Steve Zimmer Reflects on the Los Angeles School Board Election, the Most Expensive in American History

It has been a month since the election that captured so much local and national attention and turned our worlds upside down. As some of the shock of the initial loss has lessened, the pain of what all of this means has begun to set in. Because we care so much and because we have worked so hard, it is very difficult to let go. And because we do the work of supporting the schools and school families that make dreams come true it is hard to know how to move on from doing the work. This email is my attempt to make some sense out of all of this and present some ideas for moving forward.

For each of you who worked so hard on this election and believe so genuinely in the promise of public education for every student and every family, I want to once again thank you for all that you have done and will do for our kids. On a personal level, the outpouring of love and support you have shown to Anika and me over this past month has been a blessing. Thank you. Never once have we felt alone. We went through this campaign with all of you as a family and we are absorbing the loss as a family. We are blessed.

I want you to know that I have reached out to Nick Melvoin and congratulated him on his victory in this election. He was gracious and is giving me the space to close out the many projects and initiatives that have defined this eight year effort to transform public education for all students in Los Angeles. I need us all to understand that no matter how deep the pain from this campaign may be, Nick will be the Board Member for Board District 4 and our schools, our students, their teachers and their families need him to be successful. I urge all of you, especially our teachers and parents in Board District 4, to reach out to Nick and the team he will assemble. There is too much at stake on the ground at our schools to have anything but the best working relationship with the new Board office.

But there is more I ask you to do and I ask us to do together.

We may have lost an election, but we were not wrong in the campaign we built for the soul of public education. The coalition that came together and the energy and the spirit of the campaign must move forward. Over this past month, there have been attempts to dissect our campaign in ways that endanger our efforts to keep working together on behalf of public education in Los Angeles. With so much immediately on the line, we cannot let in-fighting turn us against each other. That is exactly what our enemies want. We can’t let that happen.

So we have to understand what happened and what didn’t happen.

This was no ordinary election. We did lose and we did lose badly. And the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and their wealthy funders won and won big. But they did not win fairly and they did not win honestly.

The CCSA effort was precise in its science and its analytics. They recruited or encouraged a group of the right candidates to keep me just under 50% in the March primary and then they waged a vicious negative campaign during the run-off. It was the most expensive school board race in the history of the nation. CCSA had a singularly unique mix of unlimited money, unbridled ambition and the complete absence of any moral or ethical code. It was a perfect electoral storm.

They prosecuted a campaign with laser focus and strict discipline. They expertly targeted precincts that were either extremely wealthy or extremely motivated against me or both. With well-paid and well-trained campaign operatives, CCSA worked these precincts incessantly. Then, CCSA unleashed the electoral equivalent of a carpet bombing campaign against me and our work together. It was a new kind of ugly and a new kind of mean.

It was also dishonest and misleading. There are real reasons that families in certain neighborhoods in our district are unhappy with my leadership. I made difficult decisions and I didn’t always get things right. I also believe that charter schools must accept every child that comes to their door and that they must be transparent and accountable for the public dollars they receive. And I have fought against many charter co-locations. So there were real reasons that some families in some communities wanted a change in District 4. But this is not what the CCSA campaign was about.

The attack ads and mailers did not talk about charter schools, charter school regulation or charter school expansion. The attack ads and the mailers did not talk about the challenging issues in Board District 4. The attack ads and the mailers did not talk about teacher tenure, teacher evaluation or the role of standardized tests. Instead, the attack ads created a fictional history that blamed me for ipadgate, the budget crisis, teacher layoffs, cuts in arts education and child abuse lawsuits. Even worse, CCSA created an ugly narrative of failure about our students, their teachers, our schools, our families and our communities.

Our campaign and the independent expenditure campaign that supported us did not have the funding, the bandwidth, or the analytics to effectively dispute the avalanche of lies nor were we able to effectively mobilize a large enough base to compete with the CCSA effort. In the end, what happened is that a majority of voters in Board District 4 believed the fictional narrative of failure created by CCSA and their wealthy financiers. They spent, they dehumanized, they lied and they won.

But winning an election in this way is not a mandate. There is no mandate for charter school expansion. There is no mandate to end teacher tenure or to devalue seniority. There is no mandate to elevate the importance of standardized tests or increase competition between schools. None of these issues was even discussed or debated. The voters believed a compelling and relentless message about my “failures”, they didn’t endorse an agenda. There are real issues. The CCSA message and the CCSA narrative was not about those issues. There is no mandate.

There has also been the assertion that there was some kind of grassroots movement that fueled this campaign. Let’s be clear. Neither Speak Up Parents nor L.A Students for Change is grassroots or a movement. They are front groups for CCSA. Each group is funded by CCSA and their wealthy sponsors. We who have been blessed to be part of real movements, cannot let CCSA and a few angry parents defile the transformational force of grassroots movements in our progressive histories.

This is why we need to build upon the inspirational spirit of this campaign. We must pivot from this loss to the immediate work that we need to do to build coalition and further define a progressive public schools movement in Los Angeles. Done right, our work moving forward at the ballot box, in schools and in communities can transform this loss into the next best chance to build an agenda for collaborative progress for our public schools in Los Angeles and beyond.

