Q&A: Backed by teachers union, Karla Griego is running for LA School Board District 5
Daniella Lake | October 7, 2024
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Veteran Los Angeles Unified educator Karla Griego is hoping to capture the school board seat for LAUSD’s District 5, which includes parts of Northeast and Southeast LA.
Griego was a special education teacher in LAUSD for almost 20 years and currently works as services coordinator for McAlister High School, in Westlake, which enrolls pregnant teens and young parents.
The UC Berkeley alum is also a former LAUSD student, and sends her child to a school in the district.
“I have a track record of working with community members, with parents, and with students,” she said in an interview with LA School Report.
Griego is backed by the United Teachers Los Angeles and held leadership positions in the union, leading more than 100 schools in the Northeast LA area to go on strike in 2019.
She’s also endorsed by current District 5 board member, and LAUSD board president, Jackie Goldberg.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell me more about community schools and your role as a community schools coordinator?
Being a community school is trying to transform your school and trying to transform the systems that are in place that have really created a school system that you know, historically, is disengaging.
The classrooms are supposed to be enriching, giving students culturally linguistically relevant curriculum that students can connect to, that are relevant to students’ lives. And so as a coordinator, what I’ve been doing, it’s a process. We were able to bring TheatreWorkers’ project [to our school], who did a 10-week workshop on movement and dialog. And then we also had yoga instruction for our students.
I teach pregnant and parenting minors, and so for a lot of them, this was the first time they had access to these things and also, we developed a partnership with Cedar Sinai to bring two licensed clinical social workers to support social emotional learning. And so my role at this point has been trying to build partnerships with the community and to bring the resources necessary for our school.
You’re backed by the teachers union. What are some of the top concerns of the teachers union that you plan to address if you were chosen on the board?
Fully funding schools is very important to me, housing is very important to me.
And so, one of the memorandums of understanding that UTLA has with the district is that the district will look at all of its vacant lots and start thinking of the possibility of building housing on those lots for our students. And so that’s a big one for me.
Green spaces are another one. In this campaign, I’ve had so many conversations with parents, and that is the one thing that really matters to them, is having green spaces in the southeast cities.
We want a curriculum that is enriching, that is culturally and linguistically relevant. We want less testing for our students. And then lastly, expanding community schools and the Black Student Achievement Plan.
What are some of your top priorities and can you share the changes you want to see in those areas?
The way I look at safety is I look at it holistically. I think of safety and safe schools as spaces where, you know, we’re taking care of our students when they’re caught with substances that they shouldn’t be having. When they’re vaping in the bathroom, what do we do? Do we just send them to the office, call parents and send them home, and that’s it? That can’t be it. That’s not going to solve the issue. Are we connecting them to programs? Are we supporting the family and helping their child work through this? That’s a big thing. So I want to make sure that we are connecting folks to these services.
Bullying. A lot of families complain about kids being bullied for whatever reason. English language learners or students with disabilities, our LGBTQ+ students, our trans students, I want to make sure that they feel safe, that there are systems in place to support them when they don’t feel safe at school.
I want to make sure that we use that money for those things and de-escalation techniques, so that if kids are getting riled up and you can tell there might be a fight or some commotion, that we teach everybody how to de-escalate situations.
I want that and then safe passages. I want to be able to connect with community organizations that are from that particular community of the school who can support safe passages to and from school.
What sets you apart from other candidates running for the school board?
I’m a special education teacher and I have a breadth of experience in the classroom, but also I have a breadth of experience outside of the classroom, and I have a breadth of experience in organizing and working with people and working on shaping policy.
And so I am the only candidate who has that kind of experience of doing that, and I’ve done it while being a teacher. I’m not a career politician, I am a parent and I am an organizer.
I’m also an immigrant. My passion and my desire to really fight for my students comes from that experience. I know what they’re going through. I know what it’s like to be them.
This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.