LA’S SCHOOLS AND OTHER MUSINGS-Probably only in the Electoral College do so few voters decide an election as was decided for the LAUSD Board of Education. 7.64% of eligible voters voted. $726.61 was spent by the campaigns and Political Action Committees for each vote cast. I’m sure I’ve read 20+ words for every vote cast about what it all means.
The most succinct appraisal was Diane Ravitch’s: “It was a wash.”
Being a pundit - if not a card-carrying/fully-fledged member of the pundocracy, at least a member of the pundit class - I can’t leave it at that.
Q: A Kayser staffer at the Kayser “Victory Party” asked me – just as the inevitable (washed down with beer and wine and cheese nibbles) was sinking in: Was I already writing my reaction piece?
A: I was listening and making note – the most elemental part of writing. Driving there I passed multi-car freeway pileup: all firetrucks, twisted metal and dazed survivors standing on the shoulder. Surely that was a metaphor. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Let me add my two-cents worth.
IT’S REALLY VERY SIMPLE. The voters voted the rascals out. It didn’t matter where they stood, how much money they raised or how many fliers they flew. If they were in – they were out. (Note: The previous line is best read with Heidi Klum’s accent.)
It was an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the current situation/the status-quo-of-the-moment/the stasis. And it leaves us exactly where we were …but with a couple of new faces on opposite sides of issues: A celebration of an Opposite Day that lasts for five-and-a-half-years
Two incumbents of completely different political persuasions+(in)sensibilities were defeated. One incumbent survived – but not by all-that-much when one considers that his opponent had little money and a reputation as a whack job. To Lincoln’s admonition “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” – we need to add the caveat that you can apparently buy some of the people some of the time.
(In the City Council Race David Ryu, the outsider won handily even though his opponent Carolyn Ramsey was supported by the termed-out incumbent, the mayor, the city council president and the LA Times. Mayor Garcetti didn’t do well in his support for Tamar Galatzan either.)
There are some that say it was a referendum on iPads or educational technology. Or perhaps John Deasy. Or testing or Common Core or charter schools or Corporate ®eform. That Deasy supported Tamar Galatzan when her opponent accused her of being a Deasy supporter probably wasn’t $500-worth-of-helpful; Ref Rodriguez took Deasy’s money – but $500 was a meaningless contribution in his multi-million-dollar effort.
IT WAS A STRANGE ELECTION; many of the lessons to be learned are meaningless. We will never have another like it again because of Charter Amendments 1 and 2 - which passed back in March to move city and L.A. Unified school board elections to June, with a November runoff, in even-numbered years along with state and federal elections. No more March and May. No more odd numbered years. No more one or two races on the ballot in regular elections.
• In terms of politics, Scott Schmerelson framed his argument that Tamar Galatzan was a Deasy supporter. Time for a change. He won.• Ref Rodriguez and his supporters framed his argument that Bennett Kayser was for iPads, against charter schools, brown children and was clumsy with a coffee cup. Time for a change. He won.
• Lydia Gutiérrez got painted as a tea party Republican, had little-to-no money and got a hell of a lot of votes for someone so burdened in her race against Richard Vladovic (who was supported by the unions and the charter folks). Not quite time for that much change!
• In the city council race David Ryu was a Korean from Koreatown - a convincing argument on the face of it ...except Koreatown is predominantly Hispanic. LeBonge was old+old school - he wore us all out and we could vote against him and business as usual without actually voting against him. Time for a change. Ryu won.
The voters who voted – and 65% of them voted by mail, some voting almost a month before Election Day - decided that the incumbents were not effective at governing the District. More of a “I’m-Mad-As-Hell-and-I’m-Not-Going-To-Take-It-Anymore”/”Toss-The-Rascals-Out” mentality than anything else.
Sarah Bradshaw, Kayser’s chief-of-staff, in a moment of pure wit+insight said Bennett’s election was lost in the Absentee Vote ...because the campaign was absent when the voters were voting!
In voting early, early voters were not aware/informed of late developments in the races and of the obscene amounts invested by outside donors. In the Kayser/Rodriguez board race they missed the news that one of Ref’s PUC Charter schools was in serious legal and financial hot water; in all elections early voters missed how ugly the campaigning got. In Kayser’s case the traditional polling place voters skewed+trended in his favor …but the early voters trumped the surge.
