Why the era of mega-spending and charter battles is ending

This election cycle marks the end to a generation of bitterly contested Los Angeles school board races that became the most expensive in the country, with the L.A. teachers union and charter school advocates slugging it out to advance their vision for public education.

The difference?

Charter school supporters — who had poured tens of million of dollars into races to elect board member sympathetic to their cause — have largely stepped aside, a reflection of shifting finances and strategy in California and nationally.

Three of seven Board of Education seats are on the ballot Tuesday in comparatively low-spending contests with incumbents as overwhelming favorites. The charter association’s political arm has not mounted campaigns in support of anyone.

East San Fernando Valley incumbent Kelly Gonez faces one challenger, Jose Sagredo, who, as a write-in candidate, will not even have his name on the ballot.

The two other incumbents, Nick Melvoin and Rocio Rivas, each face a challenger with extremely limited campaign resources and no special-interest financial backing.

Since the early 2000s, the rise of charter schools has been a central narrative in Los Angeles public schools. Charters are privately operated, mostly nonunion public schools that compete for students with district-operated campuses. Starting in the early 1990s, charters gradually took hold in L.A., persuading parents they offered an attractive education alternative, and they now enroll about 1 in 5 public school students living within L.A. Unified boundaries.

Starting with the L.A. Unified board election in 2013, wealthy charter advocates became the primary opposing campaign force to the teachers union.

But now, the California Charter Schools Assn., which doesn’t endorse candidates, and its political cousin CCSA Advocates, which does endorse, simply have less money to call on — with major donors no longer in place.

Still, the decision not to mount a high-cost campaign is born more of strategy than necessity, said Gregory McGinity, executive director of CCSA Advocates.

“Our core electoral objective was to support the reelection of experienced board members who understand the importance of maintaining high-quality public school options for students and families, including Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez,” McGinity said.

Given that Gonez has virtually invisible opposition and Melvoin has his own donor base, “the level of outside spending seen in prior marquee races was simply not necessary,” McGinity said.

The charter association also has changed tack in the race for state superintendent of public instruction by backing San Diego Unified school board President Richard Barrera, the same candidate endorsed by the California Teachers Assn.

“Richard Barrera has shown that supporting educators and supporting high-quality charter public schools are not mutually exclusive,” McGinity said in a statement.

Charter supporters “seem to be following the union money [rather] than fighting it, likely giving to candidates they perceive as winning,” said Lance Christensen, a charter ally who ran unsuccessfully for state superintendent in 2022.

That race four years ago foreshadowed what is happening today: CCSA Advocates did not play a visible role backing anyone. It declined to support long-shot Christensen against incumbent Tony Thurmond, who was running for his second and final term with the backing of the California Teachers Assn..

In contrast, in 2018, CCSA Advocates spent about $40 million and failed — in efforts to defeat both Thurmond and Gavin Newsom in his successful bid for governor.

At this point, Christensen said, most charter school advocates “know that they have to survive through political jiu-jitsu or go extinct.”

Yet, political observers note that it’s hard to imagine that an earlier iteration of CCSA Advocates would not have gone full bore against the anti-charter Rivas, who replaced strongly pro-charter Monica Garcia, who termed out in 2022.

Who are the candidates?

Rivas led a recent charge to deny the renewal of Gabriella Charter School, which uses a substantial portion of the Echo Park campus where the district operates Logan Academy for Global Ecology. Both schools serve students from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade. Both have been affected by declining enrollment.

The district’s charter division could find no basis under state law to recommend closing Gabriella. The board majority — which leans anti-charter — voted 4 to 3 in October to shut down the school anyway.

The decision was overturned by the county Board of Education and a judge. But a few charters with less clear-cut cases were not so fortunate.

United Teachers Los Angeles has made it clear that it will defend Rivas, spending close to $1 million through May for an independent campaign on her behalf. Rivas’ own campaign had raised $62,505, according to recent filings.

As a board member, Rivas also has pushed for more budget transparency related to high-cost district contracts. The teachers union shares this priority, asserting that more money could be set aside for salary increases.

Rivas’ opponent is Raquel Zamora, who teaches English in the L.A. Unified adult school and works for the district as an attendance counselor. Her campaign has raised $1,960.

Zamora is a member of the teachers union and, based on her responses in a candidate survey, seems somewhat less critical of charters than Rivas.

For much of the last two decades, pro-charter forces routinely outspent the teachers union — although both sides spent more than enough to inundate local voters.

Charter advocates were among Melvoin’s biggest supporters in 2017 when he unseated then-board President Steve Zimmer in the most expensive school board race in U.S. history, with outside groups spending nearly $10 million.

Melvoin’s opponent is Ankur Patel, outreach director for Hindu University of America, who is critical of some charters but not as much as Rivas is, based on his survey responses. He worked three years as a staffer for school board member Scott Schmerelson and five years as a district substitute teacher.

Melvoin has raised $348,763 for his campaign. Patel has raised $20,060.

One wild-card spender in this campaign is retired businessman Bill Bloomfield, who has put $367,093 into an independent campaign on behalf of Melvoin. Bloomfield is supportive of charters — and critical of the teachers union — but does not consider himself a charter advocate.

Bloomfield has been a big spender in recent school board election cycles. In 2022, for example, he contributed $4.6 million to a charter-friendly campaign committee in the L.A. board races. This committee spent $419,406 against Rivas and more than $2.3 million in support of her opponent, Maria Brenes.

The teachers union too is sitting out the Melvoin-Patel race.

Some in the union remain bitter about negative campaigning that led to Zimmer’s loss and consider Melvoin too pro-charter. But the union has aligned with him on cuts to school police, reduced instructional screen time and cellphone limits for students. And Melvoin’s strong Westside base would be challenging for UTLA to overcome.

What happened to the charter money?

Two major wealthy donors, former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan and philanthropist Eli Broad have died. They were steadfast in committing millions to create, essentially, a consistent anti-education-union political presence.

The money from outside L.A. also was huge, including from the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, which has wound down and gone out of business.

Other major donors included former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Netflix founder Reed Hastings. They appear to be among those who either have shifted their campaign money to friendlier political climes or prioritized direct aid to help charters grow and improve their services. Heirs to the fortune of the Walton family, which founded Walmart, have also sharply reduced their collective pro-charter political contributions compared with their peak giving.

In the national political framework, some major conservative donors are less attracted to charters, pushing instead for voucher plans — which provide public dollars for parents to send their children to private schools. Their donations to elect like-minded officials has led to a rapid growth of states with new or expanded voucher plans, including Texas and New Hampshire.

As the seven-member L.A. school board now stands, the majority consists of candidates elected with the endorsement of UTLA.

This election could not have changed that majority, but the outcome could have determined whether UTLA would strengthen its hand or whether other constituencies — such as charters — would gain a measure of power at the union’s expense.

But, after all, money isn’t everything, said Eric Premack, executive director of the Sacramento-based Charter School Development Center.

“Some of the big money accomplished some of the least,” Premack said. “Getting schools to really focus on their performance and their relationships with parents, city leaders and elected officials — rather than trying to buy their support with campaign dough — can really get you a lot of mileage for a lot less money.”