Speak UP Endorses Change Candidates Marilyn Koziatek and Tanya Ortiz Franklin
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Speak UP endorses Marilyn Koziatek (left) and Tanya Ortiz Franklin for LAUSD School Board in Districts 3 and 7.
The Los Angeles Unified school board elections in Districts 3 and 7 present a clear choice between change and the status quo. The current four-member board majority, captive to adult employee special interest groups, enacted distance learning plans without any parent input that resulted in massive and discriminatory inequities against our most vulnerable Black and Latino students, low-income kids, English Learners and kids with disabilities.
The current board majority allowed Los Angeles Unified to violate federal law and stop serving the majority of kids with disabilities after campuses closed in the spring. It also made live teaching optional, which led to schools falling entirely out of touch with thousands of high-needs kids during the pandemic, creating potentially irreparable learning loss.
Six months later, LAUSD and the board are simply ignoring the Los Angeles County Board of Public Health’s recent order allowing schools to safely reopen for small cohorts of kids with disabilities and English Learners, because United Teachers Los Angeles opposes it. UTLA is even actively discouraging its members from volunteering to help high-needs kids 1:1 after school.
Despite persistent calls from parents, the current board also failed to hold a single public meeting to discuss the terms of distance learning this fall until a week before school started and after an agreement with UTLA was already reached. Instead, the board spent hours and hours on divisive politicking and devising new rules intended to scapegoat and harm the minority of students who attend public nonprofit charter schools in order to distract the public from its failures to properly serve the 80% of kids attending district schools.
Parents currently hold no power within LAUSD, and the only way to change this dynamic and get students the education they deserve is to vote in a kids-first board majority that is not beholden to and controlled by adult employee special interest groups. We have a chance to tip the balance of power this fall and create change by electing qualified candidates who are independent and able to have arms-length negotiations with the employee groups they are charged with overseeing.
We need candidates who are responsive to parent concerns and who support giving parents a seat at the table in the decision-making process. Those two candidates are parent and school leader Marilyn Koziatek in District 3 in the West San Fernando Valley, and educator and attorney Tanya Ortiz Franklin in District 7, which runs from South L.A. to San Pedro. Speak UP enthusiastically endorses Koziatek and Ortiz Franklin in the Nov. 3 election.
District 3
Marilyn Koziatek would be the only mom of LAUSD kids on the board if elected.
Even though the success of distance learning relies heavily on parents being able to oversee their kids’ education at home, the LAUSD school board currently has no parents of school-aged children serving on the board. If elected, Marilyn Koziatek would change that. She would be the only parent of LAUSD children serving on the board and would give parents a literal seat at the table.
But Koziatek is not only a mom of two kids who attend their neighborhood LAUSD school, one who understands the challenges working parents are facing during distance learning. She’s also the only candidate in the race who currently works at a school site during this pandemic.
Koziatek serves on the leadership team of one of the most successful public schools in L.A., Granada Hills Charter High School, which pays its UTLA teachers 13% more than district teachers and still runs a surplus. It’s also a school that has years of experience with 1:1 technology and online learning, which is crucial at this unique moment. She also leads parent engagement efforts at the school and has used technology to help amplify parent voices there, which could serve as a model for other schools within the district.
Koziatek shows a clear understanding of the challenges the district faces to serve high-needs kids and is committed to relying on science when it comes to decisions about gradually reopening schools. Her opponent, the incumbent Board Member Scott Schmerelson, believes in an all-or-nothing approach that will keep high-needs kids underserved at home until it’s “100 percent safe” for all kids to return at once, a decision that could lead to a logistical and operational nightmare for LAUSD.
As an LAUSD parent who works at an independent charter school, Koziatek is also uniquely qualified to represent the interests of all public school parents and kids, regardless of school model. Her election would present an opportunity to move beyond the divisions deliberately stoked between district and charter parents – divisions intended to keep parents weak and powerless as they fight one another instead of fighting together for the rights of all kids.
Schmerelson, on the other hand, has fueled the hostility. He attended an anti-charter protest featuring chants of “Stop the Invasion” -- distinctly Trump-like language to scapegoat and label charter elementary school children as invaders. He voted against the expansion of Granada Hills Charter to elementary and middle school, despite huge demand from the community. And he ignored the wishes of his constituents when he led efforts to block El Camino Real Charter High from developing an empty LAUSD campus that had become a blight on the community. The lot remains an empty eyesore to this day.
Schmerelson was no help, either, when LAUSD teachers and parents in his district protested the removal of redwood trees from campuses because of renovations devised by LAUSD’s downtown bureaucracy without proper input from the local community. Koziatek, on the other hand, supports greater local control in decision-making.
Perhaps most troubling, Schmerelson is an avid defender of the status quo at a time when parents are crying out for help and change. Even though parents at Millikan Middle School gathered thousands of signatures protesting LAUSD’s decision to make live teaching optional in the spring, Schmerelson said at the candidate forum that Speak UP co-hosted last week with the League of Women Voters that “I don’t think LAUSD missed a beat when this pandemic came about.”
