Genethia Hudley-Hayes

This is the final profile of candidates running for LA Unified’s vacant District 1 board seat. The election is scheduled for June 3, with a possible runoff in August. Genethia Hudley-Hayes is the only candidate who declined to be interviewed for the series. Numerous attempts to reach her and her campaign failed to get a response. 

Genethia Hudley-Hayes has one thing none of the other seven candidates running in the special election for LA Unified District 1 seat can claim: she has actually served on the school board, representing the same south LA district.

She won a narrow victory in 1999 against an incumbent, sweeping into office with a reform slate that was backed by then-Mayor Richard Riordan. Her tenure lasted four years, until she was defeated in 2003 by Marguerite LaMotte. But by many accounts, her term in office, including the first two years as board president, Hudley-Hayes won a reputation as a leader with record of success.

“She demonstrated good judgement, independence and leadership during her time on the board. I saw her in action,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who took office after her tenure. “She didn’t just do a public service, she did it well. She was a change agent focused on accountability and results.”

Caprice Young, who came into office as a school board member the same year as Hudley-Hayes, says she made every decision based on what she knew was right for children, especially students who were under-served. Young had high praise despite launching a successful campaign to replace her as board president after just two years.

“She fought for the rights of foster children, English language learners, gifted kids, special needs students and, especially, African-American students,” Young told LA School Report.

Hudley-Hayes took leadership of the school board at a time it appeared paralyzed in the face of enormous district-wide problems.

Overcrowding was chronic, more than 300,000 students rode polluting diesel buses to far away schools to help alleviate it; test scores were falling; and LAUSD was facing a movement to break up into smaller districts.

One of the biggest crises facing the school board had been a $200 million Belmont high school construction project located on an oil field near downtown which was under investigation for not securing a proper environmental review. A symbol of dysfunction at the school board level, the project had been in perpetual limbo.

Young said Hudley-Hayes led the board in a vote to abandon the Belmont project, at the risk of alienating Latino groups.

Later, in an effort to unite the board majority to start solving problems, Hudley-Hayes helped bring in Colorado’s out-going Governor Roy Romer as superintendent, impressed by his ability to raise money and lead large organizations.

When the state legislature failed to allocate LA Unified’s fair share of construction dollars, Hudley-Hayes leveraged her relationships with the social justice community to sue the state and worked with then Assemblyman Tony Cardenas to get nearly $980 million in state bond money set aside for construction projects.

Over the next decade, the funds helped build 150 new schools and renovate 350 more in the most high-needs neighborhoods, easing overcrowding and extending the school year by more than two weeks.

Despite heavy criticism of back-room politics, Hudley-Hayes not only helped the district restore arts, expand after-school programs and purchase clean-fuel buses, she also helped make sure early childhood and dropout programs were protected and new, more effective reading and math programs were adopted. She helped pass a Healthy Beverage Resolution, the first school board policy in the country to ban sugary drinks from school vending machines.

“She was effective because she didn’t get caught up in district politics,” Young said. “She didn’t just bring people to the table, she made them sit down and do the right thing together.”

Marlene Canter, another former board member who served with Hudley-Hayes, said that her wisdom and experience put her in a position to get things done because she helped bring cohesion to the board.

“She had an ability to work cooperatively with the Superintendent and senior staff to make sure goals were in alignment,” Cantor said.

A decade later, Hudley-Hayes, who is a product of the LA Unified school system, finds herself in a familiar hot seat. One of her opponents, Alex Johnson, has accused her of falsifying her resume and has invited her to drop out of the race.

“I will not be bullied,” she said in response. “My record stands for itself, with 30 years of service in this town.”

LA School Report confirmed the inaccuracies on her resume (see story here), which included claims of several academic degrees, but she has declined interview requests from LA School Report ever since.

Nonetheless, she has maintained a number of high profile endorsements including Villaraigosa, U.S. Congresswoman Karen Bass, California State Senator Holly Mitchell and other civil rights activists and groups.

The latest forum for candidates running in a special election to fill the vacant seat in South LA’s District 1 produced unexpected agreement last night on some of the most volatile issues in public education.

The four contenders who participated — Alex Johnson, Rachel Johnson, Genethia Hudley-Hayes and George McKenna — saw eye to eye on nearly every core issue involving charter schools, including those that have been particularly contentious for the Los Angeles Unified school board.

The consensus could be partially attributed to catering to the crowd: the event was sponsored by CCSA Families, an advocacy group affiliated with the California Charter School Association, and more than 200 parents and teachers, many of whom were wearing CCSA Families t-shirts, filled the room at at Mount Moriah Baptist Church.

But the area has long been plagued with low-performing schools in a high-needs population, and charters have proven popular with parents.

Even the sole candidate endorsed by the teacher’s union, Rachel Johnson, was unabashed in her support of charters – despite the union’s fierce criticism.

“We [must] move past that adversarial ‘oh, the charter schools are taking us over’ idea” she said. “No. Charter schools are educating our students.”

Seven candidates are competing in the June 3 special election. The four last night agreed that charter schools are higher performing than traditional public schools and should be used as models; that there should be no cap or limit on charter growth; that ‘co-location’ between public charter schools and traditional public schools should be supported.

Perhaps most surprising was consensus that charter school operators should be allowed to takeover failing traditional school – a privilege that the board stripped from charter operators in its agreement with the teachers union three years ago.

The event was marked by polite restraint and only the slightest sign of criticism.

“We can’t keep doing the same old things that we were doing [30 years ago],” Alex Johnson, an aide to County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, said to much applause. “We just can’t. It is ineffective, and it is unacceptable and our children deserve change here and now.” Two of his opponents, McKenna, and Hudley-Hayes are more than twice his age, 33, and have been involved with LAUSD for decades.

If there were buzzwords of the evening, they were “accountability,” mentioned by every candidate numerous times; “choice” and “scale.”

“If they (charter schools) are doing a better job, we need to figure out what they are doing, find out what can be brought up to scale,” said Hudley-Hayes.

In a rare divergence, McKenna, a recently retired administrator, broke rank with the others on the question of his support of current LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. While his three adversaries voiced support for Deasy, McKenna said the issue of whether the superintendent is doing a good job and whether he would support re-opening Deasy’s contract, “is a question I have no interest in, whether the superintendent’s contract is reopened or not.”

McKenna later told LA School Report that as a private citizen, he doesn’t “know enough about the Superintendent’s performance” to evaluate him and refused numerous times when pressed to answer.

McKenna also got the closest to touching controversy by bringing up teacher and principal effectiveness, the third rail of education.

“We cannot have effective schools if we don’t have effective teachers…the performance of the schools is based on the teachers and the most critical person in any school is the principal,” he said. “You cannot have an effective school with an ineffective principal.“

The room expressed approval of his position, and that might have been because the teacher’s union, a vocal opponent to evaluations and charter growth in general, was not represented in the crowd or on the stage.

Two other candidates endorsed by UTLA did not appear at all: according to a CCSA staff member, Sherlett Hendy-Newbill canceled due to a scheduling conflict, and Hattie McFrazier,  did not respond to the invitation.  Omarosa Manigault canceled due to a last minute illness.

Graciela Martinez and Himelda Gonzalez, both mothers at a charter school in South LA, said they came to the forum unsure whom they would support.

They went home saying they would vote for McKenna, impressed with his views on accountability of principals.

“The principal is the most important,” said Martinez, pausing to find the right phrase in English. “if the head is not working, the school is not working.”