Latino Theme Muted in Race for District 5 Schools Seat

In the 1992 redistricting of the Los Angeles Board of Education, a necklace of neighborhoods was strung together along the city’s northern edge with the primary goal of electing a second Latino to the district’s seven-member governing board.

So far, it hasn’t worked out that way.

Four years ago, Spanish-speaking, politically astute, Jewish high school teacher David Tokofsky scored a 76-vote victory in the new District 5 over the candidate backed by the city’s top Latino power brokers.

Now, in an election dominated by anti-incumbent sentiments, Tokofsky faces a test of survivability in a district whose population is nearly 76% Latino.

But, with an improbable series of maneuvers--gaining key Latino endorsements and a spot on Mayor Richard Riordan’s slate--Tokofsky has largely neutralized both the issues of race and incumbency.

In contrast to four years ago, the appeal to ethnicity has been subdued in this campaign.

Challenger Yolie Flores Aguilar, a 4-foot, 7-inch bundle of energy who has dedicated her career to children’s social welfare, is treading lightly on the Latino agenda.

Aguilar doesn’t make an issue of bilingual education, for instance. Only when pressed does she express her deep concerns that Proposition 227 will deprive Latino students.

“Any child can learn more than one language,” she said. “You don’t need to take away one language to learn another language.”

But the image she cultivates is that of a business-minded consensus builder, leaving the modifier “Latino” to be understood.

The blurring of ethnic alignments is only one of the ironies in the race.

In some ways, Aguilar seems closer to the mayor’s ideal candidate than Tokofsky. Riordan, in fact, praised Aguilar effusively last month when she received an “Outstanding Service to Children” award from the Alliance for Children’s Rights.

Aguilar’s campaign message has picked up many of the themes espoused by Riordan and by a committee of prominent business leaders who have urged a radical reform of the board.

Echoing Riordan’s demand for the district to get rid of weak principals, she has said she would fire school district employees who were responsible for starting construction on the Belmont Learning Complex without adequate environmental assessment.

And, sounding a lot like the 26-member Committee on Effective School Governance, she said she would empower Supt. Ruben Zacarias to run the district, rather than hound staff with questions on everything from contracts to cafeteria food.

She labels Tokofsky’s relentless questioning of district bureaucrats as the sort of micromanaging the committee cited as one of the board’s most harmful practices.

“We all know that as a whole the board has become completely ineffective and dysfunctional,” Aguilar said. “It spends most of its time in micromanaging and in sabotaging the recommendations of the superintendent. . . . Mr. Tokofsky can’t escape his role in that dysfunction.”

A review of district records shows that Tokofsky sent about 300 memos and demands for information to Zacarias over the last 14 months, by far the most of any board member.

Tokofsky counters that his questioning is necessary to root out poor staff work. He criticizes the district auditing practices as ineffective. He holds the bureaucracy responsible for the failure to develop internal controls capable of tracking textbooks.

“I think the bureaucracy stands tall as the fundamental determinant,” he said.

Tokofsky often is on the losing end of votes, and consequently has fallen into an “I told you so” mode. He opposed the Belmont Learning Complex. He spent a year futilely pushing a motion to create an office of inspector general to fight waste and fraud. It was he, he often says, who began asking questions about the textbook shortage, long before a Los Angeles Times article forced Zacarias to acknowledge that such a problem existed.

When Riordan first announced his intention to support candidates for the school board, he targeted all four incumbents who faced reelection, including Tokofsky.

Tokofsky turned the threat to his favor with a combination of luck, savvy and a lot of work. A Latino businessman picked by the mayor dropped out of the running early on, leaving Tokofsky an opening that he exploited by showing up wherever the mayor went, including a party to which he was not invited. The mayor finally gave in and endorsed Tokofsky.

After devoting much energy to the business side of the district, Tokofsky now wants to focus a second term on revamping the instructional program.

He wants the district to build a computer system that would track student progress with the precision of baseball statistics.

On the stump, the two candidates make a picture of contrasts.

