For all its problems, the Los Angeles Unified School District is moving in the right direction on the most important front: Scores on California’s mandated standardized tests improved in math and English. Most students aren’t up to grade level and the district still hasn’t rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, but these are the most positive results in years.
The district is also working steadily to expand on its community schools initiative, in which campuses serve as a center to support families and neighborhoods with services such as healthcare and recreational activities. District officials are right when they say that healthier, more cohesive neighborhoods will lead to mentally and physically healthier students.
But there’s reason to be concerned that the district may not be headed in the right direction in some areas. It has not developed a comprehensive plan for coping with declining enrollment even though by 2032 it is projected to have less than half the number of students it had in 2002. The district stumbled on the rollout of Proposition 28 and still needs to provide full answers on how it has used its share of arts funding. And it remains to be seen whether moving away from the successful Primary Promise reading and math program was a good idea.
That’s why incumbent Scott Schmerelson, despite facing a strong challenger, is the better candidate right now to keep the board stable because of his commitment to staying the course on improvements, while speaking up on the more questionable actions. Voters should elect him to the District 3 seat, which includes most of the western part of the San Fernando Valley.
Schmerelson’s opponent is Dan Chang, a math teacher at Madison Middle School who aligns more with the charter school movement though Madison is not a charter school. Schmerelson has, ever since he joined the board in 2015, been the favored candidate of United Teachers Los Angeles.
For all that, they agree on many issues. Both say the school district has not done enough to show that it has used Proposition 28 funding according to the rules; Schmerelson voted against certifying to the state that the money had been used appropriately and has called for an audit.
Both agree that the $9-billion bond measure for school renovation and modernization was rushed to the ballot without enough notice or public input, though Schemerelson supports the bond and Chang opposes it. Both want to restore school district police to at least some schools.
Chang has been off base in blaming Schmerelson for attendance figures at his school that were made to look rosier than reality. He said that when he marked his eighth-graders students as absent on the last day of school, the office asked him to switch and mark them as present. After he refused, he said, the record showed them as present anyway and he complained, and the school had to change its attendance report for the day.
The school isn’t even in District 3 — but at this point the board should ask its Office of the Inspector General to look into how widespread this practice might have been.
We appreciated Chang’s willingness to ask tough questions. He was the one who complained about the attendance issue at his school and raised reasonable arguments against the bond measure. He’d make an excellent candidate in future elections to bring a fresh voice to the school board.
But Schmerelson, to his credit, has not been a rubber-stamp board member, and his continued presence on the board would bring stability at a time when the district needs to be rock-steady in its pursuit of better learning in the classroom.
