School Board Hopefuls’ Forum Erupts in Shouts

A debate among candidates seeking the Los Angeles school board’s 1st District seat erupted into shouted exchanges Friday night among the panelists and audience over what it would take to improve student achievement.

Most of the shouts and grumbling came at the end of the 90-minute forum sponsored by the Committee for Effective School Governance, a group of 26 prominent civic and business leaders who believe that the school board is ultimately responsible for substandard education of children in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“We don’t need another committee!” one man screamed above the din. “What are you doing to educate the kids?”

“How will you get teachers out when they’re protected by the union?” a woman said.

“They don’t want to answer the questions!” yelled another.

And before an audience of about 100 people at the Foshay Learning Center in South-Central Los Angeles, incumbent Barbara Boudreaux and several supporters repeatedly referred to Mayor Richard Riordan’s backing of candidate Genethia Hayes Sas an example of “plantation politics.”

Boudreaux and Hayes are among four candidates vying for the seat in the district running from South-Central to the middle-class neighborhoods of Baldwin Hills and the Crenshaw area. The others are employment recruiter Austin Dragon and teacher Moses Calhoun.

In an interview later, Hayes, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Los Angeles branch, said Tuesday’s election comes as the city’s school system is in crisis. She called for sweeping education reforms in the 1st District, where student test scores rank lowest in the city.

“What you saw tonight is a good example of the problem: people’s inability to see or listen critically to other people’s thoughts and ideas,” she said. “Chaos leads to additional chaos.”

During the yelling, at least a dozen people held up pictures of Riordan’s face and waved $20 bills, yelling, “Where’s the money? Where’s the money?” referring to Riordan’s backing of three challengers and one incumbent for the school board. So far, Riordan has helped raise more than $2 million on their behalf.

But Dragon--far outspent in the campaign by both Boudreaux and Hayes, who have raised nearly $1 million between them--found a silver lining in Friday night’s debate.

“This forum is great. Love it,” he said. “I didn’t get in this race to lose, but I knew I’d be outgunned money-wise. Getting my message out has been very grass-roots.”

Earlier in the day, Boudreaux held a news conference at her campaign headquarters in the Crenshaw area that became a 90-minute testimonial and racial pride rally.

Danny Bakewell of the Brotherhood Crusade suggested that the election was “one of the most important political races that black people will have an opportunity to participate in.”

With Boudreaux at his side, he said, “We shed our shackles and proclaimed political freedom from plantation politics decades ago when men like Gus Hawkins, Tom Bradley and Merv Dymally were elected to power and broke the bondage of white control.”

He also exhorted about 75 people on hand not to allow “the slave master mentality to prevail by allowing men like Mayor Dick Riordan to anoint, select and finance candidates of their choice to govern our future.”