2020 Elections

Let The Next Round Of Anti-Semitic Ads Begin

All four pro-public education candidates came in first in their LAUSD school board elections, but two will face run-offs in November.

Carl J. Petersen
5 min readMar 5, 2020

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Scott Schmerelson ( https://scott4lausd.com/) and Patricia Castellanos (UTLA)

The battle over whether or not the Los Angeles Unified School Board is controlled by supporters of public education and the UTLA or ‘school choice’ and unfettered charter school expansion remains up in the air.

- Los Angeles Education Examiner

Those supporting public education in the Los Angeles Unified School District had everything to lose in Tuesday’s election. The resignation of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez set up a situation where all of the board members supporting the privatization of education were elected in 2017 and the seats held by members of the opposing block were before the voters this year. Just one win by a candidate from the charter school industry would have meant that they would once again gain a majority on the board that is supposed to represent public school students. To give a business analogy, Coca-Cola’s management would be in charge of the Pepsi Board of Directors.

With all of the chances for really bad headlines, Tuesday brought very good results for those supporting public education. In Board District 1, George McKenna faced token opposition from a write-in candidate and according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk received 100% of the vote. Jackie Goldberg survived a campaign of vicious lies to defeat her opponent in Board District 5. She also earned more than 50% of the vote and will, therefore, avoid a runoff. In the two other races, the public education candidates had the most votes but did not earn enough to avoid competing against the second-place finishers in their races in November.

Early in the evening, Mike Lansing and Lydia Gutierrez jumped to the lead for those in Board District 7 who had mailed their ballots in advance. This would have set up a race between a candidate supported by the charter industry and Gutierrez, who is a public school teacher but…

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Carl J. Petersen

Parent, special education advocate and former LAUSD School Board candidate. Still fighting for the children. www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com