, serves predominantly Latino students and has some of L.A. Unified’s highest-need learners as well as some of the state’s lowest-performing schools.

The elected board member will complete a term expiring in December 2020.

Go to the county registrar website for election results Tuesday night. In the meantime, here are six things you need to know about Tuesday’s special election:

1. What’s at stake?

It’s an important election for all L.A. Unified students.

Whoever fills the vacant seat could swing the balance of the board either toward a more pro-charter or pro-union majority as members contend with the district’s deficit spending and grim financial projections, low achievement metrics and deep ideological divides on charters’ future role in public education. The board in January voted to ask the state to study charters and impose a temporary moratorium — an ask heavily pushed for by United Teachers Los Angeles during the six-day teacher strike.

This election is particularly important to Latinos because they make up almost 90 percent of enrollment in BD5 — the second-highest concentration of Latino students among L.A. Unified’s seven board districts.

Of the more than 81,000 traditional school students in BD5 enrolled across 177 schools, many come from immigrant families. More than a quarter are classified as English learners, and 11 percent require special education services. More than 85 percent live in low-income households, and an estimated 2,000 students are homeless.

Seven schools in BD5 were recently identified in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state, and all seven are in the district’s southeast section. Nearly 4 in 10 of the board district’s elementary and middle schools are in the lowest categories in both math and reading on the state’s dashboard.

The new board member will also represent more than 15,000 students across 32 independent charter schools. Some of these charters have multiple site locations, which then brings the total of charters to 41, according to a district spokesperson. BD5 has no affiliated charters, which are district-run schools with some autonomies.

Read what BD5 parents say about their schools and what they want for their children here.

2. Who’s on the ballot?

Jackie Goldberg and Heather Repenning are the two remaining candidates following a 10-candidate primary election in March. Goldberg amassed just shy of 50 percent of the vote in the primary; Repenning took about 13 percent, inching out Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz by a hairline 31 ballots for the second runoff slot.

Both women are white, continuing a trend of low Latino representation in the BD5 seat in the last two dozen years despite the board district being drawn to elect a Latino.

Goldberg, 74, has deep political roots in the city and state. She was a teacher in Compton, an L.A. Unified school board member, an L.A. city councilwoman and a state assemblywoman. She is endorsed by UTLA and is closely aligned with the union on topics such as increased charter school scrutiny.

Repenning, 44, speaks fluent Spanish — a top priority of Latino parents in BD5 — and has more than 18 years of experience in local government. She’s a former aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is now campaigning for her. Repenning would be the only parent on the board with a child in the L.A. Unified school system, and she has campaigned for more parent engagement initiatives. She’s backed by SEIU Local 99, a union that represents non-teaching staff such as school cafeteria workers and custodians.

The California Charter Schools Association’s political arm, which backed both Board District 4’s Nick Melvoin and Board District 6’s Kelly Gonez in the 2017 elections, did not endorse any candidate this election cycle.

As of May 10, Goldberg had $1.28 million in outside expenditures from UTLA, according to city ethics commission data. Repenning was at $1.18 million, with about $1.1 million from SEIU Local 99. Campaign totals are available via this link.

Read up on Goldberg and Repenning in our in-depth profiles. Or check out our latest rundown comparing the two candidates on key topics here.

3. Who’s voting?

There are about 315,000 eligible voters in BD5. But the vast majority won’t cast a ballot.

Voter turnout in school board elections is typically low — 10 percent or less — and even lower in special elections, “simply because it’s singular to a specific district, a specific set of communities, with candidates specifically targeting certain audiences,” Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State LA, told LA School Report in March.

This is the only race on Tuesday’s ballot. March’s primary, which overlapped with a few municipal elections, saw 10.7 percent turnout, or 33,777 voters.

Voter turnout is already historically low for Latino voters, many of whom live in the southeast region on BD5. In the last BD5 election in 2015, for example, 57 percent of registered voters in BD5 were Latino, but they made up only 46 percent of the about 26,600 ballots cast, according to data provided by pollster Paul Goodwin. Goodwin noted in an email on Monday that about 62 percent of BD5 voters are now listed as Latino.

The area northeast of downtown, where about 32,000 students are enrolled in schools in whiter, more affluent neighborhoods like Eagle Rock, Los Feliz and Silver Lake, has typically seen higher turnout. Latino experts and political watchers agree that those who would be most impacted by low electoral turnout would be the 67,000 students in the southeast section.

“By holding a special election … it disenfranchises communities, especially the southeast community,” Fernando Guerra, a professor and founding director of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, which conducts the L.A. Votes exit poll, told LA School Report earlier this election cycle.

Before the primary, pollster Goodwin said a runoff between Repenning and Goldberg could discourage Latino turnout. “If you have this interesting sort of inter-union battle between Heather and Jackie, where there’s unlikely to be any substantive difference between them … then you might have very, very low Latino turnout,” Goodwin said. He reiterated this notion in Monday’s email, guessing that Latino voter turnout would be “about 35% to 40%” because of the lack of Latino candidates on the ballot.

María Daisy Ortíz, an immigrant parent, said at a candidate forum that she is more concerned with whether the next board member can improve educational opportunities for English learners and low-income students than if they’re Latino. “I hope all parents, particularly Latinos, can be very analytical about who they’re going to vote for and don’t vote for a candidate that only tells them what they want to hear,” said Ortíz, who is also a member of the district’s committee for English learners and a frequent speaker at L.A. Unified board meetings.

The county registrar received 15,739 absentee ballots as of Friday, a spokesman said Monday — a larger early turnout than in March. It had issued more than 153,000 ballots.

To make board selection more democratic, groups like Power California are advocating for youths 16 years old and up, as well as non-citizens, to be able to vote in school board elections. Repenning supports both; Goldberg is only fully behind non-citizen voting at this time. San Francisco in November became the first California city to allow non-citizen voting in school board elections.

Read more about disparities in Latino voter representation here.

4. Why a May election?

The BD5 special election was approved by the school board in August, a month after District 5 member and Board President Ref Rodríguez resigned after pleading guilty to political money laundering charges. The seat has been vacant since then. The cost of tomorrow’s election is an estimated $2.1 million, according to the country registrar’s office.

The winning candidate will serve out Rodríguez’s term, which ends in December 2020, and can run again for the next term. Both Goldberg and Repenning have expressed intentions to run in the next term’s election.

5. How can I vote?

Registered voters who live in the boundaries of BD5 can vote in this election. The district includes neighborhoods northeast and southeast of downtown. Click here for a complete map of District 5.

You can find your polling place by entering your address in the Los Angeles County Clerk website. For assistance by phone, you can call (800) 815-2666. Polling places will open Tuesday, May 14, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

6. Then what?

About 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, the county registrar will release the first tallies, which will include all absentee ballots received up to that point.

Goldberg’s campaign will be hosting an Election Night party at Taix French Restaurant at 1911 Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles. Repenning’s event will be at Ivanhoe Restaurant at 2500 Riverside Dr. — about 2 miles apart and both in the northern part of BD5.

Goldberg’s campaign manager Zoe Kleinfeld wrote in an email Thursday that, “We cannot predict Tuesday’s outcome; however, both candidates should have a good idea after the first round of returns.”

Between 9 and 9:30 p.m., there will be an updated total that counts ballots cast at the polls. Updates will continue about every half hour Tuesday night until 100 percent of the precincts are reporting, a county spokesman said. Absentee ballots have to be postmarked by Tuesday at the latest and received by Friday to be counted, the spokesman said.

While the outcome could be known as early as Tuesday night, the county isn’t expected to officially certify the election results until May 24. The next board member can be seated after the election is certified, Board Secretariat Jefferson Crain has told LA School Report.

Go to the county registrar website for election results.

Read more about the election from LA School Report:

● Pre-election rundown: Where Jackie Goldberg and Heather Repenning stand on hot-button issues in LAUSD’s school board race

● Goldberg and Repenning find little to disagree about in their last forum in LAUSD Board District 5’s southeast section before Tuesday’s vote

● Heather Repenning enters the school board runoff vowing to address the need ‘to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD’

● More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years

● New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5

● Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.

Tomorrow is the runoff election in L.A. Unified’s Board District 5, a mostly Latino district. The next board member representing BD5 will not be Latino, and therefore, as educators and leaders of color, we believe it is critical that the ultimate winner in this election makes an explicit commitment to addressing the unique socioeconomic challenges that district residents face every day.

In order to improve educational outcomes for children across the district, the community needs a representative who can understand the important cultural characteristics that define it and who will be responsive to the variety of ways in which marginalization of Latinos has fostered educational disparities.

We call on the candidates to focus on the following issues:

• Focus on equity and diversity and their link to achievement. The new school board member should prioritize advocating for the needs, rights and safety of immigrant students, increasing the number of young children in dual-language early education, raising the percentage of college-ready students of color and increasing the number of teachers and administrators of color in schools. Research shows that the positive results for Latino students are indisputable when their backgrounds are reflected on the school board and in the classroom. Outcomes in graduation rates, dropout rates, enrollment in Advanced Placement classes, suspensions, expulsions and standardized test scores all improve, independent of other school population and economic factors. How will you increase teacher and administrator diversity in BD5 schools?

• Value and act on community input. Cultural competency and the ability to communicate with Latino families are critical to BD5 parents, who are frustrated that schools in their communities have been neglected for too long, especially throughout the district’s majority Latino southeast. Parents have shared that low expectations, overcrowded classrooms, poor school maintenance, safety and security concerns and poor food quality are challenges that don’t exist in schools just 10 miles north of where they live. What is your plan to engage and respond to the community to eliminate these disparities?

• Address the unacceptable third-grade reading proficiency problem. Smarter Balanced assessment results for the 2017-18 school year show that only 1 out of 7 socioeconomically disadvantaged third-graders in BD5 were reading above standard. Yet, research shows that third-grade reading proficiency is one of the strongest predictors of high school graduation and college matriculation. What will you do to lead on closing this gap for the students of LAUSD and BD5 in particular?
  

• Support the expansion of dual-language instruction. Dual-language instruction — one of the best chances for English language learners to succeed — is unquestionably provided to middle-class white families when requested yet often denied or dismissed when requested by Spanish-dominant families. How will you advocate for increased dual-language instruction for BD5?

We know from research and our personal experiences that the change the community deserves is only possible if the next leader on the school board can embrace its multifaceted set of challenges and strengths — and truly work in the best interests of the community you represent. We eagerly await your response to these questions so that we can more fully understand how you plan to meet the needs of our community.

We are a national network of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC), and we look forward to working with the next representative of BD5 to set the entire BD5 community on a successful course for a better future. We hope that this is the beginning of an open dialogue to achieve that goal.

Sincerely,

Yolie Flores, former LAUSD board member for BD5 and a member of EdLoC’s Los Angeles branch

Layla Avila, CEO and executive director of EdLoC

Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC) is a national membership organization of 300 leaders of color working to elevate the leadership, voices and influence of people of color in education and to leading more inclusive efforts to improve education. EdLoC aims to advance a third way that breaks through the polarizing divides that have consumed efforts to improve public education and to forge the alliances needed to realize and sustain EdLoC’s vision of providing low-income children of color expansive and substantive opportunities for the highest levels of academic and economic attainment.

Jackie Goldberg, left, and Heather Repenning will face off in Tuesday’s school board election.

Residents of L.A. Unified’s Board District 5 are headed to the polls Tuesday to select their next representative — one who will help shape a school board grappling with the district’s financial instability and a lack of consensus on how to improve student learning.

On the ballot is Jackie Goldberg, who amassed just shy of 50 percent of the vote in March’s primary election, and Heather Repenning, who secured about 13 percent of the vote and inched out Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz by a mere 31 ballots.

Goldberg, 74, of Echo Park, has deep political roots in the city and state. She was a teacher in Compton, an L.A. Unified school board member, an L.A. city councilwoman and a state assemblywoman. She is endorsed by United Teachers Los Angeles.

Repenning, 44, lives in Los Feliz — also in the northern, more affluent part of the board district — and has more than 18 years of experience in local government and was an aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is campaigning for her. She would be the only parent on the board with a child in the L.A. Unified school system.

The two share similarities: They agree on the need for bolstered public education spending and back the upcoming Measure EE parcel tax. They’ve both been educators. Their moms are their greatest inspirations. But both Goldberg and Repenning are quick to distinguish themselves and their agendas. Repenning has painted herself as a centrist candidate who wants to deepen parent engagement efforts. Goldberg has tapped into her firebrand persona, demanding charter scrutiny and promising to work her connections at the state level to increase school funding.

Whoever wins the election will represent a predominantly Latino board district — about 90 percent of enrolled students are Latino — and fill the vacated seat of Ref Rodríguez, an education reformer who resigned last July after pleading guilty to political money laundering charges. The winner will impact how the current board, which swings between reform- and union-leaning agendas, addresses the district’s fiscal uncertainty, low achievement scores and the future of charter schools.

