With less than two weeks to go until election day, the District 6 School Board runoff is remarkably sedate. Very little mail has been sent out for either campaigns, and Independent Expenditure (or IE) committee spending is down compared to the primary. Monica Ratliff still teaches every day at San Pedro Elementary, so her public exposure...

School Board candidate Monica Ratliff met with 15 or so teachers and LAUSD employees Thursday night at an event sponsored by Teach Plus. During the hour-long discussion, the candidate for District 6 (East San Fernando Valley) did as much listening as she did talking, asking teachers about their concerns on issues such as local autonomy...

The teachers union is none too pleased about a recent LA Times story by Howard Blume about rumors that District 6 School Board candidate Antonio Sanchez had worked out a secret deal with UTLA Vice President Gregg Solkovits. “It is sad that the Times has chosen to print rumors and innuendo, instead of doing the necessary research...

UTLA’s political action committee, or PACE, has given $1,000 to the Monica Ratliff campaign, according to paperwork filed with the City Ethics Commission — but hasn’t funded her opponent, Antonio Sanchez. Both candidates have been endorsed by the teachers union. The move is all the more notable because on Wednesday, UTLA’s House of Representatives again...

District 6 School Board candidate Antonio Sanchez got nearly 44% of the vote in the March Primary — just 6 points shy of the 50 percent that would have given him an outright victory. So don’t expect any big changes in his May 21 runoff election with teacher Monica Ratliff. “We only need to capture...

The day after the March 5 primary election, a tired-looking Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa mentioned off-hand that turnout for the LAUSD School Board elections was a dismal seven percent. A couple of weeks later on KPCC, he amended that number to 14 percent. So which is it? Neither, actually.  Voter turnout for the LAUSD races was initially reported...

The union political action committee charged with re-interviewing District 6 runoff candidates last night voted narrowly to remove Antonio Sanchez and make Monica Ratliff its sole endorsed candidate for the May 21 runoff — but fell well short of the two-thirds majority required to make the recommendation official. UTLA’s governing body, the House of Representatives,...

When District 6 runoff candidate Antonio Sanchez showed up to the UTLA endorsement interview last year, he was accompanied by Miguel Santiago, an old friend of Sanchez’s as well as a member of the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees and — more importantly — State Assembly Speaker John Perez’s District Director. Santiago’s appearance...

On Wednesday evening, UTLA’s House of Representatives will vote on whether to stick with its endorsements of Antonio Sanchez, a former aide to the Mayor, and classroom teacher Monica Ratliff, or to pick one candidate over the other in the District 6 school board runoff. Sources say that UTLA leadership doesn’t mind Sanchez, a politically connected...