Voters in Los Angeles Unified Faculty Board District 5 have a alternative on the Nov. 5 poll between Karla Griego, a particular schooling instructor, and Graciela Ortiz, a district administrator.
Veteran board member Jackie Goldberg is retiring, leaving an open seat on this sprawling, C-shaped district, which incorporates the southeast cities of Huntington Park, Maywood and South Gate, swerves via Central and South L.A., throughout East Hollywood and into Glassell Park, Eagle Rock and different elements of northeast L.A. Her substitute ought to have the talents and expertise to deal with studying loss, continual absenteeism and psychological well being points college students have suffered for the reason that pandemic, and to bridge communities with disparate wants.
The perfect candidate to signify them on the college board is Griego. She has devoted her profession to serving a few of the district’s highest-need college students and brings practically 20 years of expertise as a instructor, father or mother and union activist who has battled district forms to get college students the sources they deserve.
Griego is neighborhood college coordinator at McAlister Excessive Faculty for college students underneath 18 which can be pregnant or dad and mom. She has taught at Sonia Sotomayor Arts and Sciences Magnet, Buchanan Road Elementary and Benjamin Franklin Excessive in Highland Park.
Her priorities embrace growing district accountability and transparency over budgeting, contracts and constitution faculties, increasing the providers faculties present to kids and their households and persevering with to spend money on the Black Pupil Achievement Plan the college board adopted three years in the past to handle the tutorial inequities Black college students face.
Griego is endorsed by the highly effective United Lecturers Los Angeles union, and although lots of her views align with the union’s, primarily based on her monitor document we anticipate her to place her vitality into modifications that greatest serve college students, not simply labor pursuits.
Whereas educating at Buchanan Road Faculty, for instance, Griego helped set up lecturers, employees and fogeys to push college and district officers till they made enhancements corresponding to including playground tools, working water fountains, inexperienced house and eradicating outdated bungalows.
Griego completed first out of 4 candidates within the major election, with 36.7% of the vote. It’s important that she now has the help of former opponent, former Bell Mayor Fidencio Gallardo, who completed third, and of Goldberg. Like Goldberg, Griego is a fighter who will ask robust questions, demand accountability and arise for the wants of scholars and their households.
Griego understands that enhancing attendance, commencement charges and tutorial achievement requires holistic options, corresponding to ensuring college students and their households have entry to meals, little one care and healthcare. That’s why she stated she would push for faculties to supply extra providers, together with before- and after-school packages, psychological well being help and health courses. These convictions are primarily based on seeing continual absenteeism go down in a single yr at one in every of her faculties after it began providing providers to the neighborhood corresponding to yoga, and because the father or mother of a daughter in highschool in District 5.
The opposite candidate, Ortiz, is an LAUSD administrator in pupil providers and attendance and former member of the Huntington Park Metropolis Council. Ortiz is backed by constitution college advocates and Service Workers Worldwide Union, Native 99, which represents labeled college employees together with tutorial aides, custodians, bus drivers and cafeteria employees.
Ortiz argues that her expertise as an elected official and district administrator overseeing counselors that work on continual absenteeism would enable her to get to work instantly on her priorities, which embrace growing funding and addressing inequities, however she has did not articulate clear plans and positions.
For instance, when requested throughout the major marketing campaign final fall to charge Supt. Alberto Carvalho’s job efficiency, she stated she was in no place to guage him as a result of he’s her boss. And through an interview in July she stated there have been faculties in District 5 that also don’t have air-con, however refused to call them on the grounds that it was information she obtained as a district worker.
We predict Griego is a better option due to her clear and constructive agenda, her invaluable ground-level perspective and her demonstrated dedication to preventing district forms to repair unaddressed issues. Voters in District 5 ought to give her the possibility to advocate for his or her college students as tenaciously as she has advocated for her personal.