LA School Report has re-upped its interviews with the two candidates spanning from mid-February to late March and tapped their comments at community forums to provide an overview of their platforms. Here are where both stand on hot-button topics:

TOP PRIORITIES

Goldberg’s campaign has largely fixated on taxing the state’s wealth and generating revenue.

In that vein, one of her first focuses as a school board member would be on equitable per-pupil spending. “One of the things we heard as I went around everywhere in this particular campaign was that some neighborhoods believe that even [in] L.A. Unified, they don’t get the same number of dollars per pupil as people who live in more affluent areas,” she told LA School Report. “So I want the district to do a study of the per-pupil expense given to each school to make sure that that’s either not true, or if it is true, that we fix it.”

Other priorities include:

● School visits. “I want to begin to visit the schools, starting with those in the southeast first because I’m the least familiar with them. That’s really the best way to know what’s going on in the district — to get up out of your chair and go visit schools.”

● Bilingual education. “I do believe that everybody needs to be bilingual, bicultural and biliterate,” she said Wednesday evening at a candidate forum.

● Charter accountability. “I want to begin fairly quickly asking the charter office to tell me what they do” when charter schools are “short by more than 50 percent for the number of students they said they would be serving. What do we do about that? Do we take money back from them?”

● Bolstering special education resources. “I want to take an in-depth look at how we are dealing with special education students. It’s near and dear to my own heart because of the difficulties my own son had getting what I thought was appropriate special needs services when he was in school [with ADHD] in L.A. Unified. … The complaints I’m getting [from parents] are that they don’t want the special education schools closed; that they’re being closed. They don’t want their kids to be mainstreamed, but they’re being mainstreamed.”

“There’s so much underfunding of special needs kids that school districts wrongly try to not spend more than they have to. Who does that help? Nobody! It’s a real problem. Every year, the district spends more on special education than it takes in. And that should not be true.” pic.twitter.com/fssNIxxdij

— Jackie Goldberg (@Jackie4LAUSD) April 10, 2019

Repenning’s campaign, meanwhile, is rooted in a call for more parent engagement. She has an elementary age daughter in the district.

“As a parent, we have so much work to do on parent engagement,” she told LA School Report. “Everything from making board meetings more accessible to giving parents more information on how schools are doing when they are trying to decide, choosing where to send your child to school. … Data and information is a really import piece of accountability. The more information that we’re able to share, the more it empowers parents.”

She hopes to increase parental involvement in the school board legislative process by bringing meetings to parents — something Goldberg also supports.

Instead of finding ways to limit public input, let’s expand it. We should move Board meetings around to different schools and hold them in the evenings so more parents and families can attend. That's what I did on the Board of Public Works, and it's what I'll do at LAUSD. https://t.co/qy3wQm7nDL

— Heather Repenning (@heather4lausd) May 2, 2019

Other priorities include:

● High-quality after-school tutoring at every school campus. “It’s very important for me as a working mother. After-school programs should be available for every child in the district,” she said at Wednesday’s forum.

● College access and eligibility. “I want to convene with [University of California and California State University system schools], community colleges, private universities to find out how can we do better for our LAUSD graduates,” she said Wednesday.

● Tackling climate change. Repenning is proposing a “Green New Deal” outfitted for L.A. Unified that calls for more energy efficiency, reducing food waste, replacing asphalt with greenspace and preparing students for jobs in science, technology and engineering fields.

● Getting people in the central office into schools. “I’d love to create a program where everyone at Beaudry or at the local districts spends one day a month or maybe more working at a school site,” she told LA School Report. “Because a school site is at the core of what we’re doing, that’s where our focus should be.”

SERVING MINORITY STUDENTS & FAMILIES

Board District 5, also known as BD5, has about 90 percent Latino enrollment, with two-thirds of students attending schools in heavily Latino and lower-income southeast cities such as Huntington Park and Maywood. BD5 is also home to some of the state’s lowest-performing schools — particularly in the southeast region of the district, where many students are children of immigrants.

A map of L.A. Unified’s seven board districts. BD5 is the backward C-shaped region in pink. (Source: L.A. Unified)

Goldberg’s take

Goldberg is white and doesn’t speak Spanish, but she told LA School Report that she’s not a “new resident” in the district either. She’s lived in L.A. Unified since the 1960s and taught in neighboring Compton for 16 years. “I taught in Compton, and that’s just south of [the southeast],” she said. “So it’s not a part of the county where I’m like, ‘Oh, where are they, I can’t find them.’ I feel comfortable there even though it is a new area for me to represent.”

The former board member is still active in the area too: she’s board vice president of L.A.C.E.R., an after-school program that serves more than 4,000 students, many of them in BD5. “I’ve been involved in the educational issues of this district the entire time I’ve been in office and out of office,” she said.

When asked about how she would serve minority students, Goldberg has said she backs bilingual education expansion and more thoughtful, equitable supports for English language learners. (About a quarter of L.A. Unified’s students are classified as ELL). “We have stupid district rules, [including] a district rule that 22 percent of English language learners should be moved into all English classes every year,” she said. “We have schools that are entry-level schools for new immigrants, where about 75 percent of Spanish speakers speak no English at all. To have the same rules for all schools is ridiculous.”

Goldberg has not yet decided whether she supports allowing 16-year-olds to vote in school board elections but does support undocumented immigrants’ participation, which is already in place in San Francisco as of last November. To better tune in to minority communities’ needs, Goldberg added that she intends to “pick a very diverse staff, and they will help me be informed on those things I know about and on the things that I don’t know anything about.”

Goldberg is backed by the CHIRLA Action Fund, which supports immigrant rights, as well as prominent Latino political figures Hilda Solís, an L.A. County Supervisor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, and activist Dolores Huerta.

I am thrilled to announce that @chirlafund has endorsed my campaign!

I have always been staunchly committed to protecting and championing the rights of our immigrant students. And as your Board Member, I will continue to push for progressive change for our immigrant community. pic.twitter.com/n3haxg3AUF

— Jackie Goldberg (@Jackie4LAUSD) April 30, 2019

Repenning’s take

Repenning is fluent in Spanish and taught in Latin America earlier in her career. Repenning, like Goldberg, believes in boosting bilingual programs — especially in early education — to support English learners.

“I would want our kids to come to our schools being bilingual starting from kindergarten,” she told LA School Report. “Bilingualism for me is very important.”

Working with immigrants is also a key focus. “I believe in my ability to support immigrant parents, first of all on immigration policies,” she said. “When I was at the city, I oversaw the office of immigrant affairs. I’ve personally been involved — I understand DACA, TPS, I understand drivers licenses, I understand how vulnerable parents are right now. I believe schools are very, very important places to communicate about a variety of things, not just about a child’s education.”

Her campaign set up an office in Huntington Park to foster more communication with families who live in the board district’s more diverse, low-income neighborhoods, campaign manager Derek Mazzeo told LA School Report.

Come join us for phone banking at our Huntington Park campaign office, at 5944 Santa Fe Avenue. Open every day until 8 PM! pic.twitter.com/qfoAzuTnUD

— Heather Repenning (@heather4lausd) April 26, 2019

Repenning thinks undocumented parents should be allowed to vote in school board elections, and — unlike Goldberg — was quick to commend the idea of also permitting 16-year-olds to vote when asked at Wednesday’s candidate forum. “At the end of the day, it’s important to me that true stakeholders in the district are able to have a real voice about who’s going to represent them at the school board,” she said.

Repenning is endorsed by the Latino Coalition of Los Angeles, an organization that advocates for policies and legislation that benefit the Latino community in Los Angeles. Ortíz, who Repenning narrowly defeated, transitioned to support her campaign after the primary.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Only six of 98 elementary and middle schools in BD5 met state goals in both English and math, according to 2017 data analyzed by Parent Revolution — ranking it third in performance among L.A. Unified’s seven board districts. At the high school level, less than half of the Class of 2019 systemwide is on track to graduate eligible to apply to UC and CSU schools.

Proposals to improve student achievement have been slim this election cycle — often taking the backseat to discourse on charters and the underfunding of schools.

BD5’s English language arts and math performance. Source: Parent Revolution

Goldberg’s take

When asked about student achievement, Goldberg tied poor performance to poverty and subpar funding. “What happens is that the lower income the community, the more challenges there often are for kids who are in school,” she said, citing “extreme correlation between being very low income and not doing well in school because of those challenges that come from poverty. … So because we have high levels of poverty in Board District 5, we’ve got a lot of students who are not doing well.”

The answer, she said, is to increase funding. “That will change things dramatically, because then you lower class sizes, then you provide additional teaching assistance, then you provide additional assistant principals so that you have more folks that are looking out for and observing and taking care of the instructional program. So you just need more money first.”

She doesn’t want additional school spending tied to accountability standards, though. “We test every kid every year! My god, what do you want to do, test them twice a year?” she told LA School Report.

#ThrowbackThursday
I authored the Living Wage Ordinance, raising 1000s of LA workers to a living wage. Research shows that when wages go up, school achievement goes up. This is true 100% of the time. All efforts of all agencies to raise the minimum wage are very important. pic.twitter.com/NfhhNh5C7f

— Jackie Goldberg (@Jackie4LAUSD) April 25, 2019

While Goldberg hasn’t laid out a step-by-step plan to improve academic outcomes, she does have ideas for what could help student learning across the board — much of it focused on reading. They include:

● “Get rid of hours of testing-based curriculum and have [teachers] actually teach kids to love reading, by giving them fun books to read, to enjoy and to talk about in class.”

● Based on a school’s budget, “double up the number of teachers and teaching assistants” for those students struggling the most with reading.

● In secondary schools, find “ways to get every academic teacher to teach reading along with their subject matter material.”

She also said during a February candidate forum that class sizes should be based on academics. “Students who are not reading at grade level should be in smaller classes than students that are reading at grade level,” she said. “One size does not fit all.”

Repenning’s take

Repenning is focused on expanding school programs for students, notably via “real, after-school academic support at every single campus,” she told LAist. “It’s important to me that our schools be real community centers that are able to serve the multiple needs of children, including mental health and nutrition.”

She also wants to buckle down on improving college readiness — a top priority for many local high schoolers. Repenning told LA School Report: “I think the LAUSD leaders should be advocates for affordable and accessible higher education. It’s expensive and it’s daunting, and we need to make sure that our students have the support that they need so they can get into higher education. The basic things are increasing access to counselors, increasing the support for students to fill out their FAFSA forms. Even earlier than that, I think there’s a shift that needs to happen. We need to start signaling to students at a much earlier age that, ‘Hey, you’re going to college.’ Students need to be seen not just as future college graduates but as future leaders. One of the most important jobs for a school board member is setting those high expectations.”

Here are some of the basic tools that should be in place at LAUSD to help kick down the door to college on behalf of all of our kids pic.twitter.com/ENPbcpjsLG

— Heather Repenning (@heather4lausd) March 18, 2019

Repenning said Wednesday she’s also a proponent for incentivizing effective teachers and principals to teach in the district’s lowest-performing schools, which are often filled with less seasoned educators. Research has shown teacher and school leadership quality correlate with student achievement.

Goldberg disagrees. “When you say to a group of teachers to come into another area, you’re implying that the teachers that are there are not very good,” she said at the forum.

LAUSD FINANCES

L.A. Unified is continuing to project significant deficit spending and ballooning health care and pension costs that will eat up the district’s reserves within three years. The district spends $1.1 billion a year — about 15 percent of its budget — on health and welfare benefits.

The district is banking on new funding sources that aren’t guaranteed to stay afloat: projected revenue from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget and local initiatives like Measure EE, the $500 million-a-year parcel tax on the ballot next month. County overseers have threatened a takeover if L.A. Unified’s financial outlook doesn’t improve.

Goldberg’s take

Goldberg has said she views L.A. Unified’s current financial crisis as an exaggeration, stating that the district leans on “worst-case scenario” projections and has a $2 billion surplus — a claim made consistently by UTLA during January’s teacher strike.

“What districts do sometimes is they say, ‘We’re not ever going to spend so much money that if there’s a recession we would have to make cuts,’” Goldberg told LA School Report. “Sitting on money in the hopes that you won’t ever have to make cuts, in my opinion, is chicken. I’d much rather make cuts after having spent the money we had on the kids for years [until a recession hits] … Until then, they’re getting the benefit of those dollars being spent on their education.”

But Goldberg still intends to look at the budget to see where there can be cuts. She also backs Measure EE, calling it “a critical piece in changing the outcomes for children in our district” at Wednesday’s forum.

