Last week, 17 people filed paperwork with the Election Division of the Los Angeles City Clerk to collect signatures so that they can appear on the ballot for this June's primary. Four of those candidates, including incumbent Nick Melvoin, were from Board District 4. Today there are only three candidates left in this race.
Negar Nikgohar, who identified herself as a parent and educator, is noted as having ended her campaign on the website maintained by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. Information from the City Clerk's office shows that she never picked up her nominating petitions.
Nikgohar is the "Co-VP of Business and Finance" of the Warner Avenue [school] foundation and was seeking a position on a school board that does not currently include a parent of a child who attends a district school. I have reached out to the former candidate to find out why she has left the race but have not yet received a response.
The Board District 4 also had a couple of potential candidates file to raise and spend money for the campaign without actually entering the race including Dr. Raissa White. According to a December 31, 2021, filing White spent $90,709.88 on her campaign, including at least $ 68,104.77 of her own funds, but never filed to collect signatures.
The charter school industry has already spent almost half a million dollars promoting Melvoin's re-election, even before a place has been secured for him on the ballot. If the aim of this early spending was to dissuade potential competitors from moving forward with their campaigns, it appears that this money was well spent, at least for their candidate. On the other hand, the students of the LAUSD would have benefited from the public debate about policy that an election is supposed to facilitate. So much for #KidsFirst.
Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He is an elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and serves as the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD's District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him "a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles." For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.
