Month: December 2019

By Shelly Leachman STAFF WRITER Four years after two union endorsements helped propel them onto the school board, the incumbents in the Centinela Valley Union High School District are battling to keep their seats against two challengers who have snatched away the support of district employees. Sitting President Jorge Luis Arroyo and fellow trustee Rafael Ramirez were backed by the district’s teachers and classified unions in 2003. But in the coming Nov. 6 election, the Centinela Valley Secondary Teachers Association and the local branch of the California School Employees Association have endorsed challengers Sandra Suarez and Gloria Ramos-Jaime. “I had every intention of retiring from this district, but I know there is a need for change,” said Ramos-Jaime, who until Friday was a 17-year district employee. (She left her librarian’s job at Lawndale High and took a position in Los Angeles Unified to ensure her eligibility for the Centinela Valley board.) Lifelong district residents Ramos-Jaime and Suarez have teamed up in an effort to unseat first-termers Ramirez and Arroyo. The race in Area 3, in the southwestern portion of the district, pits Arroyo against Suarez. Arroyo, a middle-school counselor, says that during his tenure as a trustee the district has become more fiscally responsible, tightened up its administration and improved its educational programs. “We’re offering more advanced-placement courses than ever before and we’re having more kids attend four-year universities than ever before,” Arroyo said. “We have a lot of work to do but I think we’ve started something and I think the ship is turning.” Suarez, a mother of 10 (all former, current or future district students) and past president of Leuzinger High’s PTSA, says she favors stronger partnerships between the district, its feeder schools and all its surrounding communities. “The community needs to be a lot more informed and involved in some of this decision-making,” she said. In the northwestern portion of the district known as Area 4, it’s Ramirez vs. Ramos-Jaime. Incumbent Ramirez – a full-time student at El Camino College who was just 18 when he first landed on the board four years ago – said his top priority is to close the book on the district’s long-controversial construction projects. A cafeteria erected at Hawthorne High has been called the “Taj Mahal” of school lunchrooms. A hulking performing arts center at Lawndale High remains unfinished, now nearly four years overdue. Both projects were widely decried as unnecessary – and both are now the subject of lawsuits between the district and its contractors. “I want to see these projects finished prior to leaving the board,” Ramirez said. “That’s what I campaigned on four years ago and I think it’s my responsibility that I see it completed.” Accountability is a campaign buzz word for both Ramirez and Arroyo, who say that all district stakeholders – from trustees and administrators to teachers and students – should share responsibility for its progress and problems alike. In separate interviews, both men suggested that school principals should play a bigger role in the classroom, “making sure standards curriculum is being taught on a daily basis and, if it’s not, to be held accountable,” Arroyo said. Low test scores have long plagued the three-high-school district that also has a continuation school and adult education site. In state and federal test results released last month, Leuzinger High had the lowest local Annual Performance Index score. Both that school and Hawthorne High were given the lowest designation on a federal watch list of persistently low-performing schools. (Lawndale High, the district’s school of choice, does consistently well.) Suarez and Ramos-Jaime also name test scores among their priorities, in addition to increasing student exposure to vocational-education programs at El Camino College and Southern California Regional Occupational Center. Their top concern though, the women agreed, is improving communication – both within the district and between the district and the community at large. “There should be open communication where the administration is not threatened by questions,” Ramos-Jaime said. “The concerns of the everyday person that works here are ignored. Even if the communication is just to say, `I’m going to look into it,’ even the slightest bit of interest would at least send a message of good faith.” Arroyo and Ramirez ran on similar issues in 2003, when they argued that teachers and parents should have a stronger voice in shaping the district’s future. Today the pair concur, as Ramirez put it, that “we could still do a lot better,” but argue that improvements have been made – and that more will be coming if they are re-elected. “We have put the train on the correct path and I feel that if given the opportunity to serve for another four years we’re going to see a lot more improvement and a lot more success for our district,” Ramirez said. “I feel that I can still bring a lot of new ideas and innovation to the district that will benefit the district in the near future.” All the candidates agreed on the most likely hot topic to-come: the potential unification of nearby feeder district Wiseburn, which aspires to build its own high school. Arguing that such a move could strip Centinela of half of its property-tax base and more than 3 percent of its students, the high school district has previously sued the state to prevent Wiseburn’s proposed secession from going to a vote. Such an election has never been held, but it still could be. The state is currently conducting an environmental impact report on the feasibility of planting a new high school in the Wiseburn area, which includes parts of Hawthorne and Lawndale and some unincorporated neighborhoods. Every current candidate was reluctant to take a definitive stance on the unification, but all asserted its impact would be enormous. “I think it would be devastating, but I think we haven’t given them much of a choice,” said Ramos-Jaime, whose great-grandfather, George Bradford, spent 29 years on the same school board she is hoping to soon serve. “We aren’t cranking out the numbers, we don’t do any outreach. If I were a parent in Wiseburn, what would I do? That will be a huge decision, and we will have to make the right decision for a huge amount of people.” shelly.leachman@dailybreeze.com160Want local news?Sign up for the Localist and stay informed Something went wrong. Please try again.subscribeCongratulations! You’re all set!