Voters in Los Angeles Unified College Board District 5 have a alternative on the Nov. 5 poll between Karla Griego, a particular training trainer, 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 alternative ought to have the abilities and expertise to sort out studying loss, continual absenteeism and psychological well being points college students have suffered because the pandemic, and to bridge communities with disparate wants.
The perfect candidate to signify them on the varsity board is Griego. She has devoted her profession to serving a few of the district’s highest-need college students and brings practically twenty years of expertise as a trainer, guardian and union activist who has battled district paperwork to get college students the assets they deserve.
Griego is neighborhood faculty coordinator at McAlister Excessive College for college students beneath 18 which are pregnant or mother and father. She has taught at Sonia Sotomayor Arts and Sciences Magnet, Buchanan Road Elementary and Benjamin Franklin Excessive in Highland Park.
Her priorities embrace rising district accountability and transparency over budgeting, contracts and constitution colleges, increasing the providers colleges present to kids and their households and persevering with to spend money on the Black Student Achievement Plan the varsity board adopted three years in the past to deal with the tutorial inequities Black college students face.
Griego is endorsed by the highly effective United Lecturers Los Angeles union, and although a lot of her views align with the union’s, primarily based on her observe report we count on her to place her power into modifications that finest serve college students, not simply labor pursuits.
Whereas instructing at Buchanan Road College, for instance, Griego helped manage lecturers, employees and oldsters to push faculty and district officers till they made enhancements resembling including playground gear, working water fountains, inexperienced house and eradicating outdated bungalows.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 vital that she now has the assist 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 rise up for the wants of scholars and their households.
Griego understands that bettering attendance, commencement charges and tutorial achievement requires holistic options, resembling ensuring college students and their households have entry to meals, baby care and healthcare. That’s why she stated she would push for colleges to supply extra providers, together with before- and after-school applications, psychological well being assist and health courses. These convictions are primarily based on seeing continual absenteeism go down in a single 12 months at one in all her colleges after it began providing providers to the neighborhood resembling yoga, and because the guardian 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 faculty advocates and Service Workers Worldwide Union, Native 99, which represents labeled faculty employees together with educational 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 permit her to get to work straight away on her priorities, which embrace rising 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 price Supt. Alberto Carvalho’s job efficiency, she stated she was in no place to judge him as a result of he’s her boss. And through an interview in July she stated there have been colleges in District 5 that also don’t have air-con, however refused to call them on the grounds that it was data she obtained as a district worker.
We expect Griego is a more sensible choice due to her clear and constructive agenda, her useful ground-level perspective and her demonstrated dedication to preventing district paperwork to repair unaddressed issues. Voters in District 5 ought to give her the prospect to advocate for his or her college students as tenaciously as she has advocated for her personal.
