{"id":505563,"date":"2026-10-23T17:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T17:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/505563\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T17:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T17:24:08","slug":"long-beach-voter-guide-lbcc-board-of-trustees-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/505563\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach voter guide: LBCC board of trustees \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This guide was produced in partnership between the\u00a0LAist<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Long Beach Post<\/a>\u00a0newsrooms. See all our guides at LBPost.com\/elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Did this guide help you? Consider donating<\/a> to support our nonprofit newsroom.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake in this race<\/p>\n

Long Beach City College serves nearly 40,000 students<\/a>, according to data from the 2024-25 academic year. LBCC is the only institution overseen by the Long Beach Community College District Board of Trustees. This election, three seats on that five-person governing board are up for election. While two incumbents are running unopposed (Uduak-Joe Ntuk in District 1 and Sunny Zia in District 3), the departure of longtime board member Virginia Baxter leaves one race wide open.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two candidates have entered the race for the seat in District 5<\/a> \u2014 which covers much of East Long Beach north of the 405 as well as parts of Lakewood and California Heights. Susana Gonzalez Edmond is experienced in higher education and has the weight of Long Beach\u2019s democratic establishment behind her. Huy \u201cHenry\u201d Nguyen, an administrator in Los Angeles Unified, has gathered endorsements from many labor organizations and the current president of the board of trustees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Employs and evaluates the superintendent-president, who oversees LBCC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adopts the budget and develops spending priorities, including overseeing bonds that fund campus construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Approves courses and academic programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Develops and adopts board policies<\/a>, which govern everything from personnel to student services to academic affairs to facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sets the direction for the college. This board has prioritized<\/a> equity and student success as well as access and affordability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You might know the board of trustees from<\/p>\n

Changes to academic offerings<\/p>\n

Campus development<\/p>\n

Lawsuit settlements<\/p>\n

Here are some things the board of trustees doesn\u2019t do<\/p>\n

Board members don\u2019t oversee day-to-day operations on campuses. That\u2019s the job of professors and lecturers, administrators and college staff.<\/p>\n

While the board sets the vision and focus of the college, how those priorities are executed is overseen by the superintendent-president, who was named to the position in Dec. 2021<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Board of trustees members serve four-year terms and have no term limits. Some candidates, including Sunny Zia and Uduak-Joe Ntuk, who are up for re-election and running unopposed, have already served multiple consecutive terms.<\/p>\n

Trustees run as nonpartisan candidates, though the board has historically tilted liberal, based on policies and voting records.<\/p>\n

In 2022 (the most recent year of available data submitted to the controller\u2019s office), each trustee received between $4,400 and $5,160, not including benefits<\/a>, according to the state controller\u2019s database of government compensation.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s on the agenda for next term<\/p>\n

Long Beach City College is currently undergoing significant facilities and academic changes. The college recently broke ground on a 431-bed student housing facility<\/a>, part of a broad effort to make affordable housing available to city residents and students. The college is also building a massive student support center<\/a> on the liberal arts campus, slated to open in fall 2027. Trustees will oversee the spending on these projects, which are funded by bonds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The trustees will also supervise the launch of the college\u2019s first bachelor\u2019s degree<\/a>, in library and information science, set for fall 2027. They will update and monitor the college\u2019s strategic plan<\/a>, which emphasizes equitable student success, support, innovation and inclusion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

What it takes to win<\/p>\n

Whoever receives more votes in the Nov. 3 election will be declared the winner.<\/p>\n

The candidates for Long Beach Community College District Board of Trustees, District 5<\/p>\n

Susana Gonzalez Edmond, businesswoman and education consultant\u00a0<\/p>\n

Susana Gonzalez Edmond began at community college and now has more than two decades of higher education experience, including leading the Cal State Student Association.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If elected, she said she will make student success her \u201cnumber one priority\u201d and ensure there is a path for every student at the college and that everyone is supported at every step from admission through transfer or completion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said she would also prioritize bond transparency so that voters have clear communication about exactly how money is being used to fund new construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gonzalez Edmond said she sees community engagement as essential to the success of the college, and as a trustee, she would strengthen partnerships between the college and employers in the region \u2014 from small businesses to Long Beach\u2019s growing aerospace sector \u2014 so that students have clear vocational pathways integrated into their education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She acknowledged that students still experience many barriers to degree completion and transfer, and she said she would closely examine why students may drop out and implement supports (from counseling to study coaching) to help them complete their programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said that as a trustee, she would lean on her passion for education and her experience managing public budgets as a former city commissioner and PTA president to ensure working families benefit from the economic mobility community college can afford.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many democratic leaders representing Long Beach have endorsed Gonzalez Edmond<\/a>: Mayor Rex Richardson, much of the Long Beach City Council, Long Beach Congressman Robert Garcia, California State Senator Lena Gonzalez and California State Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, to name a few. The LBCC trustees, aside from Uduak-Joe Ntuk, have also endorsed her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Huy \u2018Henry\u2019 Nguyen, K-12 administrator\u00a0<\/p>\n

Huy \u201cHenry\u201d Nguyen is an administrator in the Los Angeles Unified School District and has worked in public service for close to 20 years, including in the U.S. Air Force.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If elected, Nguyen said he plans to expand and promote dual-enrollment options to reduce educational costs and barriers, especially for working families. He suggested boosting student success by promoting the college\u2019s shorter 8-week courses, which have shown promise, especially for students balancing work, family and life obligations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said he also plans to prioritize basic needs at LBCC and leverage his experience overseeing millions of dollars in food service operations in LAUSD. As a military veteran himself, Nguyen said he wants to be an advocate for veterans in the community and ensure they are aware of resources available to them, from mental health support to education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He sees community college as a direct path to access affordable education, and he said he\u2019d like to expand educational opportunities and events geared toward seniors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nguyen has collected endorsements from the Long Beach City College Faculty Association, the California Teachers Association and many labor unions. He\u2019s also received endorsements from sitting trustees Uduak-Joe Ntuk and Ennette Morton and Long Beach City Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This guide was produced in partnership between the\u00a0LAist\u00a0and\u00a0Long Beach Post\u00a0newsrooms. See all our guides at LBPost.com\/elections. Did this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-505563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}