LA Times Comes Out in Support of Melvoin and Gonez

14May
by La Comadre

As you know, La Comadre has been following the LAUSD School Board race. Voters head to the polls on Tuesday. Last week, the LA Times endorsed Nick Melvoin for District 4 and Kelly Gonez for District 6, citing these candidates’ independent thinking. You can read the full endorsement here, but we want to highlight a few things.

The LA Times expressed concern about the financial situation at the LAUSD and incumbent board President Steve Zimmer’s leadership:

“But L.A. Unified is in troubled shape financially, and Zimmer is among those who have refused to confront this challenge head-on. The district will have to come up with policies to address its heavy and growing obligations to teachers’ retirement benefits, but Zimmer has been unwilling to lead matters in that direction — or in fact, to even have that discussion at all. This is why we endorsed Melvoin in the primary. We believe in well-compensated teachers, but the district is digging itself deeper into a hole.”

The LA Times highlighted Gonez’s support of greater accountability and transparency for charter schools:

“Gonez, a charter-school teacher and a former official in the U.S Education Department during the Obama administration, clearly wouldn’t have voted with the board majority on the charter bill. But she also has spoken in favor of tighter charter oversight and greater transparency to make sure that these schools are doing right by their students. On this and other issues, she comes across as reform-oriented but also as an independent thinker who bases her stances not on rhetoric or ideology but on what the evidence shows. She’s a strong choice for District 6, which covers the eastern San Fernando Valley.”

To learn more about Nick Melvoin, you can find our Q & A here.

To learn more about Kelly Gonez, you can find our Q & A here.

What do you think?

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