(2/2) As a former Board Member and Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, I will fight to fully fund our schools through structural revenue solutions — because California is currently 41st in per-student spending and we can’t make the long term improvements without solutions.

— Jackie Goldberg (@Jackie4LAUSD) March 21, 2019

However, Goldberg rejected the idea of cutting pensions categorically at a February forum. “A pension is what you reward a teacher for spending their life working with your children,” she said. “This is a good thing, not a bad thing. What the problem is, is that we’re not taxing the wealth of the state.”

Repenning’s take

Repenning sees more nuance in the district’s financial woes. She acknowledges the “very real financial issues LAUSD is facing,” and, like Goldberg, is calling for more funding. “First, we need more support for our schools from both Washington and Sacramento and for all of us to put aside political differences to ensure we pass Measure EE this June,” she told LA School Report.

At Wednesday’s forum, she added: “The district still does not currently have enough money to pay for the whole [teachers contract] package, so we actually need to pass Measure EE in order to be able to implement all three years of the strike agreement.”

Another solution for cost savings, she’s noted, is taking “a serious look at eliminating redundancy and waste in our bureaucracy and how we can push existing resources out of the central office and back into the community.”

Unlike Goldberg, Repenning said at the February forum that she would be open to exploring healthcare reforms. “I don’t see why only LAUSD should be providing a hundred percent of healthcare for seniors when we have the state and the federal government,” she said. “They should be playing a part of that as well.”

CHARTER SCHOOLS

Arguably the most heated topic in L.A. Unified is charter schools and their role in public education. Charters are publicly funded schools, and all L.A. charters are run by nonprofit organizations. Most are not unionized. There are nearly 15,500 charter school students attending 32 independent charters within BD5, according to the California Charter Schools Association.

Goldberg’s take

The need to re-evaluate and rein in charters has been a central talking point of Goldberg’s campaign. Goldberg told LA School Report that she isn’t proposing to close existing charter schools, but she claims they’ve become a privatization scheme at the hands of billionaires that demands enhanced transparency and scrutiny — especially as the traditional public school system remains underfunded.

She further maintains that charters are unregulated, that they do not adequately serve special education students, and that the state system is “rigged” because when students leave for charters, traditional schools “lose 100 percent of the money” for educating that student, but not “100 percent of the fixed costs,” such as facility upkeep and staffing.

She supports a moratorium on new charters and strongly opposes a current law that allows these schools to co-locate on district campuses. Goldberg also favors changes to state law that would give L.A. Unified more power to turn down new charter applications. Currently, if the district rejects an application, the petitioner can appeal to the county Office of Education or the state, which can then greenlight the application.

Her rhetoric, often seen as anti-charter, aligns closely with the teachers union. The Los Angeles Times, in an editorial endorsing Repenning, called Goldberg, “by far the more ideological of the two, strongly allied with United Teachers Los Angeles.” It continued that, “A board as riven as L.A. Unified’s over such issues as charter schools, teacher retirement benefits, school accountability, the looming budgetary crisis … the district doesn’t need more polarization or a stronger vote for one side or the other. It needs a move away from the division altogether.”

Tomorrow, Los Angeles has a chance to continue the #UTLAstrong momentum:

"A victory for Goldberg – a front-runner — could tilt the direction of the Board of Education toward @UTLAnow"

Don't forget to #VOTEJackieGoldberg! @Jackie4LAUSD https://t.co/jkBv4FsF0l

— AFT (@AFTunion) March 5, 2019

Repenning’s take

Repenning has avoided the rhetoric, assuming a more measured stance on charters. The same L.A. Times editorial called her a “nonconfrontational consensus builder.”

Repenning considers charter schools as “part of our system” and wants to encourage traditional schools to learn from charters that are performing well. But she agrees with more charter transparency and accountability. Repenning thinks the district should have more control over approving charters that open within its boundaries, and she generally sided with the school board vote in January asking Sacramento to study a charter moratorium.

“If you’re going to get public money, that’s a huge responsibility; you need to be doing much better than us or else I don’t see the point of renewing,” Repenning told LA School Report. “The whole point [of charters] was to create these laboratories that we learn from.” She added to LAist, “The politics are what they are. I am not running the same type of, I would say, anti-charter campaign as my opponent.”

The California Charter Schools Association has not endorsed Repenning — or any candidate during the entire BD5 election cycle. Her campaign did take some heat, however, after the L.A. Times reported that philanthropist Eli Broad had made a $100,000 donation to an SEIU Local 99 political action committee backing Repenning. Broad’s foundation has funded reform-minded board candidates and supports charter schools.

Repenning told LA School Report the donation was made through an independent campaign that she can’t “communicate or coordinate” with. And she’s stressed that she won’t take contributions from charter school operators.

Circle back Monday for more coverage on Tuesday’s election. For our past coverage:

● Goldberg and Repenning find little to disagree about in their last forum in LAUSD Board District 5’s southeast section before Tuesday’s vote

● Runoff Q&A: Jackie Goldberg outlines her first-day priorities and her strategies as she prepares to face Heather Repenning in May’s LAUSD school board election

● Heather Repenning enters the school board runoff vowing to address the need ‘to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD’

● Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.

● New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5

Esmeralda Fabián Romero contributed to this report. 

Jackie Goldberg, left, and Heather Repenning at Wednesday’s candidate forum at Turner Hall in Cudahy, in the southeast section of LAUSD’s Board District 5. The runoff election is Tuesday.

In their last candidate forum in the southeast section of L.A. Unified’s Board District 5, the two candidates vying for the open school board seat in next Tuesday’s election mostly stuck to familiar themes and gave few glimpses of how they differ.

Jackie Goldberg and Heather Repenning met Wednesday evening at Turner Hall Community Center in Cudahy, in the heavily Latino and poorer section of Board District 5, taking questions from parents and students in English and Spanish before an audience of about 50 people.

They did not engage in substantial debate on what they would do differently, nor did they address improving low-performing schools, school choice or ways to bring new revenues to the district besides the parcel tax on the June ballot.

The candidates had a minute and a half to respond to questions from a panel of two parents, Luz Puebla and Jeannette Godina, and two student members of the United Way’s Young Civic Leaders program, Gabriel Rodriguez and Nazareth Gutierrez. The questions were projected in both languages and were based on a recent survey conducted by Alliance for a Better Community (ABC), which co-hosted the forum with United Way of Greater Los Angeles. This was the third candidate forum organized by these groups in the District 5 board race. The first two took place in February when there were 10 candidates on the ballot in the primary election. In total, the two candidates have faced each other at about 10 forums this spring.

Goldberg, 74, reiterated her decades of experience as a public servant and a former school board member in District 5. “I believe those experiences are what you need,” she said. For many of the questions asked, her answers revolved around her message about “taxing the wealthy,” lowering class sizes and having more substitute teachers, counselors and nurses at every school.

Repenning, 44, highlighted that she would be the only board member with a child in the district, as well as her ability to communicate with more parents because she speaks Spanish. She said she would advocate in Sacramento and Washington for more funding, particularly for schools with the highest needs, the need for wraparound services for students, and college readiness and eligibility. “LAUSD should be measuring its success not just on high school diplomas but college diplomas,” she said. “The status quo isn’t good enough.”

Heather Repenning with one of the students on the panel, Nazareth Gutierrez, after the forum’s Q&A.

Their only glimmer of differences came during questions about whether 16-year-olds should be able to vote in school board elections and how to better support teachers.

“Absolutely I think students should be able to vote,” Repenning said. “And I believe that undocumented parents and residents should be able to do that as well. At the end of the day, it’s important to me that true stakeholders in the district are able to have a real voice about who’s going to represent them at the school board.”

Goldberg said about 16-year-old voters, “I’m not sure. I have to look at that some more. I haven’t made up my mind yet.” She added, “What I have absolutely made up my mind about — and I already have a draft of — is what San Francisco did to enfranchise every parent and guardian in their schools to vote regardless of citizenship. That is something I do believe.”

To the question of how to better support teachers, Repenning said, “We can have a program where we offer teachers, school staff and administrators, people who have shown a lot of success, additional pay or other incentives to come and serve out some time in some of our more struggling schools.”

But Goldberg responded that “when you say to a group of teachers to come into another area, you’re implying that the teachers that are there are not very good.”

Goldberg added that the best way to support teachers is by reducing class sizes and having additional teaching assistants. “That combination costs money, and we need to think about how to get more money from Sacramento. Time to tax the wealthy in the state.”

Jackie Goldberg with Marco Covarrubias, a parent who attended the forum, after the Q&A session.

When asked what their priorities would be for their first 100 days in office, Goldberg listed the topics of:

• Equal school spending —“making sure schools are getting the same amount of money in L.A. Unified.”
• Bilingual education — “I do believe that everybody needs to be bilingual, bicultural and biliterate.”
• Special education — “A lot of parents are happy their students are in regular schools and regular classes, but they are unhappy with the services they have.”

Repenning said she would:

• Advocate for more money for public education — “I will look for every possible source for new funding.”
• High-quality after-school tutoring at every school campus — “It’s very important for me as a working mother. After-school programs should be available for every child in the district.”
• College access and eligibility — “I want to convene with UCs, CSUs, community colleges, private universities to find out how can we do better for our LAUSD graduates.”

When asked why Measure EE, the parcel tax on the June 4 ballot, was needed, Goldberg said, “Measure EE is a critical piece in changing the outcomes for children in our district. The contract with the teachers talks about a nurse in every school, adding a teacher each year for two years. That’s not going to reduce class sizes nearly enough. It tries to do more in the way of counselors. We need to vastly change the amount of money spent on children in the state, a very rich state. EE means that for the first since Prop. 13 in 1978, the big landowners in Downtown L.A. and in the city will be finally taxed for our children.”

Repenning said, “Measure EE is a direct outcome of the teacher strike. There is actually not enough money at the district right now to pay for all three years of the strike agreement, even though some of the changes reached in the agreement, the reduction of class sizes, the increase in counselors were more gradual than I think a lot of people were hoping for. The district still does not currently have enough money to pay for the whole package, so we actually need to pass measure EE in order to be able to implement all three years of the strike agreement. I think it’s very important that we find and support new revenue for our school district. I believe whatever happens with EE, this effort shouldn’t stop there.”

If passed by two-thirds of the votes, Measure EE would raise about $500 million a year over a 12-year period for schools.

As the candidates were preparing to leave after the forum, an immigrant parent from Nicaragua pressed them both to listen to her concerns. “How are you going to fix low-performing schools?” Francisca Rueda asked in Spanish. “No parent wants their children to attend a  low-performing school. What are you going to do to address that? I need you both to take that into account.”

Repenning responded in Spanish that “as a member of the school board, I will focus on how we can fix the issues that exist in the schools that are underperforming.”

From left, panel members Nazareth Gutierrez, Luz Puebla, Gabriel Rodríuez and Jeannette Godina.

After the Q&A, Elijah Cabrera, a father of four students, told LA School Report that he will vote for Repenning because “she has fresh and specific ideas on how to support students. She is in full support of our students. I think she will pay more attention to the underperforming schools because in this district there are too many of them and very few good ones, and that hurts. We need change, fresh ideas, that’s why I’ll vote for her.”

Patricia Covarrubias, a Cudahy resident with grandchildren in the district, said she will vote for Goldberg because “she has the experience that will help her bring many resources back to our schools including art and music programs that are so needed in communities like this one. That’s very important for me.”

Goldberg came close to winning the seat in the March 5 primary but fell just shy of a majority, winning 15,935 votes — 48.18 percent of the 33,074 total primary ballots cast. Repenning won about 13 percent of the vote. Both are backed by unions: Goldberg by United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents teachers and support service personnel such as counselors, and Repenning by SEIU Local 99, which represents education workers including cafeteria staff, bus drivers and teachers aides.

Before the candidate Q&A, the forum organizers shared a new report on the district’s disparities between the wealthier and whiter northern section of Board District 5 and the south and southeast sections. Northeast of downtown, the median income is $50,446, compared to $41,203 in the southeast section and $31,559 in the south section.

It also showed that the overall voter turnout in the last runoff election in the board district, in 2015, was 8 percent. Registered voters in the southeast voted at 7 percent, in comparison to 13 percent in the northeast.

Based on the input of more than 500 stakeholders in Board District 5, the report included five recommendations for the next elected board member, calling for:

1. Increasing bilingual and dual language programs
2. Prioritizing the needs of special needs students and their parents
3. Prioritizing the needs of English learner students and their parents
4. Addressing the language barriers of parents
5. Targeting funds for the bright spots of BD5.

It also requested that both candidates commit to meeting with parents and student leaders within the first 100 days of taking office, to which both agreed.

• For more on the Board District 5 race:

Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.

