Monica Ratliff won a historic upset in Los Angeles!
She won with 52% of the vote!
She had less than $50,000 in small contributions.
Her opponent Antonio Sanchez had the support of billionaire Eli Broad, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and organized labor groups.
People power beat money power!!!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great news! Thanks for sharing it, Diane.
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Yay!
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Best $25 I ever spent on campaign contributions!
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Hooray! It’s a new day….
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That is some good news.
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Power to the people! The tide begins to turn at last.
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I’m glad I donated to her campaign. Thanks for telling us about it, Diane!
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Terrific news!
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Great news for LAUSD and a shot in the arm for us.
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Fantastic Grassroots effort!
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The tide is turning. The billionaires can’t even blame it on those “evil all-powerful teachers’ unions!” Nice to see democracy can beat plutocrats sometimes. Who will Broad,, Walton, Rhee, Bloomberg and Duncan blame now? Perhaps themselves and their policies?
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Another example of the power of grass roots movements. The vote is more valuable than money. Thanks for helping, Diane.
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Best antidote for education depression to date. Nothing beats a well informed and commited citizenry. We just need to figure out how to give everyone a good education!
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Maybe the public is realizing that they don’t want to be controlled by Wall Street???
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There is hope!
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BRAVO!!!!
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What a great way to start the day! Thanks, Diane!
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Have been patiently waiting to see this information!! So glad and passing around face book as local folk here are getting ready to fight for our public school lives. 🙂
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I think people are getting tired of the out-of-town, billionaire purchase of elections. Perhaps this might start a trend nationwide: Look to see which candidate has “raised” millions, then vote for the other guy.
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I really don’t have a problem with the ruling allowing all the money in the world be spent on campaigns. What happens in reality is the people get over satuated with ads and stop watching all of them. Maybe now they will start looking at the facts. We all know ads can’t be believed. Especially the ones that sponsor Fox news. Why would anyone buy their products
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But this news comes on the heels of who just won the Democratic primary for mayor in LA. According to the NYTimes. “While the city race is nonpartisan, a survey from Loyola Marymount University of voters leaving the polls showed that Mr. Garcetti received far more support from Republicans than Ms. Greuel, who also had the support of the Chamber of Commerce.” Ms. Greuel also had the support of unions which Garcetti used against her!!
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Greuel’s education policies fall somewhere between the AEI and the John Birch Society. She praises privatization via charters, supports the vile trigger laws, demonizes teachers, and more. Ordinarily given choices like Garcetti and Greuel, I would have abstained for voting. However, Greuel was so far to the right on education issues, I made it a point to vote for her opponent.
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Wow!! The Times called her a moderate. I am losing faith in Democrats.
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She also appointed Dick Riordan as her advisor on education issues, endorsed Sanchez over Ratliff, expressed support for Deasy, and shared the stage with Monica Garcia.
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Ratliff and Zimmer are the right people with the right credentials for the job. Here’s to looking out for the equal interests of all students.
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This victory provides us hope.
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The billionaire reformers are learning that it’s easier to buy sitting politicians than elections.
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Wonderful, how great is this win where quality and a local teacher wins over money. Congratulations to all especially teachers and students in LAUSD.
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I hope no one minds if I quote a well-worded comment appearing under the LA Times artice today. This is a good one to share with non-educators who need economically expressed commentary to help them see what is so malignant about the current “reform”:
“If returns hold, the fight for single seat up for grabs on the LAUSD school board will be victory for teachers, students, parents, and public schools, and a defeat of out-state billionaires trying to buy LA’s school board to begin selling our tax-fund public schools to Walmart, News Corp, and Microsoft. Antonio Sanchez is a weak puppet weasel purchased by out-of-state billionaires club to buy votes on school board that will enable them to execute their school takeover scheme to funnel public school tax dollars away from our children and into their pockets. You don’t believe it? Here’s a simple question for you. Why has this race for a single school board seat attracted outside money from exotic sources like Gates Foundation (Microsoft), Broad Foundation (Shock Doctrine), Bloomberg Group (Micheal Bloomberg of New York City), and Walton Foundation (Walmart)? These groups have pumped money into campaign of Antonio Sanchez because they share a common and scurrilous goal – to somehow redirect the $8 billion LAUSD budget now going to public schools into their own coffers by turning our schools into privately-operated but publicly funded cyber charter schools where classrooms of 75 kids are parked in front of computers all day overseen by a single teacher. To the billionaire scavengers, tax-funded public schools are last great untapped source of profits.”
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“Weak puppet weasel…weak puppet weasel…hmmn, yes. That just about sums it up, doesn’t it? 🙂
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One for the good guys.
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We are witnesses to history in the making.
Justice will prevail. Great News!
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After losing the Oakland CA school board election due mainly to being outspent by more than 10 to 1, it’s great to see big monied “reformers” lose. Could the tide be turning?
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Truly news that gladdens the heart and gives hope. This on a day when our teachers are so overwhelmed with SLOs, locals, teacher of record verification, report cards that two teachers reported they now need sleeping pills to sleep at night.
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winning the election was obvious; doing something constructive is much harder to do.
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a victory for sure…but the margin was too close for comfort. let’s not be apathetic on this or any election. i fear the big bills are viewing this as a close call and do not intend to step down on this or other school reform agendas.
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They lost. Bloomberg dumped $1.35 million into LA school board races and came up empty
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