Round and rumpled, Tokofsky, 39, is habitually hurried and late, finding it hard to walk out of an interesting conversation and having to divide his time between the campaign and the care of his 8-month-old daughter. He has the air of an academician and a penchant for the clever rejoinder. That habit recently led to an angry letter from a parent after Tokofsky responded to a middle school student’s complaint about the weight of his bulging backpack. The student said the pack was a third of his weight; Tokofsky informed him that correct answer was actually closer to half.

Aguilar is impeccable in fashion, refined in manner and far more inclined to nurture than to challenge. Those who know her say she is passionate about children. Aguilar said she put off adopting a child of her own to take on her campaign for school board, which she sees as the culmination of a career spent dealing with the issues of family and children.

Aguilar, 36, graduated from Huntington Park High School. After earning a master’s degree in social work from UCLA, she was hired by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to develop a family care program.

As a 1993 fellow with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, she interned at three national children’s organizations, including the Childrens Defense Fund.

In 1997, she returned to the Casey Foundation as a consultant on family issues affecting the nation’s Latino population.

Returning to Los Angeles, Aguilar was appointed to the Los Angeles County Office of Education board, a position which, she said, gave her a bird’s-eye view of the troubles within L.A. Unified.

“I was especially discouraged by the lack of leadership I saw on the board,” she said. “We need better people there. We need people of courage who will really stand up to the kind of reforms that are needed.”

Tokofsky arrived at school board politics through what he has termed a “genetic commitment” to public education evidenced by a mother, a brother and a grandmother who teach.

After graduating from Pacific Palisades High School and earning a bachelor’s degree in history and Spanish from UC Berkeley, he became an emergency-credentialed social studies teacher at Marshall High School in Los Feliz. There, he made himself a legend by coaching a team of students to the district’s first national title in the Academic Decathlon.

Dissatisfaction with the district’s instructional programs propelled him into the seemingly impossible quest to win election in the new, predominantly Latino school board district.

In the primary, Tokofsky captured only 27% of the vote compared with 44% for the Latino favorite, Lucia Rivera. However, he then capitalized on a quirk in voter turnout: Fewer Latinos voted in the June runoff.

This time, the dynamics are less in his favor.

With two City Council races overlapping the District 5 turf, a raft of candidates are stirring up voter interest.

“They’re almost all Latino candidates trying to turn out the Latino vote,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “Tokofsky’s opponent may benefit from that.”

Moreover, with only two candidates on the ballot, Tokofsky cannot count on a second chance in a runoff.

As the election approaches, he has managed to retain front-runner status by piecing together strategic endorsements.

He exploited shifting alliances to court Latino politicians such as union leader Gilbert Cedillo who recently won a state Assembly seat. He defeated school board President Victoria Castro, who is supporting Tokofsky’s opponent.

Also backing him are Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) and state Senate majority leader Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), two powerful Latinos who have risen on the state scene by building coalitions across ethnic lines.

Support from such heavy-hitting Latinos cut off sources of political contributions that could have helped Aguilar. As the campaign wears on, Tokofsky has raised almost $200,000, nearly twice as much as Aguilar.

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino contributed to this report.

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District 5

David Tokofsky

Total contributions through March 27: $199,808

Top two contributors: United Teachers Los Angeles, $18,000, L.A. City and County Employees Union; L.A. School Police Assn., $5,000.

Endorsements include: Reps. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk), Matthew Martinez (D-Monterey Park), Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills), Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles); State Sens. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles); Assembly members Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), Thomas Calderon (D-Montebello), Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles); County Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Zev Yarslavsky; Los Angeles City Council members Michael Feuer, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Laura Chick, Cindy Miscikowski; California Teachers Assn.; United Teachers Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Democratic Club.

*

Yolie Flores Aguilar

Total contributions through March 27: $104,228.79

Top two contributors:Joseph Giovannini, $3,750 (non-monetary), Kids on the Move, $2,500 (non-monetary).

Endorsements include: Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles); Esteban Torres, retired U.S. representative; Supervisor Gloria Molina; State Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente); Assemblymen Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) and Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angeles); Victoria Castro, president, Los Angeles Board of Education; San Fernando, Northeast and Eastside Democratic clubs; Rudell Freer, president, Los Angeles County Board of Education, and Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, vice president; National Women’s Political Caucus, L.A. Metro Chapter; Vivian Weinstein, president, Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families, Betty Rothstein, president, Los Angeles County Probation Dept.