Candidate Aims To Prove Her Incompetence

“I read the article you posted about me on Google [SIC] and what you said about my having a dangerous agenda… I don’t appreciate your misrepresenting my intentions.” - Gentille Barkhordarian

I do not envy the voters in LAUSD Board District 4. The three choices for the next school board member who will represent them for the upcoming four years are not qualified for the position and each one of them has their own set of baggage. Incumbent Nick Melvoin is ethically challenged, has attacked schools serving students with severe special education needs, and has voted to authorize even the worst-performing charter schools. Tracey Schroeder is a teacher who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine needed to protect vulnerable families like mine. Parent Gentille Barkhordarian has even more extreme views on COVID-19 prevention methods and did not seem particularly knowledgeable in answering a series of 20 questions about issues facing the district.

The views espoused by Barkhordarian are so extreme that she was interviewed on OAN, the same network that was forced to admit “that there was no vote fraud in Georgia” after being sued by two election workers who had faced harassment over a falsehood propagated by the network. Barkhordarian conducted this interview in a shirt emblazoned with “Let them breathe NOW!!!,” showing her disdain for the masks that “are effective at reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, when worn consistently and correctly.”

In a series of emails initiated by the candidate to protest my “misrepresenting [her] intentions”, Barkhordarian continued to misrepresent the facts about COVID-19 prevention measures. This included ignoring the CDC’s finding that “a growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission.” For some reason, she also brought up the fact that “vaccinated people transmit and get COVID themselves and in some cases end up at the hospital, just like the unvaccinated do.” While this is true, it is also true that the unvaccinated are much more likely to become severely ill and hospitalized when infected. They are also more likely to die.

Barkhordarian also made the statement that "In areas where schools remained open there was no increased risk of COVID to children, and nowhere near the amount of learning loss or mental health issues as we’ve seen at LAUSD." I asked her to provide the data that she used to draw this conclusion, but she did not send it. Instead, she attacked the president of the teachers’ union, UTLA, for claiming that “there was no learning loss in the last couple of years.” I asked her twice to define the term “learning loss,” but no definition was provided.

For a person looking to serve on the board of a school district where 80% of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch under federal guidelines, Barkhordarian also displayed a lack of understanding of the effect that COVID-19 had on this population. While she would like to use data showing that “the achievement gap between Black and Latino students and white and Asian students widened to 21% during the pandemic” to prove her claim that the LAUSD kept school campuses shut down for too long, the fact is that these groups were the least likely to return when classrooms opened. This was due to the devastating effect that the pandemic had on vulnerable communities. The district should not be faulted for the closure of campuses but for not ensuring that poor students did not get the resources they needed during online learning.

Contrary to Barkhordarian’s repeated claims during our engagement, I have not endorsed her opponent in this race. To do so would imply an agreement with her opposition to mandates. However, given the importance of dragging Melvoin into a runoff so that the California Charter School Associating (CCSA) has to defend the seat in November, I strongly feel that voters should place a vote for “anyone but Nick.” As I have stated previously, if I was voting in the election, I would choose Schroeder but only because she is the best of three bad choices.

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He is an elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and serves as the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.