Endorsement: Karla Griego for Los Angeles Unified School Board District 5

Voters in Los Angeles Unified School Board District 5 have a choice on the Nov. 5 ballot between Karla Griego, a special education teacher, and Graciela Ortiz, a district administrator.

Veteran board member Jackie Goldberg is retiring, leaving an open seat in this sprawling, C-shaped district, which includes the southeast cities of Huntington Park, Maywood and South Gate, swerves through Central and South L.A., across East Hollywood and into Glassell Park, Eagle Rock and other parts of northeast L.A. Her replacement should have the skills and experience to tackle learning loss, chronic absenteeism and mental health issues students have suffered since the pandemic, and to bridge communities with disparate needs.

The best candidate to represent them on the school board is Griego. She has devoted her career to serving some of the district’s highest-need students and brings nearly two decades of experience as a teacher, parent and union activist who has battled district bureaucracy to get students the resources they deserve.

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Griego is community school coordinator at McAlister High School for students under 18 that are pregnant or parents. She has taught at Sonia Sotomayor Arts and Sciences Magnet, Buchanan Street Elementary and Benjamin Franklin High in Highland Park.

Her priorities include increasing district accountability and transparency over budgeting, contracts and charter schools, expanding the services schools provide to children and their families and continuing to invest in the Black Student Achievement Plan the school board adopted three years ago to address the educational inequities Black students face.

Griego is endorsed by the powerful United Teachers Los Angeles union, and though many of her views align with the union’s, based on her track record we expect her to put her energy into changes that best serve students, not just labor interests.

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While teaching at Buchanan Street School, for example, Griego helped organize teachers, staff and parents to push school and district officials until they made improvements such as adding playground equipment, working water fountains, green space and removing old bungalows.

Griego finished first out of four candidates in the primary election, with 36.7% of the vote. It’s significant that she now has the support of former opponent, former Bell Mayor Fidencio Gallardo, who finished third, and of Goldberg. Like Goldberg, Griego is a fighter who will ask tough questions, demand accountability and stand up for the needs of students and their families.

Griego understands that improving attendance, graduation rates and academic achievement requires holistic solutions, such as making sure students and their families have access to food, child care and healthcare. That’s why she said she would push for schools to offer more services, including before- and after-school programs, mental health support and fitness classes. Those convictions are based on seeing chronic absenteeism go down in one year at one of her schools after it started offering services to the community such as yoga, and as the parent of a daughter in high school in District 5.

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The other candidate, Ortiz, is an LAUSD administrator in pupil services and attendance and former member of the Huntington Park City Council. Ortiz is backed by charter school advocates and Service Employees International Union, Local 99, which represents classified school staff including instructional aides, custodians, bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

Ortiz argues that her experience as an elected official and district administrator overseeing counselors that work on chronic absenteeism would allow her to get to work right away on her priorities, which include increasing funding and addressing inequities, but she has failed to articulate clear plans and positions.

For example, when asked during the primary campaign last fall to rate Supt. Alberto Carvalho’s job performance, she said she was in no position to evaluate him because he’s her boss. And during an interview in July she said there were schools in District 5 that still don’t have air conditioning, but refused to name them on the grounds that it was knowledge she obtained as a district employee.

We think Griego is a better choice because of her clear and constructive agenda, her valuable ground-level perspective and her demonstrated commitment to fighting district bureaucracy to fix unaddressed problems. Voters in District 5 should give her the chance to advocate for their students as tenaciously as she has advocated for her own.