The Los Angeles Community College District is a vital part of the region’s educational infrastructure, offering a transition between high school and four-year college, certificates in vocational and technical training programs, one-off courses for the merely curious and a chance for older students to learn new skills. This fall, voters get to elect four members of the seven-member Board of Trustees. We recommend voters go with one incumbent — Andra Hoffman in Seat 1 — and three newcomers, Gerald Anderson in Seat 3, Nichelle Henderson in Seat 5 and Chris Han in Seat 7.
The way this election is being conducted raises significant concerns. In 2012, the trustees persuaded the state Legislature to pass a law letting the LACCD — and the LACCD alone — skip primary elections for their seats and have just one vote, in November, with each seat going to whomever wins a plurality of ballots cast, not a majority. The district saves $3 million or more by not holding that first round of votes, which remains its rationale for this egregious disruption of democracy that further stacks the deck in favor of incumbents and makes it likely that winning candidates will be selected by a minority of voters.
In this election, 33 candidates are running for the four seats, with a high of 10 contenders for Seat 3. So conceivably, a candidate for Seat 3 could win with as little as 10.1% of the vote — a preposterous situation. What kind of a mandate can a trustee possibly have with the backing of only a sliver of the people voting? Further, such a wide pool of candidates is too much for voters to consider in a general election. In just about any other race the field would be winnowed during a top-two primary, allowing for better vetting of the final two candidates and a general election winner supported by a majority of the voters. The college district is able to get away with this travesty because it attracts so little public scrutiny of its actions. Voters ought to demand that the district ditch this undemocratic process.
Also, the district clings to an outmoded at-large system in which all voters cast ballots for every seat; the seats are not tethered to a specific geography. Historically, such systems have made it more difficult for people of color to win elections. While the current board is somewhat diverse with four Latinos and one Asian, it includes only one woman and no Black members. The board needs to better reflect the broad and deeply diverse community that it works for. We recommend that the district assign its board seats to specific territories, each of which elects its own trustee, and that it consider expanding to nine seats with a single community college anchoring each one. That would help surface issues peculiar to the specific colleges, and increase the ability (though success remains elusive) of local communities to elect trustees more representative of them. Given the long string of successful legal challenges forcing other elected bodies to do away with at-large races, it’s remarkable that the courts haven’t already ordered the change.
The LACCD is a massive entity, with a $5.4-billion budget (including construction bonds) and nine colleges serving nearly 120,000 students enrolled in 265,000 classes. The district faces significant issues, including declining enrollment — something afflicting community college districts around the state and country — and a student body that suffers from high levels of homelessness and food insecurity. The district has crafted some programs to help, including partnering with nonprofits to find housing and provide free meals, but that has barely touched the problem. There is a philosophical question over whether taxpayer-funded community colleges conceived as commuter schools have a responsibility to offer their students food and housing, but we think there is much good to be gained by expanding the district’s cooperative efforts with outside organizations to help…
Read More: Endorsement: Hoffman, Anderson, Henderson and Han for LACCD