Manipulating The Electorate In LAUSD School Board Races

“Mónica (García) made everybody rich.”
- Gil Cedillo

In 2020, supporters of the charter school industry spent $6.569 million trying to unseat Scott Schmerelson from his LAUSD School Board seat in District 3. One focus of this sometimes antisemitic campaign was the significant pay raise members of the board had received during his first term. Despite the fact that the salary increase from $45,637 to $125,000 was initiated and approved by an independent Compensation Review Committee, billionaires Reed Hastings and Jim Walton used a torrent of mailers to try to convince voters that Schmerelson had acted inappropriately to enrich his bank account.

Even though Board President Kelly Gonez accepted the same salary as Schmerelson, the charter school industry did not send similar mailers during this year’s campaign. In fact, Reed Hastings has provided “major funding” for ads to support her re-election. It is almost like he did not really care about the issue other than as a tool to sink his ideological opponent.

This hypocrisy is further amplified by details found within the audio leaked from a meeting between three Los Angeles City Council members. In between hurling insults at Blacks, Indigenous People, and Jews, Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo, and Kevin de Leon revealed that there was an LAUSD Board Member who did play a role in securing this raise - former LAUSD board president Mónica García. “Cedillo repeats three times in the audio, ‘Mónica made everybody rich.’”

García is a longtime supporter of the charter school industry and was re-elected in 2017 after $622,536 was spent on her behalf by its supporters. According to reports, she has been promised the position of Chief of Staff if fellow charter school supporter Maria Brenes is elected next month. Martinez and de Leon have endorsed Brenes.

This manipulation of the electorate provides another example of how the charter school industry operates with a "win at whatever the cost" mentality. Is this behavior that should be modeled for the students who attend their publicly funded private schools?

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He was elected to the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and is the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.