Jackie Goldberg, 78, elected president of the Los Angeles Unified School Board

The Los Angeles Unified School District elected former school board member and Assemblyman Jackie Goldberg as board president Tuesday, raising her to the position 40 years after her first successful run for school board.

Goldberg, a graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, first entered education and politics in the mid-1960s, becoming a student leader in the free speech movement while earning a teaching degree from Berkeley. However, Goldberg was fully involved in education for some time, including a 16-year teaching job in Compton before returning to the political scene in 1983 when she was elected to the LAUSD Board of Education.

She served on the board of directors for eight years, during which time she quickly gained the trust of the teachers’ union through her beliefs and actions on the board, including leading a bilingual K-12 program. She also faced a mass strike of teachers, which was instrumental in both giving them large raises and greatly reducing their wages later due to citywide cuts. Leaving in 1991 due to term limits, she quickly moved into broader Los Angeles politics, becoming the first openly gay person to be elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1993, where she tried to pass a living wage bill. In 2000, she was elected to the California Assembly for six years before returning to Los Angeles to become a faculty advisor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Then, for much of the 2010s, she was semi-retired, but reappeared in 2019 and ran again for the LAUSD School Board. Fighting for a seat vacated by former member Ref Rodriguez, who left last year following a campaign donation scandal. Despite being in her 70s and having not held elected office for over 10 years, Goldberg won, this time becoming the first member of the Democratic Socialists of America to hold office. With active support from the United Teachers Los Angeles union, once again Goldberg voted accordingly and has since been known as a staunch union supporter.

This has led to the current situation. With the departure of LAUSD Board President Kelly Gonez, non-teacher school workers, the Service Industries International Union (SEIU) threatening to start a strike permit vote this month, and a possible strike in February due to lack of new contract from July, board members decided to select a member who had long-standing ties to both the union and the school system to become president and help avoid a strike, the board elected Tuesday in a 6-0 unanimous vote in Goldberg.

Goldberg elected chairman of the board of directors of LAUSD

“I will work to make up for the loss of academic performance of children. We need to double down on getting them on par by fifth or sixth grade so they don’t drop out by the time they get to high school,” Goldberg said Tuesday. “I consider all of our employees important, not just members of the teachers’ union. I think our secret agents need our special attention.”

“I will add two subcommittees of non-voting board members, one on procurement and facilities and the other on climate and greening. I want to increase the influence of the board committees so that they are more change-minded, suggesting changes to the superintendent and his policy staff, instead of us basically hearing great information but not taking real action.”

Political and educational experts remain polarized on Wednesday’s selection of Goldberg, with many favoring her experience and history in educational matters, while detractors point to her troubled past, questionable past decisions and her previous attempts to help the union in the 1980s- ‘s was largely in vain.

“The LAUSD board couldn’t have chosen a more controversial figure,” Ellen Taylor, a former teacher who has helped several educational boards in Southern California over the past few years, explained to the Globe on Wednesday. “She is very passionate about her work and has worked tirelessly to build new schools and the like. But it is also dazzlingly unionist and devoid of nuance. She doesn’t even pretend to hear both sides. And look, now she will head the board. For those who think the teachers’ union is too strong in Los Angeles, an election is the worst-case scenario. She is also almost 80, and now she is leading these negotiations. A lot of concerns and questions about her leadership are already on the table, and the president’s chair has not even warmed up yet.”

Union votes and strike decisions are expected in the coming weeks.

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