The first step is at the polling place.

What happened to us in this election cannot be allowed to happen again and the only way to ensure that is to be present and engaged in critical upcoming elections.
Two weeks ago, Jimmy Gomez won an important victory and will be our next Member of Congress from the 34th District. This means his Assembly Seat for the 51st District will be open. The 51st Assembly District covers parts of East Los Angeles, Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Echo Park and Silver Lake. This is one of the most progressive districts in the State. It is essential that an educator or a pro-public education candidate be elected as the next Member of the Assembly from the 51st District. Last November, CCSA won huge victories in Senate and Assembly races throughout the State and gained dangerous influence in both houses of the legislature. These races were almost as ugly as my School Board race. We can’t let that happen in the 51st Assembly district. This will be an important statement race and if we are successful it could shift the pro-charter momentum in Sacramento. We need to bring the soul and the energy of our campaign together in coalition with good progressive democrats who are on the ground in the 51st District. That race starts now. We must be involved and engaged.

Next, we are exactly one year away from the State-Wide Primary Election. The stakes quite literally could not be higher. The Governor’s Race and the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction will, in real and meaningful ways, determine the future of public education in California. In the coming months, I will write to you about the strong candidates who are running for these offices. But what is important for us to understand is that CCSA will be trying to take these important seats as well. And they will try to do it in the exact same way as they did this to us in this School Board race.

We must fight this state level fight through grassroots organizing, coalition building and through solidarity with our brothers and sisters in labor and progressive community organizations. We need to get even more active in our local democratic clubs. We need to engage club by club throughout Los Angeles County and we need to make sure that no one who calls claims to be a Democrat is allowed to get a pass for outsourcing jobs and privatizing public education. The values that CCSA promotes may be cloaked in the civil rights of children and their parents, but they are in fact Donald Trump and Betsy Devos’s value. And CCSA’s deregulatory agenda for public education must be rejected by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and local democratic clubs just as we Democrats reject Environmental and Labor deregulation. The fight against privatization must also be a fight for equity and a fight for justice. And so our campaign in 2018 for the Governor and Superintendent must be a campaign that speaks to voters about how teachers, families and community leaders can work together to change education outcomes for children.

The second step is within our own unions.

There has never been a more important moment for solidarity. I had labor support, but that did not translate into labor priority and we lost control of the school board. The consequences will be even graver if Antonio Villaraigosa and Marshall Tuck are able to divide the labor movement in 2018. Given Villaraigosa’s positive labor record in some areas this is going to take strategy, focus and discipline. But it is also possible. We must build an understanding about why labor unions need to prioritize education issues and recognize how interconnected the collaborative transformation of our public is with the growth of the labor movement.

The 2018 Statewide races give our coalition another important chance to present a positive, “all kids and all dreams” public education vision for California. Over the next few weeks, I will work to connect our coalition with progressive pro-public education forces from across the state. We lost an important round in the fight for public education last month, but we have to learn from this loss and deliver Los Angeles County in a huge way for progressive, pro-public education candidates for Governor and State Superintendent.

And of course, we must resist the Donald Trump’s racist, xenophobic and nationalist Presidency on every level. I urge you to fight Betsy DeVos’ efforts to privatize public education and strip away the nation’s commitment to equity, access and protections for all students; particularly our immigrant students and our LGBT students. We must fight her on social media, in the legislature and on the streets. As teachers, community activists and as parents we have an important voice in the resistance. Let’s connect all the dots and build bridges of common cause to win the State House and take back Congress in 2018.

Friends, I came to Los Angeles to teach 25 years ago. I started my student teaching at Jefferson the day it re-opened after the uprising in South Los Angeles. Throughout my career I have had the chance to stand with my students and their families through some of the most important fights in California political history. More important, I have grasped hands with parents and guardians to uplift all American dreams through public education in Los Angeles. I have been welcomed as a brother and as comrade in communities that were not my own. I am forever grateful to the students who taught me that teaching is listening and that counseling is listening even more. And that leadership is listening the most. I am forever grateful to the teachers, the counselors and the school leaders who worked with me to build programs where we never gave up on a single student.

I have two weeks left as your Board President. I intend to work with all my heart and all my soul and all my might until June 30th.

But on July 1st, the dreams of all children in Los Angeles will be just as important as they are today. And so I ask you to keep on keeping on. I ask you to never stop believing and to never give up on a single child. We need to stay focused on our kids and we need to keep doing the work. The dreams of our children and the purpose of our LAUSD family are too important for us to stop even for a moment. The soul of public education will hang even more in the balance when we wake up on July 1st. Not at the School Board, not in the State House, not in the White House but rather right here at the school house. Because the dreams of families, our dreams, are still alive and well at our school house door.

We know that dreams can come true through public education. And we know that dreams have no boarders and that dreams cannot be put behind bars. We know that dreams are more powerful than hate. We know that dreams are more powerful than pain, disappointment or loss. And we certainly know that they are more important than any one election. These dreams, our dreams will guide us towards a better tomorrow and towards this beloved community.

It has been a blessing and it has been an honor to elevate the dreams of our children together with all of you. I believe in each of you and all of you. And I have never been prouder of this family.

Anika and I thank you.

Steve

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