With text quoted from the Times editorial board
The Los Angeles Community College District's Seat 6 was the only one with an incumbent candidate running in the March elections. It was also the most vigorously contested of the three races. Perhaps in the wake of The Times' 2011 series exposing waste and ethical lapses in the district's expenditure of billions of dollars of bond money on new construction, opponents sensed that longtime board member Nancy Pearlman, one of the building program's main advocates, was vulnerable.
That was especially true after David Vela, an aide to Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina), won the support of the major labor groups ....
Pearlman is the better choice .... She speaks with deep knowledge about the district's foibles and needs, and correctly identifies its most urgent challenge: providing students with better and more efficient remedial education. She has been more apt than most of her colleagues on the board to challenge the status quo, including some of the bond expenditures. She should continue to voice her concerns. Too few of the district's 141,000 students reach their goals, and there are nearly perpetual accreditation problems at one college or another; this board can't afford complacency.
Vela is an affable candidate but one with too little understanding of the task ahead. He speaks with justifiable pride about initiatives in the Montebello school district — such as a small, successful academy that guides students toward careers, and an anti-bullying program — but these minor accomplishments are dwarfed by the systemic reforms required at the colleges, such as state-mandated counseling to help more students complete their academic or career training.
