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LAUSD teacher and charter school booster Dan Chang is running to unseat incumbent Scott Schmerelson in LA Unified’s Board District 3, covering the West San Fernando Valley and Studio City. 

Chang, who is endorsed by a statewide charter school group, is a math teacher at James Madison Middle School in North Hollywood, who routinely calls out corruption wherever he sees it. His opponent is backed by the teachers union, and has nearly five decades of experience working in LAUSD. 

The hotly competitive race between the two men is the most expensive contest for the LAUSD board this year, with nearly $7 million raised or spent on behalf of the two campaigns. 

The race is seen as a possible tipping point for the direction of the LAUSD school board, particularly when it comes to Los Angeles’ charter schools, which face new restrictions brought by the union-dominated board last year.   

Chang, who led the openings of some 17 charter schools as vice president of school development for Green Dot Public Schools before becoming a teacher five years ago, said he’d move to repeal those restrictions if elected. 

“I think the board needs a new voice,” said Chang. “It’s critical that someone with my background gets on there.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

You’ve said the board needs someone with your background. What do you mean by that?

There’s a pattern of fraud, waste and abuse happening at LA Unified that, again, I think the current board is not just hasn’t been capable of, you know, providing the level of oversight necessary.

I think the most egregious example is what’s happening with the arts right now. It’s at least a $30 million issue, and the superintendent at the board meeting literally lied to his board directly about it. It’s that kind of behavior happening at the central office that’s literally draining money away from local elementary schools in my district.

What do you see as other major issues impacting the district?

I think fraud, waste of abuse is a big issue. I also think student safety is a big issue. The percentage of students that feel unsafe on campus has doubled in the last few years, and LA Unified continues to not provide additional school police officers to school sites. Already, at the beginning of this year, there are instances of school violence taking place on campuses, and it just speaks to the inaction of the current board. 

How should the district be handling the issue of police on campus? 

We need to have school police available for schools. We should bring back the budget, and we should have more school police protocols. I think there needs to be continued training on the rules of engagement and how school police behave once they are on campus, how they interact. But, definitely, we need an increased presence  

How should LAUSD handle the cell phone ban it has coming in January?

Our middle school essentially has a cell phone ban. Students are not supposed to have their cell phones out or use them between 8:30 and 3:30. You ask them to put it away. And it’s not painful. 

My classroom has a good culture. My kids are respectful of each other. They’re respectful of me. I’m respectful of them. 

Got it. Let’s switch topics. What do you make of the controversial restrictions on charter schools’ use of public school campuses that the district enacted this year? 

It’s a wrongheaded policy. I know why the district is doing it, but I don’t think it follows the law and I think it creates more division. In every Prop 39 colocation that I’ve been a part of, it’s worked. It wasn’t easy, but it worked.

What you see is members of the school board actively pitting public school teachers against public school teachers, public school parents against other public school parents, literally, I think, for no reason. LA Unified has close to 600,000 seats of classroom capacity. It’s big enough for everybody. 

Let’s switch topics again. What do you think about the district’s dramatic enrollment declines?

It looks like we’re facing 2.5% decreases each year for the foreseeable future. This district is headed to 350,000 students pretty quickly. There has to be some sort of reconciliation of that reality and the number of schools we have open, the number of facilities we’re keeping open, and the overall construct of the district. 

Those are the conversations that have to happen. It’s challenging, but I don’t see how they are avoidable. 

What else should we be talking about?

For me, it’s student safety, cutting the bureaucracy and getting that money back to the schools, and addressing the waste fraud and abuse, which I think has grown under the superintendent, as well as improving our math and reading scores, that haven’t changed much in decades. We need to see continual, year after year, four and five point games in math and reading.