In fact, Schmerelson accepts no responsibility for any issues the district faces, including huge racial and socioeconomic achievement and opportunity gaps that have left a large percentage of LAUSD students ineligible to even apply to a four-year state college. Instead, he blames all shortfalls on “poverty” without acknowledging that improving the quality of education LAUSD offers is one of the best ways to give students a chance to escape poverty.
Even more unsettling, Schmerelson seemed entirely unaware when questioned twice at the candidate forum last week that the L.A. County Public Health Department had given schools the green light to reopen for small cohorts of kids with special needs and English Learners. “As far as special ed kids, we are having IEPs online, we're having related services,” he said. “This is the best that we can do for our special ed kids.”
That wasn’t the first time Schmerelson appeared woefully unprepared and misinformed. After serving on the board for three years, where he was charged with overseeing the district’s multi-billion budget, Schmerelson told the Los Angeles Daily News that he was receiving “tutoring” to understand it.
Schmerelson also received multiple warnings and a subsequent fine from the Fair Political Practices Commission for repeatedly failing to properly disclose his personal financial investments in companies such as the tobacco giant that owns the vaping company JUUL, which LAUSD is suing for harming kids. His response was to claim ignorance of the stocks in his portfolio, which also included investments in Big Oil and McDonald’s.
Likewise, during a board discussion of a resolution from Board Member Kelly Gonez (BD6) to study magnet school enrollment patterns to help decrease school segregation, Schmerelson opposed the measure and attempted to delay the vote without being able to explain his opposition to the racial justice measure.
Schmerelson, a lifelong Republican who switched political parties shortly before launching his reelection campaign, is also painfully out of step when it comes to issues of gender equality. At a board meeting discussion about gender discrimination in dress code enforcement last year, Schmerelson made the stunning statement that, “I think that males are discriminated just as much as females.”
When asked to explain that comment at last week’s forum, he doubled down on his insistence that such gender discrimination is nonexistent in schools. “I’ve been at school and seen what happens,” he says. “That just didn’t happen.”
Women are tired of having their experiences dismissed. And parents are tired of being relegated to the sidelines while those in power like Schmerelson make poor decisions behind closed doors that dramatically affect our lives and kids’ education and futures. It’s time for a change in Board District 3. It’s time for a qualified LAUSD parent to have a seat at the table. Vote for Marilyn Koziatek Nov. 3.
District 7
Tanya Ortiz Franklin is the only candidate with experience working in education and the only candidate who has reached out to listen to parents and give them a voice in the decision-making process.
Tanya Ortiz Franklin is an energetic educator and attorney who is laser-focused on equity and racial justice in education. She’s running for the open seat in one of the most diverse districts in Los Angeles -- a district in which the neediest Black kids in the northern part of the district have often felt ignored.
That would change if Ortiz Franklin were elected. Her work with the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools has been dedicated to improving the lives of the most disenfranchised kids in the district, those who have been left behind during the pandemic.
Ortiz Franklin is, quite frankly, the only candidate in the District 7 race with the necessary qualifications for the job. She has worked as an LAUSD teacher in District 7, and she’s now a teacher educator specializing in restorative justice at the Partnership’s 19 high-needs LAUSD schools. She also worked as a special education attorney and believes the district can do a much better job serving kids with disabilities during the pandemic.
Her opponent, Patricia Castellanos, a political insider who serves as a workforce deputy at the county, has never worked professionally in public education or held a job serving kids at a school site or anywhere else. Her lack of education experience may explain her inaccessibility over the course of this race. Castellanos did not attend any of the three candidate forums held during the primary, and she skipped the student-led ACLU forum and the parent-led Speak UP/NALEO forum earlier this month.
Castellanos also failed to respond to Speak UP’s candidate questionnaire and interview request. And the RSVP link to recent events advertised to her email list immediately directed people to a donation page, effectively excluding the 80% of LAUSD parents who live at or below the poverty line.
After facing criticism for her inaccessibility, Castellanos finally attended her first candidate forum Saturday night. There she touted her status as the parent of a second grader and her role in forming Reclaim Our Schools, a rabidly anti-charter, labor-backed group known for divisive tactics such as protesting at peoples’ homes. The 20% of L.A. public school students attending charter schools should be alarmed by the Castellanos candidacy and under no illusions that she would fairly represent them.
Castellanos’ candidacy almost seems designed to give parents the facade of representation on the school board, when it would, in fact, perpetuate the status quo. It’s not enough to be a parent when there’s no indication she will include parent voices in her decision-making if elected. Castellanos has made no attempt to reach out and listen to longtime parent leaders in District 7.
Ortiz Franklin, meanwhile, has been extremely accessible and has a concrete plan to create advisory boards of parents and students to give them a voice. As an LAUSD graduate and former LAUSD teacher, she has no direct experience with charter schools, but she supports parent choice and wants LAUSD to learn why families sometimes opt out of district-run schools.
We’re excited by the fact that Ortiz Franklin is a listener and learner who leads with humility and has the demeanor to bridge the perspectives of educators and parents. She understands that working together and empowering all stakeholders will serve the best interests of all kids.
Most of all, she has dedicated her career to ensuring kids have a brighter future and has a proven track record of lifting the achievement of our highest-needs students. Vote for Tanya Ortiz Franklin on Nov. 3.
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