The seven members of the L.A. Unified’s board oversee the nation’s second-largest school district, with more than 538,000 students enrolled. The district is also the county’s second-largest employer with more than 74,000 educators, administrators, and support staff on its payroll.

Three seats are up for election Nov. 5, including Board District 1.

Unlike in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., where the mayor appoints education system leaders, Los Angeles schools are run by the school board, which voters elect directly. That means the board members have a lot of power.

What do LAUSD board members do?

• Hire and fire the superintendent — their single most important responsibility
• Pass the budget ($18.4 billion) and decide how it will be distributed.
• Work with parents and resolve disputes in their district over facilities, budgets, etc.
• Vote on every charter school that hopes to open in L.A.

What’s on the agenda for next term?

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges in the district, including declining enrollment, disparities in student learning, truancy, inadequate mental health support, and lackluster standardized test scores.

Go deeper: Read more about what board members do, and the challenges facing the school board

About the Board District 1 race

District 1 includes L.A.’s Mid-City, Crenshaw, Arlington Heights, and Westmont neighborhoods. Current board member George McKenna is retiring after a more than 50-year career as a teacher and administrator in LAUSD, Inglewood, Compton, and Pasadena schools.

The candidates:

• Kahllid Al-Alim, community organizer/parent
• Sherlett Hendy Newbill, education policy advisor

Quick take:

• Hendy Newbill’s experience more closely matches current District 1 board member (and mentor) George McKenna, with decades of experience as a high school leader and strong endorsements from sitting board members and other political leaders. Al-Alim’s education credentials are based on his experience as a parent and grassroots organizer, helping push the district to increase funding for Black students and alternatives to policing.
• Al-Alim’s campaign lost a groundswell of support and the endorsement of the powerful teachers union after social media posts endorsing antisemitic ideas resurfaced during the primary. Al-Alim has since offered an apology.

(

Kahllid Al-Alim

)

Kahllid Al-Alim

Community organizer/parent

Al-Alim’s children attended Crenshaw and Dorsey High School and he has been part of several parent-led education initiatives in the district. Al-Alim was born and raised in South L.A., and works as a civil servant in the city’s sanitation department. The teachers union revoked its support of Al-Alim in February after screenshots of his past social media surfaced in which he said a book that promotes debunked, antisemitic ideas about the relationships between Black and Jewish communities should be mandatory reading for students. Al-Alim apologized and said he would seek trainings about countering antisemitism.

Ahead of the primary, Al-Alim said his top three priorities were:

• Expanding student wellness and support.
• Targeted supports for unhoused youth, immigrant students and communities, LGBTQ+ students and staff.
• Expanded worker and community rights.

LAist interviewed Al-Alim in August. Here’s what he said:

• Academic success will follow when support is given to groups most in need. “What's good for the Black community is good for all communities. And we need to start honing in on that narrative. What's good for gifted and talented students is good for special needs students, and we need to make sure that our reintegrated students and our pregnant teen students are also embraced and shown that they are loved, appreciated, and they have the opportunity, and the access to that opportunity to succeed.”
• The district can make the budget easier to understand. “There's too many closed door sessions. We don't have to speak accountant language, but we should put [the budget] in terms of what it looks like at their school site level. Our IT definitely needs to be improved in terms of school websites and being able to get information out just by looking at the school website. And then of course, on the district website, it's kind of hard to navigate still, and if you speak another language or, you know, from another culture, it can be intimidating.”
• School safety has to run through community collaboration, not school police. “If we have leadership at the administrative level, if we have our parents engaged at the school site council or leadership committee level, if we have our student clubs activated and doing those things and having a voice and participating in decision-making … just those little three items right there would go a long way."
• Coverage of his past social media posts left room for confusion. “I have been working diligently for the last 20 years trying to bridge gaps between all the communities in the City of Los Angeles. It's disappointing for me to have seen that it was so easy to dismiss that for some social media posts. I have already given an apology to the Jewish community. I never meant to offend the Jewish community.” Al-Alim promised a website soon where he’d delve further into his comments.

We also asked Al-Alim whether he would have voted with the board majority to:

• Restrict where some charter schools can be located? Yes. “If your child is going to a school and is not receiving the resources and the supports necessary, and then on that very same campus, you see a similar student getting those same types of supports, it causes unnecessary division, and a lot of misunderstanding. It's putting a strain on the budget. It's putting strain on the community.”
• Cut funding to school police? Yes. “When a parent walks into a school, they want to know that that school is going to take care of their baby. Just that small bit of courtesy and customer service [from a principal] goes a long way. You don't get that from school police. They're there to do just one job and that's either engage or engage and incarcerate.”

