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Q&A: Ex-Star Teacher and LAUSD Board Member On What’s Ailing LAUSD, Post-Fires

Ben Chapman | January 22, 2025



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As usual, David Tokofsky is annoyed about something at LA Unified.

This time it’s the school board, which Tokofsky says is failing to post materials for public meetings online in a timely enough manner. He peppers reporters with unheeded calls for stories on the scandal. 

Tokofsky is the guy who shows up at board meetings to harangue the board and superintendent in person, to their faces, about any number of issues, but also knows exactly what he’s talking about.   

Indeed, with almost four decades of working in the classroom, administration and consulting, including 12 years on the board, Tokofsky is very well acquainted with the Los Angeles Unified School District. 

He was a celebrated social studies teacher and star academic decathlon coach before becoming a beloved school board member. Tokofsky graduated from Marquez Elementary, which burned in the fires this month, and Palisades High School, which also burned down.

Tokofsky’s work as a consultant with traditional public schools, unions and charters has given him a front row seat to what goes on behind the scenes in the nation’s second-largest district.  

He sees the irksome details and the district’s big problems as well, and loves LAUSD like a sometimes-troublesome family member. 

While Tokofsky’s ability to solve big problems and see the future keeps him sitting at the tables of power, he’s not optimistic about the challenges facing the district, as it fights declining enrollment while the city digs its way out of the worst fires in its history. 

“There’s nothing like this apocalyptic moment,” he said in an interview with LA School Report on what ails the LAUSD now. “Nothing compares to this. This is a fiasco of major proportions.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

OK, David, so you left me a voicemail and said you had some thoughts you wanted to share. Like, some prognostications for 2025?  

There’s activity in the district, but in a sense it’s stuck. And we keep reliving the same battles every two years politically, and we do the same press conferences on the same subjects over and over again.

 Where is the deep learning that should be going on for kids and for the system?

Well, what do you think of the latest test scores from the district – the state scores?

They’re horrible. They’re absolutely horrible.

What’s the most alarming part of those test scores then?

They said they moved closer toward the standard but then when you ask, you know they’re still like 60 points away from standard.

What the district needs to do is refocus on the excitement of learning, engaging teachers and students in the imaginative and creative and thoughtful world of learning to move away from punitive testing models.

What about the impact of the fires on the district’s progress?

Evacuations and losing everything, it’s just apocalyptic. At the same time there is strength in the communities of Altadena and the Palisades, that goes back to the early 20th century.

What are the challenges facing the district moving forward as it reopens?

Clearly, this apocalyptic trauma has affected families, employees and kids a lot, and nowhere greater than the families that lost their homes and have been told to evacuate.

You have an entire community of employees and families that have been devastated. And once you have them back in schools, social and emotional support is going to be the most important thing.  

But there’s also got to be some serious discussion about climate education. What has been done on climate instruction? And what is being done to enhance fire safety?

Normally, the district is at its absolute best operationally in crisis. And I would say this time they haven’t been. I think that teamwork is not as bold as it could be.

Moving on, what’s the current state of the district’s budget and the district’s financial outlook?

The district has filed a three-year, positive budget for 2024 through 2027. So, they have certified that they have enough money for the next three years. 

The district believes that there is a structural imbalance and a pending fiscal cliff, but the governor has provided a solid floor for funding and the board passed a $9 billion bond.

And, fewer students in LA Unified means, counter intuitively, more money per child.

Does this mean that they’re not going to have to close schools anytime soon, even though enrollment keeps dropping?

I think closing schools is the wrong discourse, taking away from a community, rather than how do we change half of a facility into increased park space, community space, or potentially housing on a leased piece of district land for a revenue source.

You have to work with communities to explain that they’re getting something rather than taking it away.

Is the district ready to have that conversation? Are they already having that conversation?

Well, there’s constant efforts to do something for housing and there’s a lot of discussion about greening the campuses, but it’s not necessarily ‘all-hands on deck.’

David Tokofsky Joins Englander LAUSD
David Tokofsky

Is the new school board making moves? This month the board voted to revoke, or declined to renew a handful of charters, which seemed to be unusually aggressive for them.

The board’s stated argument for closing the schools is the test scores were not improving, right? And of course, that’s true for about 180 schools in LA Unified, too.

The schools in a strict numeric way, did not meet the math and English achievement levels necessary, but they had other things going. One of them was a school for homeless kids.  

What do you make of the LA Unified principals union joining the Teamsters?

It’s a vote of no confidence in the way the labor office of the district has been behaving. I think a survey found that principals felt that over the last few years, particularly in the last three years, that they’ve been asked to do more and more.

What do you think is the significance of these out-of-state lawsuits against the race-based policies that the district had?

I think the district labeled it the ‘Black Student Achievement Plan,’ but they were doing it based upon low performance as well as race issues. So, the district has not retreated from those goals. The question is, how are they doing in pursuit of those goals?

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