More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years

Heather Repenning enters the school board runoff vowing to address the need ‘to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD’

New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5

Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz, left, as she announced her endorsement of Heather Repenning on Sunday. (Photo courtesy of Michael Pessah / Heather Repenning’s campaign)

*Updated March 31

There were seven Latino candidates in the L.A. Unified school board race for the Board District 5 seat, but Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz was the only one who came close to making it into a runoff.

Only 31 votes separated Ortíz from second-place finisher Heather Repenning, but on Wednesday Ortíz announced she would not ask for a recount. On Sunday, she endorsed Repenning.

“This board seat isn’t about what side you’re on. Because all of us need to be on the same side, the side of children. The children in our southeast communities have gone underserved for far too long,” Ortíz said at Sunday’s gathering in Huntington Park.

After thanking Ortíz, Repenning said, “We should put our resources in the communities of greatest needs, and that includes our best people. If elected, I will create a program to incentivize our best teachers, school staff and administrators to sign up to serve students in our most struggling schools.”

In a phone interview Thursday, Ortíz said that whoever wins the seat will need to “fight for equity for all of our schools and to ensure that we have the same resources across the board in all schools within L.A. Unified, for all children.”

The May 14 runoff race will be between Jackie Goldberg — the frontrunner in the primary, a longtime politician and a former District 5 board member — and Repenning, a former mayoral aide. Goldberg won 48.18 percent in the primary — more than three times the votes for Repenning.

Repenning got 13.13 percent in the primary. Ortíz ended in third place with 13.03 percent. Together their votes make up only a little more than half what Goldberg won in the primary.

“I’m planning to get involved in the runoff. I really believe that we do have to have a voice on that board who is going to understand equity,” Ortíz said in the interview. “I’m really proud of the campaign that we ran. It was a team effort. Early on in the campaign, members of the community told me, ‘Graciela esta ya no es solo tu campaña, es de la comunidad’,” Ortíz said, which means, “Graciela, this is no longer only your campaign, but it’s the community’s campaign.”

Thank you to @_gracielaortiz and so many amazing parents and families for joining us today in Huntington Park. I promise to be a champion for the Southeast and fight for equity in all our schools. pic.twitter.com/hwYrL3ZtOA

— Heather Repenning (@heather4lausd) March 31, 2019

Ortíz said it was the community’s grassroots efforts, particularly in the southeast, that helped her get so far even though she was being outspent by “a lot” by the other two candidates. Goldberg and Repenning are from the more affluent and whiter northeast section of BD5, as the district is known. Both are backed by the two largest labor unions in the district, which each represent about 30,000 members. Goldberg is the teachers union-backed candidate, and Repenning has the endorsement of SEIU Local 99, which represents non-teaching school employees.

Ortíz had the endorsement of the Los Angeles School Police Association, the Association of Pupil Services and Attendance Counselors and the National Association of Social Workers. Many Latino elected officials from southeast cities also endorsed Ortíz during the primary, including L.A. City Councilman Gil Cedillo.

“It was about working hard, not giving up, and that’s what we did. We were knocking on doors, making phone calls every single day, doing everything possible to make sure that our community had a voice. And even though we lost, I really feel our voices were heard,” said Ortíz, 38, who is in her 13th year working as a full-time L.A. Unified school counselor, currently at Linda Marquez High School in Huntington Park. She is a member of the local teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles.

“All odds were against us, we were outspent by a lot, millions of dollars were spent on the other candidates, and we didn’t have that kind of money. We were nowhere near,” she said.

Ortíz was the Latino candidate with the most campaign contributions. She raised about $140,000.

Repenning was the primary race’s top fundraiser, receiving about $287,000 in direct contributions to her campaign. SEIU Local 99 spent close to $1 million to elect Repenning in the primary. About $140,000 went toward opposing Goldberg. Charter advocate Eli Broad also gave $100,000 to SEIU Local 99 on Election Day, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Heading into the runoff, Goldberg has spent about $175,000 of the $200,000 she’s received in campaign contributions, according to city ethics commission data last updated on March 5. UTLA has separately poured about $670,000 so far into getting her elected.

Ortíz said she will complete her term as a council member until 2020. She was first elected to the Huntington Park City Council in 2015 and served as mayor in 2016-17, when she voted in favor of a moratorium on new charter schools in Huntington Park which lasted one year.

“This is not the end for me. I’ll continue to advocate for children as I do on a daily basis as a school counselor. I’ll continue to advocate for equity and making sure all of our schools are fully funded and making sure all of our schools are providing quality education,” she said.

“I’m from the community. I have been doing a lot of work for the community for many years. I work in schools on a daily basis. It’s really about having connection within the community, being the voice of individuals who do not necessarily know how to speak for themselves,” Ortíz said. “I believe that it wasn’t just about the campaign. It was a lot of work that many of us have put in for many years for our community.”

Latinos make up almost 90 percent of enrollment in BD5, which has some of the district’s neediest students and the state’s lowest-performing schools, particularly concentrated in the southeast section, which includes Huntington Park, Maywood, Cudahy and South Gate. The northeast section covers more affluent neighborhoods like Eagle Rock, Los Feliz and Silver Lake — where voter turnout has traditionally been higher.

In the last BD5 election when Ref Rodríguez, a Latino, was elected to the seat in 2015, there was a 7 percent voter turnout — about 26,000 people voted — and Latinos represented 55 percent of those who voted in the primary and runoff elections.

Ortíz credits the support of southeast voters for going as far as she did in the race. “Believe it or not, we’re able to pull out a lot of votes in the southeast.” But she added, “We have to do a better job in organizing all voters, and that they do come out and vote, period. We need to vote, we need to pull up the vote. We need to make sure that our Latino voters understand that their voice does matter and their voice does count.”

Ortíz expressed not being “fully concerned” about not having a Latino in the BD5 seat. “Whoever becomes the next board member, I’m looking forward to working with any of them in ensuring that we have quality education in all of our communities.”

In the last 24 years, only two Latinos have occupied the seat. Rodríguez was elected in 2015 and Yolie Flores in 2007. Flores completed her four-year term and Rodríguez resigned after pleading guilty to political money laundering charges in July. One month later, the school board approved a special election to replace him.

District 5 has the second-highest concentration of Latino students in all L.A. Unified, and some of them have parents whose immigrant status make them ineligible to vote.

Ortíz’s parents are immigrants from Mexico. Her father died when she was 6 months old, so her mother had to raise her and her three siblings as a single mom in Huntington Park, where Ortíz grew up going to L.A. Unified schools.

“I think It’s really important to have individuals running who understand undocumented communities. This is definitely one of the communities I represent now. I don’t know what laws would have to pass, but what I do know is that, on my campaign trail, on my team, it’s about representing anyone equally, whether undocumented or not, every single family.”

She said some members of her campaign are undocumented. “Whether it was volunteering or just spreading the word, that’s important for me, that everyone is on board, providing that platform and that opportunity for everyone to have that voice.”

Ortíz said this is a critical time for BD5 and for L.A. Unified as a whole because of the “redesign and the restructuring of the district and how it’s going to operate.”

L.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner indicated last year that he plans to transfer authority from the district’s central office and put it into the schools’ communities, though he has not yet formally introduced the plan. The Los Angeles Times reported that Beutner’s plan includes dividing the district into 32 neighborhood “networks.”

“There are many changes coming up within the district right now, where we’re going to have local control, so we need to make sure that when the restructuring of the district rolls out, that the needs of all students are being met,” Ortíz said.

“Many times, opportunities are just not there, just like when I was growing up. Fifty percent of my friends didn’t graduate from high school,” she said. “What we learned from our life experiences is that many times we have to work 100 times harder. That’s what we did, that’s what we do.”

Ortíz graduated from UCLA and has a master’s degree in social work from California State University, Long Beach. She was the first in her family to go to college.

In the years since she was an L.A. Unified student, many things have improved in the schools, she said, like overcrowding or “different tracks” for students, such as those who have access to the college-prep A-G courses. She said “early intervention” and providing the “right tools” for college readiness are still needed in the district.

“Just because I’m not in the runoff doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue to fight for what’s best for the kids and to hold those conversations with whoever is elected. We need to be heard, not just during election times, to express our concerns and to fight for our students’ voice.”

*This article has been updated with Sunday’s official announcement of Ortíz’s endorsement.

• For more on the BD5 race:

Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.

More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years

Heather Repenning enters the school board runoff vowing to address the need ‘to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD’

New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5

]]> https://www.laschoolreport.com/ortiz-will-not-request-a-recount-in-lausds-school-board-race-leaving-repenning-and-goldberg-to-face-off-in-may/ Wed, 27 Mar 2019 21:50:58 +0000 http://laschoolreport.com/?p=54722 There will be no recount in the L.A. Unified school board race.

Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz, who narrowly missed a spot in the May runoff election by 31 votes, decided Wednesday not to challenge the March 5 primary results that the county certified last Friday. Her decision came hours before the deadline to request a recount in the Board District 5 race.

In the May 14 runoff, Heather Repenning, a district parent and a former L.A. city official, will face frontrunner and teachers union pick Jackie Goldberg. Goldberg had been just shy of the more than 50 percent majority vote needed to win outright. Repenning got 13.13 percent of the more than 33,000 ballots cast in the primary — less than a third of the number of votes that went to Goldberg.

“When there is a change [from a recount], it’s usually one or two ballots,” campaign manager Sergio Carrillo told LA School Report on Wednesday afternoon, adding that Ortíz’s team had reviewed nearly four decades of recount data and trends. “We’re 31 votes behind. The math isn’t there.”

If Ortíz had called for a recount, it would have cost her campaign in the ballpark of $5,000 a day, Carrillo said. Heading into the primary, Ortíz’s campaign had spent more than $40,000 above what it raised, according to city ethics commission data. Carrillo acknowledged that the campaign was in debt, which he said was “not abnormal at the end of a political campaign.”

Repenning, who’d hung onto a slim lead over Ortíz for most of the ballot-counting process, said in a statement Wednesday: “This election proved that every vote really does count. We’re incredibly grateful to the voters of Board District 5 who participated in the democratic process, and to the candidates who brought their voices and passion to the race. We look forward to the general election and continuing to articulate the need for a new chapter of change at LAUSD.”

Ortíz was the highest Latino vote-getter and fundraiser in the primary race. Six other Latino candidates were on the 10-candidate ballot. Repenning and Goldberg are both white. Repenning speaks Spanish; Goldberg does not. The board district, known as BD5, has about 90 percent Latino enrollment but has been represented by non-Latino school board members for 16 of the last 24 years. The seat has been vacant since July, when former board member Ref Rodríguez resigned after pleading guilty to money laundering charges.

Whoever wins in May will join the school board as its seventh member — likely reshaping the majority, which now swings between reform- and union-leaning agendas — as soon as the county certifies the results. That certification date is tentatively scheduled for May 24, a county spokesman told LA School Report.

Ortíz has worked for 13 years as an L.A. Unified Pupil Services and Attendance counselor and currently works at Linda Marquez High School. She is a member of United Teachers Los Angeles, which is backing Goldberg.

Ortíz was elected to the Huntington Park City Council in 2015 and served as mayor in 2016-17, when she voted in favor of a one-year moratorium on new charter schools in Huntington Park. Ortíz told Speak UP in an interview that she had to “wear that hat” as a councilwoman, and that the charter moratorium was temporary. “My view on schools, in general, is I believe in good schools, period. I believe in good schools in all our communities. Period.”

At a candidate forum, she said teachers should have the ability as stakeholders to make decisions, and that lowering class sizes is key to educators’ effectiveness because it allows them to listen to their students’ needs.

Ortíz was endorsed by dozens of elected officials, particularly from heavily-Latino cities in L.A. County. Ortíz speaks Spanish and was born and raised in Huntington Park, which is part of the southeast section of BD5. There are 67,000 students in the southeast section, which also includes Maywood, Cudahy and South Gate and has an overwhelmingly Latino and low-income population.

The other half of BD5, which on a map looks like a backward letter C, is northeast of downtown, where about 32,000 students are enrolled in schools in whiter, more affluent neighborhoods like Eagle Rock, Los Feliz and Silver Lake. Latino students, however, are still the majority in BD5’s northeast section, making up 74 percent of enrollment.

Jackie Goldberg, right, is joined by UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl on March 5’s election night. (Source: Jackie Goldberg/ Flickr)

*Updated March 27

As the race for the school board seat in L.A. Unified’s Board District 5 officially heads to a runoff, Jackie Goldberg has yet to break a sweat.

With ardent backing from the teachers union, the 74-year-old former school board member nabbed 15,935 votes — 48.18 percent of the 33,074 total primary ballots cast — in the March 5 primary’s tally that the county certified Friday. Her runoff opponent, district parent and former L.A. city official Heather Repenning, clocked in far behind, with about 13 percent of the vote.