More voter resources:

• Teachers Union Officially Revokes Endorsement Of LAUSD Candidate
• As of publication, Al-Alim’s website is not available.

(

Jewett L. Walker Jr.

)

Sherlett Hendy Newbill

Education policy advisor

Hendy Newbill has worked in LAUSD since 1998 and is currently an education policy advisor for retiring Board District 1 representative George McKenna. She is an athletic director at Susan Miller Dorsey High School, her alma mater. Hendy Newbill was also an administrator at the school, coached girls’ basketball, and taught physical education and psychology.

Ahead of the primary, Hendy Newbill said her top three priorities are:

• Promoting a comprehensive safety plan for all schools.
• Establishing full-service community schools with quality after-school programs with wrap-around health, mental health, social and family services, and supports.
• Ensure the most vulnerable and marginalized groups are serviced, including students within the Black Student Achievement Plan.

LAist interviewed Hendy Newbill in July. Here’s what she said:

• Tutoring is working. “There are ‘push in’ sessions where students are at school and being brought into a space either near their class or within the same classroom. So it may be divided for a moment, but the students are getting that extra engagement within the same time that the other students are still learning who may already not need remediation. I think that's a key thing that you want to continue to do, is to maximize the time that the students are at the school site.”  
• Budget cuts have to start at the top. “Those that are providing services that are far, far, far away from students and school sites need to be evaluated, to say, ‘is this really making the impact that it needs to make?’ Those that are in the classroom, on the ground, making the most impact, those aren't the areas that we need to cut from.”
• Communities around schools should determine how to keep schools safe. “I don't think it should be a one-size-fits-all. If a [school] wants a resource officer to be near their campus, to be available to their campus for whatever crisis may happen, I think that is the way in which we should go.”
• And a community collectively can create better outcomes for students. Hendy Newbill says people from the outside looking in may judge a South L.A. school like Dorsey, but “The school itself has been a product of family, close-knit people who take care of children as their own. I say that proudly … my family, my sisters, my brothers, my cousins, we have all gone through Dorsey. And I think what makes us so unique is that many of us as alums have come back and continue to serve within the school, which really ties us together and makes us a team.”

We also asked Hendy Newbill whether she would have voted with the board majority to:

• Restrict where some charter schools can be located? Yes. “If you're already battling attendance issues, you're battling high turnovers, and then to add a co-location to it? Now you're having to share public spaces like libraries, cafeterias, nurses. It becomes complicated, and again that competition comes in, and then it pits students against each other … and that's not the model for which charters were created.”
• Cut funding to school police? No. “More questions should have been asked, you know, are we going to be short staffed because of this cut? We want to make sure that our campuses have the availability for officers to come out. We don't have that now because of that cut. The stability of the occupation is no longer there.”

More voter resources:

• Website: SherlettHendyNewbill.com
• Endorsements: See full list here

Follow the money

Since the primary, Al-Alim’s campaign has refunded more than $2,000 in contributions, and it has raised zero dollars for the most recent filing period that ran July 1 to Sept. 21. His campaign has spent just $18 in that same period.

Senior editor Ross Brenneman contributed to this story.

Before you read more, we wanted to take a moment to tell you about our mission here at LAist, and why we're so dedicated to helping you get ready to vote.

In the lead-up to this important election, our hard-working reporters and editors spent hundreds and hundreds of hours researching and writing these detailed guides and fact-based resources. We invested that time because we're here to help you vote confidently and make your community a better place.

But we cannot do this essential work without your help. We rely on donations from readers like you to stay independent, which keeps our nonprofit newsroom strong and accountable to you.

At a time when the need for local journalism has never been greater, many newsrooms are facing cutbacks, including LAist. Member support — your support — is what will sustain a free press in Southern California.

LAist’s mission is to be here for you, so please be here for us now with a donation to power our trusted local reporting. Step up right now and make the choice to give. Because that’s exactly what it is — a choice. It's choice with consequences. If readers do not choose to step up and donate, the future of fact-based news in Southern California will not be as strong.

No matter what happens in the world, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust.

Thank you for your generous support.

Sincerely,

• 

  Megan Garvey

  Executive Editor

  (she/her)

Chip in now to fund your local journalism

Continue

Monthly Donation One-Time Donation

$5/mo

$10/mo

$15/mo

$20/mo

$60

$120

$180

$240

Continue

(

LAist

)

This voter guide originally published Sept. 4.