Voters head to the polls Tuesday for a special election in LAUSD’s Board District 5, which has been without representation since last summer, when Ref Rodriguez resigned. The runoff between candidates Heather Repenning and Jackie Goldberg could mark a significant shift in the direction of the board.
Read MoreBoosted in part by Speak UP’s efforts to turn out the vote in the primarily Latino Southeast section of LAUSD’s Board District 5, Huntington Park Councilmember and school counselor Graciela Ortiz appears to be headed for a runoff against veteran politician Jackie Goldberg, who last served on the school board in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.
Goldberg, 74, who was backed by United Teachers Los Angeles and received $640,000 in outside union spending to support her campaign, rode the wave of the teachers strike to take a solid lead with 48.26 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, she fell short of the more than 50 percent needed to win outright and avoid a runoff May 14.
Ortiz led candidate Heather Repenning for the second-place spot by just 53 votes after all the results were tallied on election night. With provisional and late-arriving mail-in ballots still uncounted, results could still change. Principal Cynthia Gonzalez took fourth place, and parent/educator Allison Bajracharya took fifth.
Repenning, who received backing and nearly $1 million in support from SEIU Local 99, the union representing LAUSD bus drivers, cafeteria workers and special education aides, is not conceding the race for second place. There’s also still a slim chance Goldberg could win outright and avoid a runoff.
If Ortiz, 38, holds onto the second place spot, the runoff will present a stark generational, geographic and racial contrast. Ortiz, who works as an attendance counselor at Linda Marquez High School, has strong roots in the primarily Latino Southeast.
Grassroots support helped her overcome a massive spending disadvantage. While Ortiz raised more money than any other Latino candidate, $129,000, she was the fourth place fundraiser overall and had far less spent on her behalf ($90,558) than Goldberg ($640,913), Repenning ($765,704) or Bajracharya ($138,695). SEIU also poured almost $37,000 into negative ads opposing Ortiz.
Speak UP parent leaders, working in coalition with Parent Revolution and Families and Teachers United, clearly had an impact on the results. While none endorsed a candidate, all three focused efforts on informing voters in the Southeast cities of Huntington Park, South Gate, Vernon, Bell, Maywood and Cudahy about the election and encouraging them to vote.
After knocking on more than 22,000 doors and making more than 21,000 phone calls to voters, Speak UP and its coalition partners received pledges to participate in the election from nearly 4,500 voters. Ortiz leads the race for a second-place runoff spot with just 3,368 votes.
“Speak UP parent leaders worked hard to get the word out to their neighbors that this was an important opportunity for their community to have a voice,” said Speak UP Executive Director Katie Braude. “They wanted to make their voices heard, and they did.”
Read MoreWith just a month to go until the LAUSD Board District 5 special election, candidate Heather Repenning leads in fundraising. Her campaign has taken in $197,248 according to the Los Angeles City Ethics Comission website. Allison Bajracharya is close behind with $151,372 and Graciela Ortiz is in third among ten candidates, with $114,315.
Jackie Goldberg is in fourth place, with $77,951. However, a PAC funded by the teachers union has spent $171,000 backing her. Service Employees International Union Local 99, the union of 30,000 teacher assistants, bus drivers and other school support staff, has spent nearly $429,000 to get Repenning elected.
Other candidates in the race are Ana Cubas, who has brought in $49,169, Cynthia Gonzalez with $24,615, David Valdez at $19,283, Salvador “Chamba” Sanchez at $6,999, Nestor Enrique Valencia at $2,644, and Rocio Rivas who, as of the most recent reporting deadline (January 19), had not reported any funds raised.
These figures pale in comparison to the 2017 LAUSD board elections, when nearly $10 million was spent in the Board District 4 race and $5 million in the Board District 6 race. Independent expenditures by UTLA and the California Charter Schools Association accounted for most of that. CCSA is not endorsing a candidate in the BD5 primary and has not spent any money backing or opposing any candidates.
Read MoreSpeak UP: Tell us about yourself and why you are running for school board.
Heather Repenning: Public education is very important to me. I'm a product of public schools. Growing up, my mom was a public school teacher, and because of her understanding of public education, she was able to identify great schools for my brother and I, and I was able to go to college and do a lot more professionally than I would have done under other circumstances. My family comes from a humble background. Originally we’re from Kentucky. To me, public education is the doorway. It is how we allow our young people to pull themselves ahead to do the things that they never imagined. And I don't think that we're doing that particularly well right now. I don't think there's any one thing or person to blame, but the issues around how we create great neighborhood public schools are very complex and require a lot of hard work. Personally, I've worked in local government for many years, and I know the work it takes to move bureaucracy, create policy and build coalitions to move great policy forward. So I feel like I have the skills to do that. Because education is so important to me, I've worked [in education] at different points in my career. I was in the classroom for a few years right out of college, and I worked at LAUSD helping organize parents and other stakeholders around the process of building new schools. I worked on the previous Ambassador Hotel, now the RFK schools site, and advocating for the new schools that are now thriving on that site.
Speak UP: You taught early in your career. Was this in Honduras? Is that how you became fluent in Spanish?
Heather: Yes, I spent time teaching in Honduras, in a bilingual school, and then I moved to Southern California to pursue graduate school. Actually, I was on the pathway to becoming an academic. I was in a PhD program. At the time I was teaching composition to undergrads at UC Irvine. And I also previously taught an ESL class at LA City College.
Read MoreThe mission of Speak UP is to engage, educate and activate parents and community members to advocate for excellent, equitable public education at their children’s schools, in their communities, with elected representatives and at the ballot box.
La misión de Speak UP es involucrar, educar y activar a los padres y miembros de la comunidad para abogar en las escuelas de sus hijos, en sus comunidades, con representantes electos y en las urnas por una educación pública excelente y equitativa.
