As Chicago continues to wait for an elected school board following the legislature’s creation of a law permitting one, Los Angeles’ elected board suggests what our future might look like.
L.A. is the largest city in the United States without mayoral control of the schools. It’s multi-district board is a fully elected one.
Two board members are retiring, two incumbents are seeking reelection and a total of 18 candidates are running in the up-coming election next month.
Races for the seats in Districts 1, 3, 5 and 7 will be on the March primary ballot.
Whoever wins next November will wield influence over the education of more than 500,000 students living in every corner of Los Angeles — from San Pedro to Sylmar and Venice to Highland Park.
No city in America currently has more charter schools than L.A..
For the last decade billionaire advocates for charter schools have spent millions hoping to seat pro-charter candidates on the LAUSD school board.
For Example, there is the billionaire, Bill Bloomfield.
Bloomfield has poured millions of dollars into political campaigns, becoming one of California’s biggest donors.
Bloomfield was a supporter of Republican presidential candidates George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.
In 2012, Bloomfield funneled $7.5 million into his own race against the Democrat Congressman Henry Waxman, who won in spite of Bloomfield’s big bucks.
In 2014 and 2015, he paid for the campaigns of two state Senate candidates, contributing more than $2 million to help. They won.
In 20128 Bloomfield gave $5.3 million to the independent expenditure committee of the charter school advocates in EdVoice, which backed pro-charter candidate Marshall Tuck for superintendent of public instruction.
Tuck lost to union backed Tony Thurmond.
Bloomfield contributed an additional $1.3 million directly to Tuck’s campaign in what became the most expensive race for state superintendent of education in the nation’s history.
Bloomfield, former CEO of a commercial laundry equipment firm previously known as Web Service Company, and founder of an Internet hosting company, is not as well known as other deep-pocketed charter school advocates such as Eli Broad and the Walton family. But he’s become one of the charter movement’s biggest supporters.
I supported an elected school board and knocked on hundreds of doors collecting signatures for one.
But I recognize the dilemma when charter school billionaires have too much money and can spend it on school board elections.
That’s not my idea of democracy.