Your guide to the L.A. Unified Board of Education District 6 race: Incumbent Kelly Gonez is unopposed

Three seats are on the June 2 primary ballot for the seven-member Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, but the District 6 race is essentially a foregone conclusion: The only name on the ballot is two-term incumbent Kelly Gonez.

The nation’s second-largest school system, with close to 400,000 students, faces evolving challenges and uncertainties that could alter the direction of the district for years.

In mid-April L.A. Unified officials barely averted a strike by agreeing to significant employee raises, rescinding about 200 layoffs and agreeing to hundreds of new hires of counselors, school psychologists and other student support staff. The contracts with three district unions, including teachers, will cost nearly $1.2 billion a year, and board members now must find a way to pay for them amid budget pressures.

California

Voter guide to the 2026 California primary election

California’s primary election takes place on June 2. Learn about L.A.’s city and county races and others for state offices.

May 1, 2026

Standardized test scores have trended upward since the nadir of the COVID-19 pandemic, recovering faster than the state average, but the pace remains too incremental for critics.

The future of L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho is uncertain. He’s on paid administrative leave following FBI raids of his San Pedro home and downtown office. At least part of the investigation centers on a failed chatbot project that was supposed to revolutionize and individualize education.

Carvalho said he’s done nothing wrong and would like to return to work. If he does not return — and cannot serve out his new four-year contract — board members would select a superintendent.

L.A. Unified also faces declining enrollment — which reduces state funding and increases pressure to save money by closing many campuses.

Heightened federal immigration enforcement also has affected enrollment and attendance while creating anxiety that spills over into the classroom. Officials responded by declaring L.A. Unified a sanctuary district — both for immigrants and for the LGBTQ+ community, which also has been a target of some conservative groups.

Carvalho’s central focus on improving test scores has led to increased tutoring, repeated diagnostic measures and phonics training. In addition, the district put a successful school bond on the ballot to continue renovations, worked to lower student absenteeism and emphasized greener campuses.

The board majority consists of candidates elected with the endorsement of the powerful teachers union — United Teachers Los Angeles. This election will not change that balance because five seats are held by union-friendly incumbents. But the outcome will determine whether UTLA can further strengthen its hand or whether other constituencies will gain a measure of power at that union’s expense.

The material below was assembled through reporting and a survey provided to Gonez. Some responses are paraphrased for clarity or condensed for brevity.

District 6 stretches across the east San Fernando Valley taking in Sylmar, San Fernando, Mission Hills, Pacoima, Arleta, North Hills East, Panorama City, Sun Valley, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Shadow Hills, Lake View Terrace, Sunland and Tujunga.

LAUSD Board Member Kelly Gonez.

(Courtney Lindberg)

Before being elected to the school board in 2017, Gonez, 37, taught for five years in local schools. She also served as a Democratic appointee in the Dept. of Education during the Obama administration. She’s the parent of children ages 7, 5 and 3 — who attend district schools.

Gonez is a Democrat and has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and its aggressive immigration enforcement. Her priorities have included early education expansion, school greening improvements, literacy through phonics training, protecting immigrant students and focusing more budget resources on the highest-need schools.

“The East Valley has been hit harder by federal immigration enforcement than almost anywhere else in Los Angeles,” Gonez said. “My first priority is making sure every child can walk through their school doors without fear. That means continuing to affirm LAUSD as a sanctuary district, getting Know Your Rights resources into families’ hands, and ensuring our campuses are trusted community centers, not places where fear stands between a child and their education.”

A write-in candidate cannot earn write-in votes unless that candidate has either turned in 500 petition signatures to become eligible for votes or paid a $300 filing fee. Either way, it is too late for that candidate’s name to appear on the ballot.

“Supt. Carvalho led LAUSD through an extraordinarily difficult period, including a global pandemic, historic budget uncertainty and sustained federal hostility toward public education. Under his leadership the district made real academic gains, and I worked closely with him on priorities I care deeply about,” she said.

All the same, she voted with other board members to put him on paid administrative after the FBI raids “because our students, educators and families need stable, focused leadership right now, and the uncertainty created by an active federal investigation made that continuity impossible while he remained in the role.”

In 2020, amid activists’ calls to defund police after the killing of George Floyd, a narrow L.A. Unified board majority, including Gonez, cut school police funding by 35%. Officers shifted entirely to neighborhood patrols, providing a short-term campus presence only during a security alert.

Recent budgets supported by Gonez essentially have frozen or modestly reduced school police staffing levels. On her candidate survey, Gonez said “a small portion of funding should be eliminated and reallocated.”

Charter schools are privately operated public schools that compete with district-run campuses for students. Most charters are nonunion, but some of the largest individual charters and charter groups in L.A. Unified are unionized.

Gonez won office in large measure because of campaign support from charter-school advocates. Since then, she has gravitated somewhat toward teacher-union positions on various issues, and the union endorsed her for reelection in 2022 and has done so again in the current election cycle.

Charter advocates — who are in a weaker position financially — have accepted Gonez‘s middle-road positioning. The California Charter Schools Assn. has not endorsed in the Board of Education contests.

“I have voted to close charter schools that were not delivering for students, including schools in my own district,” Gonez said. “I have also opposed unregulated charter expansion and will continue to do so, particularly in this time of declining birthrates and families being priced out of Los Angeles.”

She said she shares the concern over potential negative impacts when a charter uses space on a district-operated campus.

“In my community, when there have been issues with co-locations, we have often been successful in working to resolve those issues collaboratively and in a way that protects our district programs,” she said.