Teachable Moment on Racism for Charter-School Promoters

Jackie Goldberg greets people before the Los Angeles school board meeting. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Ihave attended many L.A. school board meetings over the past twenty years. I have seen debates grow heated over budgets, teachers’ and classified employees’ salaries, graduation rates, and even iPads.

But I’ve never seen such casual displays of racism in testimony before the board as I saw this week, on August 21, from the pro-charter schools advocacy group SpeakUp. The group, which operates in close association with school board vice president Nick Melvoin, recruited a series of Latino parents to read scripted remarks into the record. Several speakers insulted a former school board president, Jackie Goldberg, often in racial terms, in order to block her appointment to fill an empty seat on the board.

I was one of nearly 20 speakers who attended the meeting to support a board member’s motion to name Jackie as an interim representative to the seat. My goal was to ensure that District 5, where I live and sent my children to school, has an equal voice on the school board until we have an election to replace Ref Rodriguez.

Rodriguez is the former charter school treasurer of PUC schools who resigned his seat in July after pleading guilty to fraud in his 2015 campaign. Rodriguez rallied Latino parents over many years to switch to his PUC chain. But the chain has been weakened by Rodriguez’ money…