LAUSD board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin will try to win relection in her South Bay district in a primary rematch against teacher Lydia Gutierrez.
Ortiz was elected to the District 7, which covers the South Bay and Harbor Area regions, in 2020, succeeding termed out Richard Vladovic.
Patricia Castellanos in the November 2020 election with about 57% of the vote. But during the March primary, Castellanos edged Ortiz, who finished in second place — about 3,200 votes ahead of Gutierrez.
And now, Ortiz and Gutierrez, a public school teacher and administrator in the aerospace industry, are the only two candidates for District 7 during the March 5 statewide primary.
The winner will represent District 7 on the Board of Education for the Los Angeles Unified School District. The seven-member Board of Education oversees policy for LAUSD, the second-largest district in the nation, with about 429,000 students.
Ortiz attended President Avenue Elementary School in Harbor City and graduated from Narbonne High School, both in District 7. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 2005 and a master’s in elementary education at Loyola Marymount University while teaching sixth-grade English and social studies at Stephen White Middle School in Carson.
The incumbent has pointed to her experience and to resolutions she has authored since being in office — “Exploring Mastery-Based Learning and Grading,” “Closing the Digital Divide to Improve Distance and Hybrid Learning” and “Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity/Preparation and Retention.”
That second resolution paid for more than 100,000 students to have high-speed broadband internet in their homes.
Her priorities, according to her campaign website, include retaining and recruiting effective staffers at all schools, improving student achievement and ensuring students have the social-emotional skills to be successful in the future. She also wants to…
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