Teachers union-backed candidate leads in school board race

Precinct worker Sonia Draper catches up on some reading between voters in her garage in Chatsworth. Draper said the day was one of the slowest she has seen since being a pricinct worker. Voters cast ballots in a school board election. (Photo by David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News)

ELECTION RESULTS

Los Angeles Community College District
Board of Trustees No. 5

Scott Svonkin; 66,136 votes (county + city)
Lydia A. Gutierrez; 60,344 votes (county + city)

Los Angeles Unified School District
District 5

Bennett Kayser; 8,854 votes (city only)
Luis Sanchez; 8,582 votes (city only)

County:
lacounty/election

City:
cityclerk.lacity.org/election

LOS ANGELES - Teachers union-supported Bennett Kayser was 272 votes ahead of Luis Sanchez today in the runoff election for the District 5 seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, with all 158 precincts counted.

Kayser received 8,854 votes, 50.78 percent, while Sanchez received 8,582, 49.22 percent, according to figures released today by the Los Angeles

City Clerk's office.

Kayser is a former seventh-grade science and health teacher at King and Irving middle schools who was backed by United Teachers Los Angeles, the union

representing the LAUSD's teachers.

Sanchez, the executive director of a nonprofit group focused on improving education, was supported by The Coalition for School Reform, Mayor

Antonio Villaraigosa, and Citizens for Better Schools, funded primarily by Service Employees International Union Local 99.

The city Ethics Commission reported last week that independent campaign groups had raised an unprecedented $1.2 million on mailers, phone calls and newspaper advertisements supporting or opposing the candidates.

San Gabriel Unified School District Board of Education member Scott Svonkin defeated Long Beach schoolteacher Lydia Gutierrez in their race for a seat on the Los Angeles

Community College District Board of Trustees.

Svonkin had 52.1 percent of the vote to 47.9 percent for Gutierrez with 1,292 of 1,390 precincts, 92.95 percent, counted, according to figures released by the Los Angeles City Clerk's Office.

The board drew criticism earlier this year over reports of financial mismanagement of its $5.7 billion construction program.

Gutierrez called Svonkin a district insider with no interest in changing the operation of the board, or its construction program.

"We need to really clean this up before we move forward," Gutierrez told the Los Angeles Times.

Svonkin, who is also an adviser to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, insisted that he was focused on changing the handling of district construction funds.

"Everybody who hasn't been fired for failing to protect the public interest should be," he told The Times.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18085011?source=rss

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