Even before Friday’s certification, Goldberg told LA School Report that she and her team were already prepping for a runoff, and sticking to the strategy and priorities that got her to where she is now. A prominent face of union support and charter school skepticism during January’s teacher strike, Goldberg had mounted a primary campaign that nearly secured her the more than 50 percent majority vote required to win outright amid a pool of 10 candidates.

• Read more: Heather Repenning enters the school board runoff vowing to address the need ‘to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD’

“We’ll do what we’ve always done, which is to run a campaign on why I think I’m the right person at this moment to help preserve and protect and promote appropriate funding of public education,” said Goldberg, whose campaign has largely fixated on taxing the state’s wealth and strengthening oversight and transparency of charters. “That’s what we did in the primaries, and obviously it resonated with a lot of people.”

Jackie Goldberg inspires with a call to action at the 2019 CFT Convention! “It is time for us to stop accepting as normal and reality the deplorable conditions in our schools.” @Jackie4LAUSD #CFT100 @AFTunion pic.twitter.com/BXD6MB8el1

— CFT (@CFTunion) March 22, 2019

Goldberg added on Monday that her campaign has “picked up additional endorsements, and people are calling up to say, ‘How can I help?’ So we’re off and running.” Goldberg tweeted Tuesday that she had picked up the endorsement of Latino primary candidate Cynthia González, whom the Los Angeles Times had endorsed. United Teachers Los Angeles has spent about $670,000 to support her election so far.

Though Goldberg is white and doesn’t speak Spanish — the board district’s enrollment is almost 90 percent Latino — the Silver Lake resident notes that she is not a “new resident” in the district. She’s lived in L.A. Unified since the 1960s and taught in neighboring Compton for 16 years before serving as an L.A. Unified board member from 1983 to 1991. Goldberg then sat on the L.A. City Council from 1993 to 2000 before joining the state Assembly from late 2000 to 2006. She’s married to longtime partner Sharon Stricker and has one adopted son who attended school in L.A. Unified in the 1980s and early ‘90s. She has two grandchildren and five grand-nieces and -nephews attending district schools.

“I’ve got skin in this game,” she said.

If elected in the May 14 runoff, Goldberg — who would swing the board toward a more union-friendly agenda — would be seated as soon as the county certifies the results, which is tentatively slated for May 24, according to the county. The seat has been vacant since Ref Rodríguez, an education reformer and charter school founder, resigned in July after pleading guilty to political money laundering charges. The term runs through December 2020, though Goldberg told LA School Report in February that she could try to stay past then.

Up until Wednesday, there was a possibility that Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz, who Repenning narrowly beat by 31 votes for a spot in the runoff against Goldberg, would request a recount. Ortíz opted against a recount on Wednesday.

A few weeks after LA School Report ran an in-depth profile on Goldberg, we circled back for post-primary perspective on her priorities, her runoff strategy against Repenning and her views on student performance. Her answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Day 1 priorities

Q: If you’re elected, what would be your first-day priorities?

1. Per-pupil spending. “One of the things we heard as I went around everywhere in this particular campaign was that some neighborhoods believe that even [in] L.A. Unified, they don’t get the same number of dollars per pupil as people who live in more affluent areas. So I want the district to do a study of the per-pupil expense given to each school to make sure that that’s either not true, or if it is true, that we fix it. Because that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing.”

2. Budgeting. “I’m going to sit down with the budget folks and tell them what I understand the budget to be and hear what they think it is, so that we can begin to reconcile some of the differences of opinion about what state the budget’s in.”

Goldberg has said L.A. Unified’s current financial crisis is an exaggeration, stating that the district leans on “worst-case scenario” projections. While she doesn’t have explicit budget cuts in mind yet, she says she’s opposed to slashing administrative positions as a solution.

3. Charter school accountability. “I want to begin fairly quickly asking the charter office to tell me what they do” when charter schools are “short by more than 50 percent for the number of students they said they would be serving. What do we do about that? Do we take money back from them?”

About 34 of the 224 independent charter schools in 2017-18 “met or exceeded” their enrollment targets, according to district data. It typically takes five years for new charters to reach enrollment goals, and California Charter Schools Association data show charter enrollment in L.A. Unified growing every year. Goldberg told LA School Report last month that she isn’t proposing to close charter schools, but that there needs to be enhanced transparency and scrutiny — especially as the traditional public school system remains underfunded.

4. Social-emotional supports. “I want to take a good look at what schools have social-emotional programs going in Board District 5 … whether or not we have social workers and psychiatric social workers.”

Goldberg added that she’s already been talking with officials such as county Supervisor Sheila Kuehl about additional supports. County supervisors in January OK’d $10 million in funding for more mental health counselors in L.A. Unified’s schools.

5. Taxing the state’s wealth. “I want to begin talking with my friends and former colleagues in Sacramento about current year tax legislation possibilities, particularly around taxing the wealth of the wealthiest folks in California. … Rather than trying to tax their income — because mostly they don’t have income, they have holdings — I would want to put some kind of tax on their holdings and see if we get some authors [in the legislature] to do that.”

Goldberg supports the Proposition 13 tax referendum on the 2020 ballot, which would increase property taxes statewide on commercial and industrial properties.

(1/2) Title I — and public education, in general — has been chronically underfunded.
We need to work with government leaders to identify strategies for developing new permanent funding streams to improve education funding.https://t.co/GlFSzZO4fp

— Jackie Goldberg (@Jackie4LAUSD) March 21, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

6. School visits. “I want to begin to visit the schools, starting with those in the southeast first because I’m the least familiar with them. That’s really the best way to know what’s going on in the district — to get up out of your chair and go visit schools.”

Goldberg said that in all of her past positions, she’s never represented the southeast part of Board District 5, known as BD5. The southeast is the poorer section BD5. Student enrollment is almost entirely Latino, and all seven of the state’s lowest-performing schools that are in BD5 are located there. It includes the cities of Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate and Bell. Goldberg lives in Silver Lake, which is in the northern, more affluent part of BD5. Other northern cities in the board district are Highland Park, Echo Park, Eagle Rock and Los Feliz.

Goldberg is familiar with the southeast, however, “because I taught in Compton, and that’s just south of [that area]. So it’s not a part of the county where I’m like, ‘Oh, where are they, I can’t find them.’ I feel comfortable there even though it is a new area for me to represent.”

And one longer-term goal…

7. Bolstering special education resources. “I want to take an in-depth look at how we are dealing with special education students. It’s near and dear to my own heart because of the difficulties my own son had getting what I thought was appropriate special needs services when he was in school [with ADHD] in L.A. Unified. … The complaints I’m getting [from parents] are that they don’t want the special education schools closed; that they’re being closed. They don’t want their kids to be mainstreamed, but they’re being mainstreamed. A lot of them do not believe that’s in the best interest of their children, and they’re very upset about that. That’s what I do not know about, so I have to look into that more deeply.”

About 11 percent of students in BD5 require special education services.

Runoff strategy

Q: What is your runoff strategy, and is it different from your initial campaign strategy?

A: “It’s not much different. We relied heavily on … canvassing and talking to people and meeting with people in their homes and emailing folks and answering specific questions every time we did a canvassing. We contact people to tell them that we think that this fight is about public education and the need to improve the funding of public education.”

Goldberg said earlier this month that she had 800 volunteers while campaigning in the primaries, in part because of vast union and educator support.

Q: Why do you think you’re the better candidate than Repenning?

A: “Well, for Heather there’s just the matter of a steep learning curve about education. If you were to ask me who would I go to if I had an issue with public works, it would be Heather, because she’s done that, knows it, she was vice president of the public works commission. She’s smart as a whip, and she’ll learn. But I will tell you that from my own personal experience it was a good two years before I felt comfortable that I had any real idea what was going on at LAUSD the first time I was there, because there’s a lot to know in a district this size. And that’s really the advantage. I hit the ground running and she would have a large learning curve.”

Q: What are the main criticisms of you that you expect to hear during the runoff campaign, and how would you respond?

A: During the primary campaign, SEIU Local 99 — a union representing education workers such as cafeteria staff that’s backing Repenning —“talk[ed] about cuts that I’ve made,” she said, referencing the millions board members cut from the 1991-92 budget at the end of Goldberg’s tenure. “Yes, I did, I made those cuts. But it doesn’t talk about the fact that we were in a deep recession when I made them, and it was that or take the district into bankruptcy.”

She added: “They talk about how I doubled my salary” during her fifth and sixth year on school board. “Well, it went from $12,000 to $24,000 … I ended up going into debt with my family that took me 16 years to get out of. But instead of saying, ‘Oh my god, for six years [she] was willing to work for $12,000 a year instead of the $34,000 [she] was making teaching’ … they attack me because I tried to raise the salary so someone other than the wealthy aristocracy” could serve on the board. “I know it’s going to happen. And it’ll make me sad. But you just live with it.”

Representing students

Q: How are students in BD5 performing? What’s at stake for them in this election?

A: “What happens is that the lower income the community, the more challenges there often are for kids who are in school. They aren’t any less intelligent than anyone else, and in fact in some ways they might be more intelligent because they’re figuring out how to survive in very desperate circumstances economically. But I do think that we have had probably 50 years of studies which show extreme correlation between being very low income and not doing well in school because of those challenges that come from poverty. So because we have high levels of poverty in Board District 5, we’ve got a lot of students who are not doing well.

“We need to do a number of things to change that — the most important of which is to get to be $22,000 a year per kid in the schools,” which is around what New York, home to the country’s largest school district, spends to educate students. “That will change things dramatically, because then you lower class sizes, then you provide additional teaching assistance, then you provide additional assistant principals so that you have more folks that are looking out for and observing and taking care of the instructional program. So you just need more money first.”

Q: Do you understand the social, financial and cultural challenges of BD5 students?

A: “I pick a very diverse staff, and they will help me be informed on those things I know about and on the things that I don’t know anything about. It takes a good office to do things. I have an intellectual understanding of a great deal of the cultural issues of my board district, but I don’t have personal experience with it, so that’s what I need from other people. Basically, it’s about listening; that’s mostly what people have to do in public office.”

• Read more: 

More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years

*This article has been updated to include Cynthia González’s endorsement of Goldberg and Ortiz’s decision on Wednesday to not request a recount.

*Updated March 27

After what she called a challenging campaign, Heather Repenning — an L.A. Unified parent and former mayoral aide — is “optimistic” she will defeat frontrunner Jackie Goldberg in the May runoff for the District 5 school board seat.

“I want to be a fighter, especially for the kids that are the underdog in the system. Along with my own daughter, they’re the ones I’m running for.”

The Los Angeles County Clerk on Friday certified the results of the primary election, which put Repenning in second place out of 10 candidates. She squeaked into the runoff by 31 votes, over Huntington Park Councilwoman Graciela Ortíz. Repenning had 13 percent of the votes, while Goldberg, a former District 5 board member and a longtime politician, captured 48 percent.

“My opponent had a big advantage in the primary. I think the strike really gave her an advantage,” Repenning said about Goldberg, who was a prominent face of the teachers union during January’s strike. “Nonetheless, she didn’t get the 50 percent, so here we are.”

While Ortíz could have called for a recount, Repenning has been effectively campaigning against Goldberg since March 15 when Repenning declared she would make the runoff. But on Wednesday, Ortíz told LA School Report that she will not request a recount.

The winner of the May 14 runoff will become the seventh member of the board, where power currently swings between board members elected with the support of education reformers and charter school backers and those elected with teachers union money and muscle.

Repenning, 44, vows to be a “coalition builder” on the board, where she says there’s an “ongoing battle” for control. She reiterated to LA School Report on Friday that she won’t take contributions from charter school operators.

“I will continue building my coalition. And I’m just going to continue moving forward with my message of the importance of having someone who reflects (parents’) needs, bringing a perspective of what are the changes that are going to most help our students right now.”

In an hour-long interview earlier this month in a coffee shop in Silver Lake near her home and in follow-up conversations and emails, Repenning outlined her qualifications for the job and her priorities for the district.

BACKGROUND

If Repenning wins, she would be the only board member with a child in the school district.  

Her daughter is in second grade at Ivanhoe Elementary, their neighborhood school in Silver Lake, in the northern section of District 5. The district, known as BD5, includes wealthier and whiter communities north of downtown as well as predominantly poor and Latino areas of southeast L.A.

Repenning, who is divorced, has lived in the neighborhood since she moved to Southern California in 2001 for graduate school.

She was born in Kentucky and moved to Florida at age 10. She learned the importance of public education through her mother, who taught second grade in a Cincinnati school — across the state line from Kentucky — where the majority of students were African-American. “She was always very focused on my education,” Repenning said of her mother, a single mom.