THE SWINGING PENDULUM MEETS THE REVOLVING DOOR. In the case of Board District Three, the ®eform Inc. vs. Teachers’ Union incumbents have alternated in the seat. It was Caprice Young’s seat when Caprice was Mayor Riordan’s candidate; Caprice was defeated by Jon Lauritzen, a UTLA stalwart. Mayor Tony ran Tamar Galatzan against Lauritzen and now Tamar has lost to Scott Schmerleson, the union supported candidate.
In Board District Five David Tokofsky first had union and mayoral support, then lost the mayor but won reelection – then left the seat to have it picked up by Villaraigosa candidate Yolie Flores. Yolie was about as pro-®eform as they get, but didn’t run again. UTLA’s Bennett Kayser defeated Mayor Tony+Monica Garcia’s handpicked Luis Sanchez in a squeaker in ®eform’s attempt to buy that election – and now the pendulum has swung back to Charters+®eform Inc. with Ref Rodriguez.
End of the world? Not quite. Armageddon has been avoided, dystopia averted. Looking at the score card it looks like a draw/a wash/a flip-flop. Is a tie a win by more than one side? …or a loss equally shared?
FUTURE SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS WILL BE DIFFERENT. It will be a long ballot and school board races will be deep down in it. Congresspeople and assemblymembers and state senators will be on the ballot; the mayor and half the city council. Judges. Initiatives+Referenda. The political money and effort will be spread thinner, the phone banks will be tied up – the political consultants already employed. It will be easier to get folks to vote and harder to get them to pay attention. Or pay money to your campaign.{module [1177]}
IT IS ALL VERY COMPLICATED.• Things are going to be testy on the board as the players figure out what their roles are.
• The current board (with lame duck members) must set the budget the next board – with the ducks long gone – will be accountable for.
• The Inspector General has an investigation ongoing of PUC Charter Schools. PUC’s CEO is now on the Board of Ed. the IG reports directly to the board.
• Who will the next board president be? The rules say it can’t be Dr. Vladovic – but the rules can be changed. In a moment at the last meeting when he didn’t know his mic was on Dr. V. pretty much said he was looking forward to not being the president.
• Mr. Zimmer and Mr. Rodriguez – despite the campaign vitriol – are going to have to figure how they can work together when that makes sense.
• We won’t have the two attorneys from The Valley constantly trying to square off and argue every legal point while their attorney – the General Counsel – waits+watches.
• The political split will continue be generally pro-educator/®eform-averse. There will now be five members on the board with administrator’s credentials and six with classroom teaching experience.
• There will be surprises. Watch this space.
I MUST SAY THIS and then I need to step back from the ledge. This is Memorial Day weekend and the following is in no way In Memoriam: That honor and this holiday is earned+deserved by those who gave us their last full measure of devotion.
TAMAR GALATZAN is sometimes a disruptive force. She was brought onto the board to follow Mayor Tony’s lead and she really isn’t a follower. On occasion – when she wasn’t bored or just angry she could be a voice of reason – especially on issues that sometimes don’t get enough attention like procurement …although she let the iPad procurement slip-through unquestioned and defended it and the leadership that proposed it as it+they descended into chaos. She first won her seat by defeating a man with terminal cancer. That seemed politically heartless …but he really shouldn’t have been the candidate.
BENNETT KAYSER is one of the most decent men I have ever met – and a good friend to me and kids and parents and teachers and public education. There is a crazy selflessness that afflicts middle school educators like a mutant gene: ‘Who, in their right mind, would return there?’ Bennett possesses this in spades. The victory-at-all-costs campaign waged against him was particularly brutal and unnecessarily hurtful to him, his wife Peggy and his friends, colleagues and family. ‘It’s not personal, it’s politics’ is easy to say and tougher to live. Forgiveness+forgetting will be harder to come by from his friends than from Bennett.
“A righteous man does not conceive of himself as righteous; he is ‘only doing what anyone else would do,’ except, of course, that no one else does it.” ― Martin Berman-Gorvine, 36
Nothing to see here. We pick up the pieces and move along.
¡Onward/Adelante!
(Scott Folsom is a parent and parent leader in LAUSD. He is the former President of Los Angeles 10th District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. Scott is a member of the California State PTA Board on Managers. He blogs at the excellent 4 LA Kids … where this perspective was originally posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 44
Pub: May 29, 2015
