Endorsement: Sherlett Hendy Newbill for L.A. Unified school board District 1
Los Angeles Unified school board member George J. McKenna III announced his retirement last year, leaving an open seat in District 1, which spans much of South Los Angeles, Mid-City, Koreatown and as far west as Palms.
This is an important seat on the school board that needs an experienced leader who can be responsive to the community and make smart decisions about how to allocate limited resources to improve student achievement, slash educational inequities, and ensure children’s safety and well-being.
The person best prepared to do that is Sherlett Hendy Newbill, who has worked more than two decades at Susan Miller Dorsey High School as a basketball coach, teacher, dean of students and in other roles. Her extensive, on-the-ground experience and common sense, independent-minded approach to tackling complex problems gives her the edge over the other six candidates vying for this seat in the March primary.
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Newbill graduated from Dorsey High School and returned to the Crenshaw district campus after college to coach and teach. Her pragmatic positions on issues like school safety and community engagement seem informed as much by her perspective as a parent — she has two sons, ages 8 and 11, who attend elementary school in District 1 — as by her work on campus.
Newbill is a champion for Black and Latino students and wants L.A. Unified to keep investing in robust instruction in math and reading in early grades and apprentice programs for older students to help stem declining enrollment. She’s a strong believer in the community schools model and would work to ensure campuses offer a full suite of services, including quality after-school programs, health and mental health services and other help families need.
She promises to be accessible and responsive, offering an open door to parents, teachers, administrators and community members and to enact policies, such as a tracking system for questions, that hold district bureaucracy accountable for responding to families’ needs and concerns.
Four candidates are on the ballot for West and South L.A. County seat.
Last year McKenna hired Newbill as his education policy advisor. Newbill previously ran against McKenna for the District 1 board seat in 2014, coming in third out of seven candidates. McKenna has now endorsed her, along with a number of local elected officials and groups.
Since hiring Supt. Alberto Carvalho two years ago, the school board has given him more space than his predecessors to carry out new policies and initiatives, which is a good thing. But board members also need to hold Carvalho accountable for delivering results.
Newbill thinks Carvalho’s move to replace the successful Primary Promise program that helps elementary school students struggling with reading and math was a mistake. She rightly observes that the district has been too quick to pull the plug on new initiatives, without waiting to gauge if they’re working.
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One of her top priorities would be ensuring ongoing support for the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, established three years ago to address the educational inequities Black students face. This community-led initiative holds promise but it needs close attention, consistent funding and importantly, time, to succeed.
Newbill is critical of the school board’s 2021 decision to remove school police from campuses without a solid plan to keep students safe. She would seek to give each school community the ability to decide whether to have police on campus. It’s a position that’s at odds with the powerful United Teachers Los Angeles union, and she suspects it’s one reason she did not earn the union’s endorsement. But her independence on this issue bodes well for her ability to navigate complex issues on the board without ideological rigidity.
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Another strong candidate is Didi L. Watts, a longtime educator who works as chief of staff to District 7 board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin. She co-founded the Watts of Power Foundation, which works to train more Black men to become teachers. She has good ideas for how schools can better educate special needs students and support vulnerable populations like foster and unhoused youth.
Kahllid A. Al-Alim is the UTLA-backed candidate, and his positions are firmly in line with the union’s agenda, including fighting the co-location of charter schools at traditional public schools and opposing police on campus.
The district would be better served by someone who is willing to change course in response to community concerns and buck powerful interests to serve students’ needs. Newbill is the candidate most likely to do that.
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