Repenning attended public schools, including a magnet school in Florida for middle and high school. “I was very lucky I had a world-class education.” In her magnet school, “We all went to college, there was no question about it, and that’s what I want for my daughter and for all LAUSD students.” She graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in literature and has a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of California Irvine. Before beginning her career in the public sector, she taught at L.A. City College and at a bilingual school in Honduras. She speaks Spanish and French.

Repenning has spent nearly two decades with the City of Los Angeles, working closely with Mayor Eric Garcetti in various roles including as political director on his 2013 campaign, director of external affairs and vice president of the Board of Public Works, which she resigned from when she announced her candidacy last year. She also worked with L.A. Unified helping organize parents and other stakeholders around the building of new schools, including those at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools site.

“Public education is not theoretical to me, is not an idea or concept,” she said. “I’m working with the system every day and that will be true for the next 10 years of my life and my daughter’s life until she, hopefully, walks across the stage and receives her LAUSD (high school) diploma.”

And while we’re talking, I’m a *life long* progressive and public servant with two decades of relevant experience to the LAUSD Board of Education. I’m also an LAUSD mom. So yes, I care deeply about public education for all. Thx.

— Heather Repenning (@heather4lausd) March 9, 2019

MAJOR SUPPORTERS

During the primary campaign, Repenning’s top supporters were the mayor and the education workers’ union. SEIU Local 99 represents 30,000 custodians, cafeteria workers, special education assistants, bus drivers and other school workers at L.A. Unified — about the same number of members in the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which backs Goldberg. Nearly half of SEIU Local 99 members are also parents or guardians of school-aged children.

SEIU Local 99 has spent nearly $1 million to support Repenning so far. In the primary, Repenning was the strongest fundraiser, with $286,745 in direct campaign contributions.

On the day of the primary election, philanthropist Eli Broad made a $100,000 donation to an SEIU Local 99 political action committee backing Repenning, the Los Angeles Times reported. Broad’s foundation has funded reform-minded board candidates and supports charter schools.

When asked about the donation, Repenning said it was made through an independent campaign on her behalf. “I can’t communicate or coordinate with them. I built a really big, strong coalition of diverse kinds of people from every corner of this district, and I’m going to continue broadening and diversifying my coalition. I think it is a reflection of the type of leadership I’ll bring to the district.”

But she also made clear that in terms of her own campaign, “I’m still not going to accept contributions from charter school operators. My rule of thumb would be not to accept and return those because being in a position of having to vote on authorizing or renewing those, I think it would be cleaner. That has been my perspective, and I’m going to maintain that in the runoff.”

She has positioned herself as a centrist candidate — pursuing neither charter backers’ nor teachers unions’ support. UTLA pushed for Goldberg to be appointed to the BD5 seat last August after it was left open when Ref Rodríguez resigned after pleading guilty to political money laundering charges.

The board rejected the proposal to appoint Goldberg, which was introduced by board member Scott Schmerelson in August, after pressure from the community, particularly Latino parents from the southeast section of BD5.

Repenning’s endorsements also include the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 and at least a dozen other local unions, as well as the National Women’s Political Caucus LA Metro, the Los Angeles County Young Democrats and local and state elected officials. On Wednesday, she picked up the endorsement of the Los Angeles School Police Association, which had backed Ortíz in the primary.

Also Wednesday, Eduardo Cisneros, director of the National Census Program for NALEO Educational Fund and a former field director for Yolie Flores when she was an L.A. Unified school board member, announced his endorsement for Repenning through his Twitter account. Cisneros was also one of the 17 initial candidates in the BD5 race, but he withdrew in November. Former BD5 candidate Justine Gonzalez also endorsed Repenning.

PRIORITIES

Repenning says she looks at basic priorities that the district needs to address “now” from a parent perspective.

“The job itself isn’t easy, but we need strong advocates who are going to fight for our kids on the board of education, and that’s what I will do. I believe I’m the best person to do the job. I believe in our kids, I believe in their potential. My priorities will tell you how different I am from my opponent.”

1. Afterschool programs. “I’m a working mom, my daughter started daycare at nine months. I’ve always worked. My daughter is at school until 5:30 or 6 every day. It’s important to me that we have, across all of our campuses, some type of academic support for students like homework assistance. Working families we don’t always have the chance to help our kids after a long day of work. There are a lot of parents who are not necessarily prepared to support their kids (with homework). To me, the learning doesn’t stop on minimum days, after school. I think whether it is with teaching assistants or reaching out to universities that are training our future teachers, we should have a program across all LAUSD, all ages.”

2. Dynamic school communities. “I think schools should be very trusted places in our communities. Eighty percent of our families are living at or near the poverty line, so there are a lot of things that we can do to help them, both the students and their families, at the school site, with the right partnerships. I believe that because of my background working with other agencies, I think I’m a very strong person to be able to organize and put those services together and make it work.”

3. Early education. “There’s a lot of money on the table for that right now from the state, and daycare and preschool are very expensive. At the same time, we want our kids to be ready for kindergarten. We want our kids to start kindergarten ready to learn from day one. I see early education as a way to support working families but more than that to support students’ readiness as a way to address students’ achievement gaps. I would want our kids to come to our schools being bilingual starting from kindergarten. Bilingualism for me is very important.”

4. College readiness. “I think the LAUSD leaders should be advocates for affordable and accessible higher education. It’s expensive and it’s daunting, and we need to make sure that our students have the support that they need so they can get into higher education. The basic things are increasing access to counselors, increasing the support for students to fill out their FAFSA forms. Even earlier than that, I think there’s a shift that needs to happen. We need to start signaling to students at a much earlier age that, ‘Hey, you’re going to college.’ Students need to be seen not just as future college graduates but as future leaders. One of the most important jobs for a school board member is setting those high expectations. I believe in high expectations, the same expectations I have for my daughter. I have those expectations for every child at LAUSD.”

5. Parent engagement. “As a parent, we have so much work to do on parent engagement. Everything from making board meetings more accessible to giving parents more information on how schools are doing when they are trying to decide, choosing, where to send your child to school. I think we can take the California School Dashboard and add more to it. I think the English and math proficiency scores don’t always tell the full picture. Data and information is a really import piece of accountability. The more information that we’re able to share, the more it empowers parents. At the end of the day, the more engaged they are, the more they can hold schools accountable, the better for the school system. I do think having real parent engagement is not something you turn around overnight, but you need to find ways to reach our parents, particularly at the middle and high school level.”

6. Climate change. “LAUSD needs to be really thinking about climate change and how our campuses can help. Addressing the environment is actually important for our kids. It’s kind of a secondary area that is very important to me. It’s something I can bring a unique set of skills to because of the job I have done at the city.”

7. Supporting principals. “We all know that a very strong principal makes a really huge difference in a school. I think this is an area where we should target investment, really supporting our principals and administrators. A lot of them come out of teaching, they made their way up and principals are running major organizations that are LAUSD schools. We have to make sure they have access to the support and training that they need because I think that is an impactful way to improve the quality of our schools.”

8. Testing. “I think about the question of are we overtesting. I’m going to look into the question of whether the assessments are working, how are they working? What are we doing with our assessments, is there a way to bring more qualitative (testing) versus standardized testing into the picture? And I think about what are we doing with those assessments, how are we making sure that we’re following up with the students. How are we making the results transparent to parents and making clear what the follow-up is when you see that students are not performing at the level that they should be.”

9. Career readiness. “As a parent, I think a lot about how are students spending their time, and I think about the key questions about what are we preparing our students for. What are the skills and the knowledge we want them to have when their time with us is over. How are we organizing their school day to match up with our goals for them. What are the careers we’re getting them ready for. I think LAUSD leaders should be able to look ahead to what the workplace of the future looks like, what are the growing career sectors and be able to point our kids in those directions. I think one area of opportunities is teaching. There’s a teachers shortage, and I think — how do we look at LAUSD students as future LAUSD teachers and (workers) in the city as well. We’re going to lose up to 40 percent of our city workforce in the next five to 10 years due to retirements. City jobs are incredible jobs, and I think — how can we look at those opportunities.”

Here are some of the basic tools that should be in place at LAUSD to help kick down the door to college on behalf of all of our kids pic.twitter.com/ENPbcpjsLG

— Heather Repenning (@heather4lausd) March 18, 2019

CHARTER SCHOOLS

Repenning leans heavily on her role as “a coalition builder and my ability to work with different stakeholders and build coalitions” — something she sees as “a really important thing on that board right now. My campaign is not directed at the ongoing battle for which side retains the control of the board of education. I don’t think that work is particularly beneficial to students. I think there are two sides, both of which represent their members. Sometimes what they’re doing coincidentally also represent the students, but they’re representing their members — that’s it. So we need people on the board who are focused on the work at hand, on what can be achieved right now, who understand the day-to-day realities of students and their families, who work trying to figure the system out. It’s messy, it’s not black and white, we need someone who can figure it out.”

The BD5 board member represents more than 81,000 students enrolled in 177 traditional schools, as well as nearly 15,500 charter school students, according to the California Charter Schools Association. Those students attend 32 independent charter schools. Because some of those schools are on multiple campuses, that brings the number of charter sites in BD5 to 41, a district spokesperson said.

Other school choice programs in BD5 that are run by the district include 38 magnet programs and 32 dual language programs. There are no affiliated charters — which are district-run schools with some autonomies — in BD5.

While Repenning has not been as direct a critic of charter schools as Goldberg has been during the primary campaign, Repenning said she “would have supported the resolution” that the school board approved in January calling for a moratorium on new charters. Goldberg also said she supported the moratorium.

“The resolution itself is symbolic. The school board doesn’t have a lot of oversight. All of the rules are set by the state, so the district currently doesn’t have the ability to put a moratorium on charter schools. They can ask the state to look at it, which they did,” Repenning said.

“To me, I see charter schools as, they are part of our system. One in five families, students are part of the charter community, and the way I look at it is that some of them are not performing. I was very disappointed to see nine charter schools on the list of poor-performing schools that the state put up. If you’re going to get public money, that’s a huge responsibility, you need to be doing much better than us or else I don’t see the point of renewing, so that’s a concern. We know there are some that are doing a really good job. And some of them have been around for many years, so I think, is there a way to acknowledge the work and learn from them. I mean the whole point was to create these laboratories that we learn from. Then, I see transparency — they are spending public money, I believe that we need transparency over how those funds are being spent.”

Goldberg’s position on charters closely aligns with that of UTLA. She told LA School Report that she isn’t proposing to close charter schools but claims they’ve become a privatization scheme at the hands of billionaires that demands enhanced transparency and scrutiny — especially as the traditional public school system remains underfunded.

“I’m concerned about some of the rhetoric right now,” Repenning said, and “the impact that has on parents and students in charter schools. My opponent said something on Sunday about how she would never send her child to a charter school. She said their parents were harming other children in deciding to send them to charter schools. I feel that parents are not to blame for any of this. We’re all doing our job, which is trying to find the best school for our kids, and LAUSD needs to do its job.”

LATINO REPRESENTATION

District 5 has the second-highest concentration of Latino students in L.A. Unified. Latinos make up almost 90 percent of enrollment in L.A. Unified’s Board District 5, which has some of the district’s neediest students and the state’s lowest-performing schools, particularly in the southeast section of the district, where many students are children of immigrants.

In the last 24 years, only two Latinos have occupied the BD5 board seat: Rodríguez, who was elected in 2015 and served as president of the board before resigning last year, and Yolie Flores in 2007. Flores was vice president of the board for three years of her four-year term.

“I’ve lived in Board District 5 for 18 years, pretty much since I first moved to L.A. I understand the importance of representation,” Repenning said. “While I am who I am, I can represent the things they most care about and that students need.

“One core value that I share as well is that we have to invest in those schools that are serving a higher-needs population of kids. I believe in my ability to support immigrant parents, first of all on immigration policies. When I was at the city, I oversaw the office of immigrant affairs. I’ve personally been involved, I understand DACA, TPS, I understand drivers licenses, I understand how vulnerable parents are right now. I believe schools are very, very important places to communicate about a variety of things, not just about a child’s education. (I understand) parents who may otherwise be nervous to access government services in the climate we are in. I believe in my ability to support immigrant parents and fight for the education that they deserve for their kids.”

Repenning also said she believes in boosting bilingual programs in early education to support English learners whose first language is Spanish and that parent engagement “needs to be done in Spanish. It needs to be done in person.”

“It’s very, very important for me to speak Spanish. I think is very important that we support those kids who come to our schools speaking Spanish and not override their Spanish but preserve it, so they can actually come into kindergarten (being) bilingual.

“Given that the majority of BD5 students are Latinx, I think that as a parent who works hard so that my child can have the opportunities that come with a good education, I can directly relate to BD5 parents who share these values.”

Goldberg has the support of prominent Latino political figures such as L.A. County Supervisor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solís and iconic Latina activist Dolores Huerta.

