Seat 4 is an open race<\/a>, with seven candidates running. Incumbent Sara Hernandez is stepping down and running for state senate.<\/p>\nThe most well-funded Seat 4 candidate is Darryn Harris, a government and community affairs officer for St. John\u2019s Community Health, who recently started teaching a class on student skills at Santa Monica College, which is not an LACCD campus.<\/p>\n
Harris has the support of a wide swath of Democratic politicians and organizations, as well as labor unions and six of seven current LACCD trustees. <\/p>\n
Others running for Seat 4 include environmentalist and former board member Nancy Pearlman; therapist Adam Bruno; healthcare workforce specialist Elaine Alaniz; sign language educational interpreter Priscilla Umana; fire department employee Isidro Armenta; and business owner Jason Aula, who in response to the Times questionnaire, as well as in a recent press release, included comments about the Chinese Communist party and cannibalism. <\/p>\n
Seat 6<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most contested race is Seat 6, where incumbent Gabriel Buelna is facing off against Randall Winston, who serves as deputy mayor of infrastructure and climate resilience under Bass. <\/p>\n
Buelna failed to gain a key endorsement of the district\u2019s faculty guild, whose executive board endorsed Winston. <\/p>\n
James McKeever, president of the faculty union, AFT Local 1521, declined to discuss many details of the union\u2019s decision to endorse Winston, but said the executive board wanted to go \u201cin a different direction\u201d and saw Winston as the best candidate. <\/p>\n
AFT 1521A, the guild representing district clerical and technical staff, issued a dual endorsement of both Winston and Buelna and has given money to both campaigns. <\/p>\n
\u201cI absolutely really love both,\u201d said Andrea Edwards, president of the staff guild. \u201cI could not choose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others running for Seat 6 are community college professor Roberto David LaCarra and realtor Tonia Arey.<\/p>\n
Buelna and Arey have accused Winston of misleading the public by listing architect as his occupation on the ballot, as well as describing himself as an educator and a teacher at West L.A. college during the campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public doesn\u2019t understand who he really is,\u201d Buelna said. <\/p>\n
Arey, who was endorsed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., has vowed to ensure there\u2019s more transparency and accountability surrounding the district\u2019s nearly $10-billion annual budget.<\/p>\n
Asked in an interview why he didn\u2019t list deputy mayor of infrastructure as his occupation when it\u2019s his day-to-day job, Winston said \u201carchitect seemed to resonate the most and architect is my first professional degree and fundamentally part of still how I think and act.\u201d Winston said he is currently licensed to practice architecture but doesn\u2019t practice day to day.<\/p>\n
Winston said he will also start teaching a leadership class at West L.A. College later this fall and is currently helping to teach a workshop at the college on climate solutions. He also said he has mentored UCLA students.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe I have met the qualifications of an educator,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder\/County Clerk\u2018s Office disagreed and declined to allow Winston to list educator as his occupation on the ballot, according to an Aug. 27 email from the registrar\u2019s office to Winston.<\/p>\n
Winston said that at the time \u201cWest LA College was still completing the administrative processing for my adjunct instructor appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before becoming deputy mayor, Winston also ran the California Strategic Growth Council, which helps fund sustainable development.<\/p>\n
McKeever of the faculty union said he saw Winston\u2019s long experience in development as an architect, deputy mayor and head of the growth council as an asset to the district as trustees deal with the bond-funded building program. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis will help maintain the integrity of the bond process as the district moves forward with new construction projects,\u201d McKeever said. <\/p>\n
Despite not receiving the endorsement of the faculty guild, Buelna retains the support of a number of faculty members, including the president of the academic senate, Angela Echeverri.<\/p>\n
Echeverri said Buelna \u201creally cares about students and education\u201d and helped successfully push for state legislation to make it easier for students to take courses in languages other than English.<\/p>\n
The law \u201creally opened up community colleges to people who previously couldn\u2019t access education,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 16 candidates vying for three seats on the board that overseas the Los Angeles Community College District…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[16303,195918,1581,195917,3705,13540,195920,4579,53540,48,52,51,47,172806,50,49,195916,19297,4574,4190,195919],"class_list":["post-507512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-architect","tag-basic-need","tag-board","tag-buelna","tag-campaign","tag-candidate","tag-deputy-mayor","tag-district","tag-faculty-union","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county-federation","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-randall-winston","tag-seat","tag-student","tag-support","tag-veres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507512","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=507512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}