LAUSD’s 5th: a Tilt to Tokofsky

Both candidates are outstanding in the campaign for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 5th District seat. The only important difference between the two finalists to replace the retiring Leticia Quezada is the experience each would bring to the school board if elected.

David Tokofsky is an award-winning teacher at Marshall High School whose students have accumulated an impressive record of achievement. He knows the daily challenges facing classroom teachers as well as the school district bureaucracy and its sometimes Byzantine politics. With the endorsement of the teachers’ union, he would come to the board as an insider, pushing to reform the schools from within.

Lucia Rivera is a community activist in Eagle Rock who has focused much of her energy on getting parents involved in their children’s schools. She is well known and respected throughout the 70% Latino district and was the top vote-getter in the April primary, winning 44% of the vote. Tokofsky and six others divided the balance of the vote. Rivera would come to the school district as an outsider, demanding more community involvement in school reform.

Because the 5th District has such a heavy Latino population, and has been represented by a Latino since 1983, some have defined this race as a test of Latino political clout. But, to their credit, neither Tokofsky nor Rivera has tried to play up ethnic issues in this campaign. Instead both focus on how to improve education for all the city’s youngsters, both support the LEARN reform campaign and both oppose efforts to break up the school district as premature.

So the choice comes down to which approach to school reform the average voter thinks is more likely to work: from the inside by a concerned educator or from the outside by a concerned parent.

In a very close call, The Times endorses Tokofsky. With the city school district facing so many immediate challenges, not least the threat of a breakup, we suspect that a knowledgeable insider like Tokofsky is better equipped to make an immediate, positive impact than a well-intentioned outsider like Rivera.

But our schools need both good teachers like Tokofsky and activist parents like Rivera. Whoever wins on Tuesday should reach out to their opponent for good advice on how to make local schools better.