Repenning was endorsed by the Latino Coalition of Los Angeles, an organization that advocates for policies and legislation that benefit the Latino community in Los Angeles.

Alex Toruno, its president, said in an interview that Repenning “has proven to be a problem solver, her experience is relevant to fix many of the issues LAUSD is currently facing.”

Toruno said that as a first-generation Latino and graduate student at UCLA, “I understand the importance of Latinos having access to high-quality early education and college readiness, and she (Repenning) has really addressed that as a priority in her vision.” He also said Repenning showed that she cares for the social-emotional needs of students and recognized how poverty affects their learning.

In the southeast of #BD5 there is only ONE school that meets CA standards on reading and math. Just. One. pic.twitter.com/acI0bd3Qok

— Jonathan Hebert (@jonphebert) March 20, 2019

LAUSD’S FINANCES

Independent studies of L.A. Unified’s finances and budget reviews by the district’s county overseers have pointed to significant deficit spending and ballooning health care and pension costs that will eat up the district’s reserves within three years. The district’s budget relies on new funding sources that are not guaranteed: projected revenue from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget and local initiatives like a parcel tax, which will be on the ballot this June.

The county could even take control of the district’s finances if officials are not satisfied with its updated fiscal stabilization plan presented last week and its ability to maintain reserve levels.

Goldberg and the teachers union have questioned the district’s and county’s assessments of L.A. Unified’s financial stability. But Repenning affirmed “there are some really big challenges on the horizon,” adding that “it serves no one to turn a blind eye to the very real financial issues LAUSD is facing. First, we need more support for our schools from both Washington and Sacramento and for all of us to put aside political differences to ensure we pass Measure EE this June,” she said, referring to the proposed parcel tax.

“But we also need to take a serious look at eliminating redundancy and waste in our bureaucracy and how we can push existing resources out of the central office and back into the community. Finally, we need to be creative and think about how we can utilize existing local, county and non-profit resources to supplement the district’s efforts in serving our kids.”

She said she plans to bring change by moving “bureaucracy out of the way.”

“I do think that there are areas inside the bureaucracy where we can look to push out resources to the school sites. I’d love to create a program where everyone at Beaudry or at the local districts spends one day a month or maybe more working at a school site. Because a school site is at the core of what we’re doing, that’s where our focus should be.

“Whether there are areas of waste, I think it’s important to be able to highlight those and be able to address them. One of the areas I see is that there are a lot of lawsuits being settled, a lot of payouts for whatever happened. It should have never happened in the first place, so (we need to be) trying to prevent that with better HR practices.”

Repenning said, “I’ll continue to emphasize the need to write a new chapter of change at LAUSD,” emphasizing again that she is in the race because “there’s nothing more important to me than my daughter’s education. The things I want to change, they’re basic things I see through the lens of a parent and through my daily experience in LAUSD.”  

That vision includes not just students in District 5 but all district students, she said.

“There’s a huge amount of work in front of us. I plan to focus on what’s achievable now to move the needle to benefit our kids. My goal is to make LAUSD a school system that works for every student.”

• Read more: 

Runoff Q&A: Jackie Goldberg outlines her first-day priorities and her strategies as she prepares to face Heather Repenning in May’s LAUSD school board election

*This article was updated Wednesday to add the endorsements of the Los Angeles School Police Association and former BD5 candidates Eduardo Cisneros and Justine Gonzalez, and to add that Ortíz will not request a recount.

Jackie Goldberg, left, will face Heather Repenning in the runoff election on May 14.

*Updated March 25

Former L.A. city official Heather Repenning and teachers union-pick Jackie Goldberg are officially headed to a May runoff for L.A. Unified’s Board District 5 school board seat, as the county registrar certified the March 5 primary results on Friday.

Goldberg had been leagues ahead of the race’s nine other candidates since election night, finishing Friday with 15,935 votes — 48.18 percent of the 33,074 total ballots cast. While the 74-year-old’s status as a former board member, vocal charter critic and union ally during January’s teacher strike granted her substantial name recognition, she was unable to clinch the more than 50 percent majority needed to win outright.

Repenning, a 44-year-old district parent and former aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti, a week ago had already declared herself in the runoff election. But she formally secured second place on Friday with 13.13 percent of the vote, a slim 31 votes ahead of Huntington Park councilwoman Graciela Ortíz. This count was unchanged since last Friday, because the six straggler ballots that were counted this week went to Goldberg, a county spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Here are the final vote tallies:

• Jackie Goldberg: 48.18%, 15,935 votes
• Heather Repenning: 13.13%, 4,341 votes
• Graciela Ortíz: 13.03%, 4,310 votes
• Cynthia González: 9.77%, 3,230 votes
• Allison Greenwood Bajracharya: 6%, 1,986 votes
• Ana Cubas: 3.46%, 1,145 votes
• David Valdez: 2.05%, 678 votes
• Rocío Rivas: 1.65%, 545 votes
• Salvador Sánchez: 1.58%, 522 votes
• Nestor Enrique Valencia: 1.15%, 382 votes

As of Monday, Ortíz had not conceded or decided whether she would request a recount. Her team is waiting for answers from the county registrar — whose offices were closed Monday — regarding concerns such as under-votes, or ballots that were submitted but weren’t filled out, campaign manager Sergio Carrillo told LA School Report on Monday afternoon. “We’ll be reviewing those [ballots], and once we feel comfortable we’ll make a decision,” he said. The decision could come as early as Tuesday morning.

A full recount of the more than 33,000 ballots cast could cost in the ballpark of $27,500 to $30,000. Ortíz’s campaign has spent more than $40,000 above what it’s taken in, according to city ethics commission data last updated on March 5. Ortíz can request a recount through close of business on Wednesday. The county would then have up to seven days to start the recount. Under “optimal” conditions, it could count about 5,000 ballots a day, a spokesman wrote in an email. Results of a recount wouldn’t be known until early April.

The runoff election is May 14. Whoever wins will join the school board as its seventh member — likely reshaping the majority on the school board, which now swings between reform- and union-leaning agendas — as soon as the county certifies the results. That certification date is tentatively scheduled for May 24, a county spokesman told LA School Report on Friday.

Repenning and Goldberg’s runoff pairing ensures a white representative in Board District 5, known as BD5, where about 90 percent of the more than 80,000 students are Latino. BD5’s students have been represented by non-Latino school board members for 16 of the last 24 years. They’ve also been without any representative since last July, when former board member Ref Rodríguez resigned after pleading guilty to money laundering charges.

BD5 includes the southeast cities of Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate and Bell, and neighborhoods northeast of downtown including Highland Park, Echo Park, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock and Los Feliz. There are more than 310,000 eligible voters in the board district, bringing voter turnout in the primary to about 10.7 percent, which is on par for school board elections.

Heading into the runoff, Goldberg has spent about $175,000 of the $200,000 she’s received in campaign contributions, according to city ethics commission data last updated on March 5. United Teachers Los Angeles has separately poured about $670,000 so far into getting her elected.

Repenning, the race’s top fundraiser, has about $9,000 left, spending about $278,000 of the $287,000 she received leading up to the primary. SEIU Local 99, a union representing education workers such as teachers aides and cafeteria staff, has doled out close to $1 million to elect Repenning. About $140,000 of that has gone toward opposing Goldberg. Charter advocate Eli Broad also gave $100,000 to SEIU Local 99 on Election Day, the Los Angeles Times reported.

It is unclear at this point if the California Charter Schools Association Advocates — which stayed silent during the primary — will throw its support behind Repenning for the runoff.

“It is critically important to CCSA Advocates that all voices are heard and considered throughout the endorsement process. At this time, a decision has not been made,” CCSA Advocates spokesperson Brittany Chord Parmley said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Updated campaign finance totals will be available via this link on April 4, May 2 and May 10.

Here is some background on the runoff candidates:

Jackie Goldberg

Backed by UTLA, Goldberg was dubbed “the candidate to beat” during the campaign season, touting decades of experience from her previous positions as a 16-year teacher in Compton, an L.A. Unified school board member for two terms through 1991, a city councilwoman and a state assemblywoman. The Silver Lake resident told LA School Report her top priorities as a board member would include taxing the state’s “150 billionaires” and multimillionaires and pushing for more accountability and transparency for charter schools. Firmly backed by teacher union support, Goldberg would swing the school board to a more union-friendly majority.

On student performance, she’s said that lowering class sizes — and pooling more resources toward special education services and teaching children to read — are keys to success. She does not speak Spanish. Read our profile of Goldberg here.

Heather Repenning

Repenning, who was endorsed by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, is a former L.A. public works commissioner and Garcetti’s former director of external affairs, with more than 18 years of experience working in local government. She has also been a teacher. The Silver Lake resident told Speak UP in a January interview that she’s focused on boosting wraparound services for impoverished communities, getting more state funding for early education and adding a “parent perspective” to the school board. Her daughter attends a district elementary school.

Repenning believes charter schools should be studied but opposes an immediate cap, telling Speak UP that “there are some charter schools that are showing very successful best practices and models. How do we learn from those so that we can do those in LAUSD?” She also considers herself a “problem solver” who, like Goldberg, would prioritize finding new funding sources for L.A. Unified. She speaks Spanish — something that many BD5 parents expressed as a priority for their next school board member in a recent survey.

Come back to LA School Report on Monday for in-depth interviews with Goldberg and Repenning on their top priorities and strategies for the runoff.

*This article has been updated with CSSAA’s statement and a statement from Ortíz’s campaign manager on Monday about a possible recount.

• For more on the election:

Meet the 10 candidates running for LAUSD school board in District 5

LAUSD special election guide: Who’s on the ballot, and why Tuesday’s primary matters

How will this LAUSD school board election differ from District 5’s last race? Will January’s teacher strike boost turnout? Experts answer these questions, and more, about Tuesday’s vote

At two forums for LAUSD board candidates, students focus on college preparation, while parents want high-quality teachers and safe schools

More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years

New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5

Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.

“We’re asked to plan for three years, account for three years, with one year of sure money and nothing else,” board member Richard Vladovic said Tuesday. “And we can only hope and dream it comes true.”

School board members have approved L.A. Unified’s latest budget, even though the district is still far from being financially sustainable.

The revised fiscal stabilization plan lays out the district’s response to county concerns about deficit spending, inadequate reserve levels and reliance on non-guaranteed funds to keep itself afloat in coming years. But instead of providing clarity, the latest budget highlighted the district’s deepening reliance on new funding sources as it struggles to correct its ballooning deficit and to meet future minimum reserve requirements that could shield it from a county takeover.

The plan, presented to the board on Tuesday, offered the first in-depth look at L.A. Unified’s budget since the district settled its new teachers contract in January. That contract came with an $840 million price tag through 2021, stemming largely from teacher salary raises, class size reductions and support staff hires, such as counselors and nurses.

The fiscal plan passed 4-1, with one abstention, and was sent to county overseers by Tuesday’s deadline for review. The county has until April 15 to provide a response, a spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday.

Beyond already-announced reductions to the central office, Tuesday’s report outlined few other guaranteed cost cuts. Rather, Chief Financial Officer Scott Price emphasized to the school board that “we need to increase revenues.” L.A. Unified continues to bank on projected new state revenue and local initiatives like a parcel tax — which will be on the ballot this June and which just received backing from the L.A. City Council — to breathe life into the budget.

“I would like to know the amount coming from the governor, I’d like to know the results of the parcel tax” before giving approval, said District 3 board member Scott Schmerelson, who cast the sole “no” vote. District 1’s George McKenna chose to abstain.

Price’s presentation Tuesday highlighted the frustratingly volatile nature of budgets, District 7 board member Richard Vladovic said, at one point waving the budget documents in the air.

“We’re asked to plan for three years, account for three years, with one year of sure money and nothing else,” he said. “And we can only hope and dream it comes true.”

“Very much” the same thing

Fundamentally, Tuesday’s fiscal report and stabilization plan “very much is the same thing” as the one L.A. Unified submitted to the county in December, Price told reporters Monday.

A few findings:

1. The 1 percent reserve remains unmet, according to Price.

California districts are required to have a reserve for economic emergencies each year that amounts to at least 1 percent of their total expenditures. But the latest budget, which by law has to include projections for the current fiscal year as well as two years out, forecasts a 0.96 percent reserve in 2020-21. December’s budget projections showed the same percentage. L.A. Unified is about $3.1 million “below the 1 percent reserve,” Price told the board Tuesday.

(Source: L.A. Unified)

The district “used $75 million of one-time central office carryover funds to get to the 2020-21 reserve of .96%,” a spokeswoman explained in an email on Wednesday.

