Michelle Rhee's biggest foray yet into California local politics yielded mixed results Tuesday.
West Sacramento voters rejected the school board candidate backed by her education advocacy group StudentsFirst, while Los Angeles voters handed a victory to one of the three candidates it supported.
Rhee – the former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools, who is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson – created StudentsFirst to counter the power of teachers unions in state and local politics.
The group formed a campaign committee that supported Francisco Castillo for school board in Washington Unified, the West Sacramento school district.
Castillo works as a spokesman for StudentsFirst. Voters instead elected union-backed Sarah Kirby-Gonzalez.
StudentsFirst also supported three candidates for the Los Angeles Unified school board: Monica Garcia, Kate Anderson and Antonio Sanchez.
Garcia won her race, Anderson lost hers and Sanchez is headed to the runoff May 21.
In last month's school board race in the Los Angeles-area city of Burbank, two StudentsFirst-backed candidates – Charlene Tabet and David Dobson – earned spots on the April 9 runoff ballot.
– Laurel Rosenhall
THE STATE WORKER
Nine years and $262 million later, California is still processing payroll with a system it had hoped to discard, and the Legislative Analyst's Office says an overhaul may not be possible. Its report Wednesday details the failed MyCalPays upgrade and recommends the state also look at keeping the old system or restarting the upgrade with new software.
– Jon Ortiz
WORTH REPEATING
"You need to get out more."
REP. TOM McCLINTOCK, Elk Grove Republican, after Twin Peaks Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly – the guest host Wednesday on a Bakersfield radio show – told him, "I haven't found anybody who isn't a huge fan of yours."
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