The New Monica Factor

New Los Angeles Board of Education President, Monica Garcia.

This afternoon, Monica Garcia was elected the president of the newly reconstituted Los Angeles Unified School Board. Marlene Canter made the handoff. It was a seven-zero vote, no opposition.

So, do we care? Does it matter?

(Can we tear our attention away from the mayor’s love life long enough to even think about these questions?)

THE BAD NEWS: Well, it’s LAUSD, babe. And it is hard to believe that ANYTHING of substance can happen if it’s coming from the bowels of the bureaucratic supertanker that is the Los Angeles Unified School District. Plus Monica is both very political and not known in the past for being terribly assertive, at least in the days when she worked for former-school-board-prez, Jose Huizar.

THE SEMI-GOOD NEWS (Okay, I’m putting on my Pollyanna persona here.) Her Chief of Staff, Luis Rivera, is a former activist and community organizer (He ran a nonprofit called Inner City Struggle, which has a pretty good track record for successfully mentoring kids in Boyle Heights.) When Rivera and I talked tonight, he swore his boss will embrace a stand-back-and-get-out-of-the-way attitude toward reform.

For instance, when I asked him how Monica would deal with the near-legendary intractability of UTLA, the local teachers union, he said: “Either they get in line or they get out organized. The rank and file is saying they want a new contract, and they want change. And community organizers are applying pressure. There’s going to be change.”

Granted, that’s at least a little bolder than the usual pablum coming out of the LAUSD’s Beaudry Street headquarters. But, like chronically abused spouses, we no longer are willing to believe in anybody’s fine words and offers of bouquets of roses. We need to see change, not just hear about it. As we say in the writing business: Show don’t tell.

Alright, look. Monica. You want to know would signal to us that you’re really serious about district reform? Your chief of staff, Luis, (a really nice fellow, that Luis) said you’re a big supporter of Green Dot and not exactly averse to the charter school takeover of Locke High School. Cool. Now how about you prove it? Through your “reform-minded” leadership, persuade the LAUSD board to overturn the local district’s fascist trampling of the Green Dot Charter conversion plan, and approve their original petition. That’s just the sort of thing that might make us believe we should give this failing, dysfunctional, control-freak district leadership one more chance.

Surprise us. We dare you. We double dare you.

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[NOTE: WLA has written previously about the Green Dot/Locke charter conversion issue here and here.]