The district’s minimum reserve level plays a large role in whether the county decides to install a fiscal adviser, county Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo told LA School Report in January. A fiscal adviser would have “stay and rescind power,” meaning he or she could rewrite budgets and overturn school board decisions.

2. The latest report doesn’t appear to remedy the county’s continuing concerns over L.A. Unified’s deficit spending.

Not taking into account potential future revenues, L.A. Unified is projecting a deficit in 2021-22 that is $749 million below the 1 percent reserve, Price said Monday. (Deficit spending means the district is spending more than it’s taking in). The new estimate is nearly 50 percent above the $506 million deficit previously projected. Price noted Tuesday that along with the district’s new union contract obligations, declining enrollment of more than 12,000 students a year continues to cause L.A. Unified substantial financial strain.

(Source: L.A. Unified)

“We will need [another] fiscal stabilization plan” in the coming months “because of the deficit that we have in that 2021-22 year,” Price told board members Tuesday. “We know that we’re going to have to look for increased revenues, and we’re working on that.”

More budget projections on the 2021-22 year will be available come June, when the district reveals its 2019-20 budget.

3. So — cuts?

When asked Monday about cuts to the budget, Price highlighted the $85.8 million in savings the district plans to receive from central office reductions over a two-year span, which was already included in the December plan.

There are other cost-saving measures not included in the fiscal plan that the district is pursuing, Price added: a three-year waiver on the teacher-administrator ratio penalty that would save $105 million, continuing “efficiencies or reductions in costs” efforts that could save $100 million and potential real estate sales or leasing opportunities that could generate $100 million.

The district spokeswoman clarified in an email that those “efficiencies” could include contracting “through other government agencies with large vendors instead of buying directly from manufacturers or smaller vendors.”

(Source: L.A. Unified)

“The district is taking steps toward greater fiscal responsibility,” Board District 4’s Nick Melvoin wrote in a statement to LA School Report on Tuesday. “The reality remains that we are an underfunded school district that needs to simultaneously grow the pie while working to cut bureaucracy and get more caring adults on campuses.”

District 6 board member Kelly Gonez on Tuesday noted that the central office reductions extend to the local districts, and she asked Price if some of those cuts could be reconsidered depending on the breadth of new funding. “Our local districts do a lot of really important work. My principals tell me all the time how valuable those supports are,” she said. “So I hope that if some of these additional savings are realized, we can spare the local districts from those cuts.”

Price also confirmed Monday that Local Control Funding Formula monies explicitly set aside for targeted student populations — low-income, English language learners and foster youth — have not been compromised as the district tries to rein in its budget.

Reliance on new money

The biggest addition to the budget from last December was the teachers contract agreement “to invest more in lowering class sizes and increasing the numbers of librarians, counselors and nurses,” Price told reporters Monday. And that comes with finding a way to pay for it.

Officials have repeatedly emphasized that new revenue is vital for the district’s solvency. Price re-upped that call this week, citing the “necessity” of a parcel tax that’s now on the June 4 ballot. Measure EE, if approved by at least two-thirds of voters, would enact a districtwide $0.16 per square foot tax — a tax of $240 a year for an owner of a 1,500-square-foot home, for example. This would generate $400 million to $500 million annually starting in the 2019-20 year: about $350 million for district schools, and the rest going to independent charter schools.

“Measure EE is critical to really opening up conversation … [about] the potential investment in schools, rather than having to deal with the year-to-year ‘third-year’ conversation” that is consistently foreshadowing doom-and-gloom, Price told reporters Monday.

When asked by a reporter if “we’d be OK in 2021-22” if the parcel tax passes, Price responded, “Yes.”

Seth Litt, executive director of the advocacy group Parent Revolution, says he’d support new measures like a parcel tax, but he needs to see more transparency and clearer goals for the funding. “It’s crucial that there’s a sense of transparency, that these things are not happening in the dark … and that there’s a real vision for how the money is spent to improve student outcomes,” he said.

On how the updated plan improves student outcomes, Price cited the benefit of lowering class sizes and adding staff such as nurses, librarians and counselors.

Melvoin told board members last month that a parcel tax “will only pass if we can convince the community that we can do more with the money, and do so transparently and thoughtfully.” In that spirit, the tax would “include an oversight plan so that voters can continue to hold the district accountable for spending our money more wisely,” he wrote Tuesday in a statement to LA School Report.

While it’s premature for a parcel tax to be incorporated into district budgeting, L.A. Unified officials did include some new projected revenue from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget: a $44 million bump thanks to a projected cost-of-living adjustment and $48 million in pension relief over two years. County overseers have cautioned against “relying on this projected revenue since the Governor’s 2019-20 Budget is not yet finalized.”

Price did acknowledge Tuesday that “we don’t know until June what we will be getting from the state specifically.” He added: “[We’re] watching the dynamics that are happening with the revenue that comes into the state right now.”

Only two members of the public spoke on the district’s finances at Tuesday’s board meeting. One was active L.A. Unified parent Maria Daisy Ortíz, who expressed frustration that the district continues to budget behind closed doors with minimal parent engagement. Including her comments, the presentation of the fiscal plan and board discussion took about a half hour of the four-hour-long meeting.

When asked Monday whether the county would accept the updated plan, Price said L.A. Unified officials “are in constant communication with the county office” and are continuing to collaborate with a fiscal advisory team that the county assembled in January.

That team “hasn’t suggested doing anything different than what’s in the fiscal stabilization plan up to this point,” Price said. “The county has its sights on beyond the 20-21 school year — just as we’re looking at that too.”

Former L.A. city official Heather Repenning announced Friday that she is headed to a runoff with Jackie Goldberg for L.A. Unified’s District 5 school board seat.

In a county update Friday that added a few dozen ballots to the total tally, Repenning, a district parent and former aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti, was 31 votes ahead of Huntington Park councilwoman Graciela Ortíz.

The results of the March 5 special election won’t be official until next Friday, when the county certifies the election. As of a Friday afternoon news release, the county said there are “no remaining ballots left to be counted” in its office. There is still a possibility that a few straggler cured ballots — ballots that initially had no signatures or non-matching signatures — will be corrected and returned next week. But “historically speaking, there’s a low return rate on those,” a county spokesman said late Friday. There will be follow-up news releases next week if any do come in, he added.

Repenning’s team is confident regardless. “With nearly all the votes counted, after today’s update we can safely say that Heather has advanced to the runoff,” campaign manager Derek Mazzeo said in a written statement to LA School Report Friday afternoon.

Repenning has 13.13 percent of the 33,068 primary ballots counted. Goldberg, the teacher union-backed frontrunner, has more than triple that — 48.17 percent. A Repenning-Goldberg pairing would mean none of the seven Latino hopefuls in the 10-candidate race will contend for the seat in a board district where Latinos make up about 90 percent of enrollment.

“Thank you to all the voters who participated in our democracy and brought their ideas and concerns for our schools, and their hopes and dreams for our students, to this race,” Repenning’s campaign said in a statement Friday declaring she had made the runoff. “I look forward to a spirited campaign in the coming weeks that centers on how we can best bring a new chapter of change to LAUSD.”

Goldberg established an insurmountable lead in the first vote count on March 5’s election night. As a former board member and a vocal charter critic who became a prominent face of the January teacher strike, Goldberg had considerable name recognition over the race’s nine other candidates. But she was unable to secure the more than 50 percent vote majority required to avoid a runoff election.

In the battle for the second runoff slot, Repenning trailed Ortíz by 53 votes after election night tallies but leap-frogged Ortíz on March 8 to take the lead by 133 votes. As of Tuesday, Repenning’s margin had shrunk to only 35 votes.

In Friday’s update, Repenning captured seven of the 51 newly counted ballots; Ortíz took 11. The other votes were scattered among the other primary candidates. These ballots included the remaining vote-by-mail ballots and those that voters had returned in incorrect envelopes.

Ortíz’s camp hadn’t committed to calling for a recount as of Friday afternoon. “We have to pay, and it can be expensive,” her campaign manager, Sergio Carrillo, told LA School Report just before the county’s update. “Depending on the results, we may think about that.”

If Ortíz were to request a full recount of the ballots cast, it could likely cost in the ballpark of $27,500 to $30,000. Ortíz’s campaign has already spent about $43,000 more than it’s taken in, according to city ethics commission data.

A recount can be requested as soon as March 23 — a day after the county certifies the election. The county would then have up to seven calendar days to start the recount. Under “optimal” conditions, it could count about 5,000 ballots a day, a spokesman wrote in an email.

Goldberg and Repenning received the most outside donor funding in the primary. While United Teachers Los Angeles has poured about $670,000 into supporting Goldberg, SEIU Local 99, a union representing education workers such as teachers aides and cafeteria staff, doled out even more — all said close to $1 million — to get Repenning elected. Charter backers have been largely silent during the primary, though charter advocate Eli Broad gave $100,000 to Repenning’s supporter, SEIU Local 99, on Election Day, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Repenning said early in the campaign that she wasn’t interested in charter money. She positions herself as “the middle-ground candidate between the charters and teachers union,” according to the LA Times. The candidate with the strongest pro-charter position, Allison Bajracharya, finished fifth in the primary.

Voter turnout for the primary came to about 10.6 percent of the more than 310,000 eligible voters in the board district, known as BD5. This is on par for voter turnout in school board elections — normally 10 percent or less. The number of votes surpassed the last BD5 primary in 2015, when 26,811 votes were cast.

Whoever wins a May 14 runnoff would assume office as soon as the county certifies the election, the district’s board secretariat confirmed last week. The predominantly Latino board district’s more than 80,000 students have been without a representative since last July, when former board member Ref Rodríguez resigned after pleading guilty to money laundering charges.

The next board member for BD5 will represent students enrolled in 177 district schools located in parts of southeast Los Angeles, including the cities of Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate and Bell, and in neighborhoods northeast of downtown, including Highland Park, Echo Park, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock and Los Feliz.

Here is some background on Goldberg and Repenning:

Goldberg

Backed by UTLA, Goldberg was dubbed “the candidate to beat” during the campaign season, touting decades of experiences from her previous positions as a 16-year teacher in Compton, an L.A. Unified school board member for two terms through 1991, a city councilwoman and a state assemblywoman. The Silver Lake resident told LA School Report her top priorities as a board member would include taxing the state’s “150 billionaires” and multimillionaires and pushing for more accountability and transparency for charter schools. Firmly backed by teacher union support, Goldberg would swing the school board to a more union-friendly majority.

On student performance, she’s said that lowering class sizes — and pooling more resources toward special education services and teaching children to read — are keys to success. She does not speak Spanish. Read our profile of Goldberg here.

Repenning

Repenning, who was endorsed by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, is a former L.A. public works commissioner and Garcetti’s former director of external affairs, with more than 18 years of experience working in local government. She has also been a teacher. The Silver Lake resident told Speak UP in a January interview that she’s focused on boosting wraparound services for impoverished communities, getting more state funding for early education and adding a “parent perspective” to the school board. Her daughter attends a district elementary school.

Repenning believes charter schools should be studied but opposes an immediate cap, telling Speak UP that, “there are some charter schools that are showing very successful best practices and models. How do we learn from those so that we can do those in LAUSD?” She also considers herself a “problem solver” who, like Goldberg, would prioritize finding new funding sources for L.A. Unified. She speaks Spanish — something that many BD5 parents expressed as a priority for their next school board member in a recent survey.

Here are the latest vote tallies as of Friday afternoon:

• Jackie Goldberg: 48.17%, 15,929 votes
• Heather Repenning: 13.13%, 4,341 votes
• Graciela Ortíz: 13.03%, 4,310 votes
• Cynthia González: 9.77%, 3,230 votes
• Allison Greenwood Bajracharya: 6.01%, 1,986 votes
• Ana Cubas: 3.46%, 1,145 votes
• David Valdez: 2.05%, 678 votes
• Rocío Rivas: 1.65%, 545 votes
• Salvador Sánchez: 1.58%, 522 votes
• Nestor Enrique Valencia: 1.16%, 382 votes

Esmeralda Fabián Romero contributed to this report.

• For more on the election:

Meet the 10 candidates running for LAUSD school board in District 5

LAUSD special election guide: Who’s on the ballot, and why Tuesday’s primary matters

How will this LAUSD school board election differ from District 5’s last race? Will January’s teacher strike boost turnout? Experts answer these questions, and more, about Tuesday’s vote

At two forums for LAUSD board candidates, students focus on college preparation, while parents want high-quality teachers and safe schools

More money, more charter school scrutiny: Here’s what Jackie Goldberg wants to bring to LAUSD in her bid to rejoin the school board after nearly 30 years

New survey shows big differences in how English- and Spanish-speakers view their schools in LAUSD’s Board District 5

Latinos are the vast majority in LAUSD’s Board District 5. But they likely won’t be the ones who elect their next school board member. Here’s why.