Steven Veres, 46, is vying to maintain his seat on the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees.
(Courtesy of Steven Veres)
Name: Steven F. Veres
Age: 50
Website: www.steveveres.com
Occupation that appears on the ballot: Los Angeles Community College District, member of the board of trustees
Experience: Veres cited his role as trustee and previous work as a teacher as key experience for another four-year term. Veres also has worked as a state politics adviser, including for Sen. María Elena Durazo. As trustee, he said his work has included strengthening job training programs, improving graduation rates and addressing basic student needs.
“Successful colleges depend on students, faculty, and staff having a meaningful voice in decisions” while the board should “listen, set clear priorities, protect public resources, and give our colleges the support necessary to help students succeed,” he said.
District challenges: The district’s greatest challenge is helping students finish their education, given how many are forced to juggle school with “jobs, housing costs, food insecurity, transportation, and family responsibilities … We need to remove those barriers while making the academic experience easier to navigate,” he said.
Priorities: “First, make college truly affordable. Tuition is only part of the cost. Housing, food, transportation, textbooks and childcare can determine whether a student stays enrolled.
“Second, improve completion and transfer rates. Students deserve clear academic pathways, accessible counseling and course schedules that allow them to earn a degree, certificate or transfer without unnecessary delays. Third, connect education to careers. I want to dramatically expand paid internships, apprenticeships and partnerships with employers and organized labor.
“These priorities reinforce each other: Students are more likely to finish when college is affordable, the path to completion is clear, and they can see the economic value of their education.”
Budget: “Our first responsibility is to use taxpayer dollars efficiently while protecting instruction and student services,” he said. In addition, Veres said that because state funding is based on enrollment, boosting it can be a path to financial stability, along with eliminating unnecessary, duplicative spending across the nine colleges and investing in energy efficiency to cut costs.
“Fiscal responsibility is not simply cutting spending,” he said. “It means directing limited resources toward what produces the greatest value for students and taxpayers.”
Student success: Veres would address barriers to student success and enrollment by pushing to make the application process easier and providing more flexible class schedules — including more evening, weekend, online and hybrid options — for working adults, parents and others. “Our job should not end when a student enrolls. It ends when that student reaches their educational goal,” he said.
Robert Payne is running for Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees Seat 2.
(Robert Payne)
Name: Robert Payne
Age: 77
Website: http://payneforlaccd.info/
Occupation that appears on the ballot: researcher/writer/environmentalist
Experience: Payne said he has taught at L.A. Mission College. His education at L.A. Valley College and Cal State Northridge helped prepare him for a career as a writer. He said he has worked on movie crews and ran an import business, among other jobs. Growing up in Pacoima helped him understand the needs of immigrants and “those of diverse backgrounds with limited resources.”
“I went through the [community college] system,” he said. “I know the difficulties. All my ideas come from my direct experience.”
District challenges: Payne cited low enrollment growth as the main challenge. Students also need to see a quicker return on their investment. “Life costs money,” he said. “If students could see immediate advantages to college, the colleges would attract more enrollments.”
He reflected on his own experience when discussing the importance of a quick payback. “I graduated from Cal State Northridge. Nothing I learned at L.A. Valley or Cal State paid off immediately,” he said. “I worked as a janitor, security guard, construction site cleaner. I lucked into a union tech job and I earned my way through graduate school. Years later, the master’s degree finally helped me get work as a ‘professor.’ ”
Priorities: Payne wants to make community colleges “cheaper, faster, better” in part by offering students more training for specific jobs and less expensive online textbooks. He also would support ending student debt.
Budget: He does not support cutting “student opportunities” and said if “the colleges can demonstrate success for the students, enrollment will justify the expense of maintaining the expense of the faculty, the staff, the facilities.”
Student success: Payne wants college to do more to offer “immediate perceived value,” including teaching résumé building, interview skills and how to apply to jobs. He said hiring adjuncts with industry experience could enhance student success.
Kristina Irwin is running for Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees Seat 6.
(Yolando Mitchell Brown)
Name: Kristina Irwin
Age: 50
Website: https://kristinairwin.com/
Occupation that appears on the ballot: parent/business owner.
Experience: As a former community college student, Irwin has firsthand knowledge of the L.A. community college student experience.
She serves on the general advisory board at Santa Monica College and said she also served on the board of trustees at her children’s school, Palisades Charter High School, during the Palisades fire. She said she holds a Public Engagement & Civic Leadership Certificate from the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine School of Public Policy.
District challenges: Irwin said the main challenge is preparing young people to advance in college when their earlier schooling failed to give them the tools to succeed.
Priorities: Irwin wants to establish “preentry” programs in every local high school that would prepare students for community college and do more to give educators the resources they need to craft classes that “fit the needs and life limitations of the students.”
Budget: Irwin said alternative streams could be identified to fund “classroom student resources.” She said that as “responsible stewards” of district resources, trustee actions “are often under scrutiny either formally or informally.”
Student success: Irwin wants to address barriers to student success and enrollment by doing more to demonstrate how a community college education can give them the tools necessary to succeed in their chosen career.
Name: Roy Payan
Payan told the Times he suspended his campaign.
Adriana Cabrera is running for Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees Seat 2.
(John McCoy/For Los Angeles Times en Espanol)
Name: Adriana Cabrera
Age: 34
Website: https://adrianaforlaccd.com/
Occupation that appears on the ballot: educator
Experience: Cabrera said she attended community college and went on to earn bachelor’s degrees in Chicana/o studies and political science and a master’s in education from Cal State Northridge. She said she also served as president of the Central Alameda Neighborhood Council and co-founded Empowering Youth in South Central, a “grassroots collective of students and educators” that “has supported thousands of first-generation students with college, career, financial-aid, and leadership support.”
“I am not coming into this role to learn higher education after I am elected,” she said. “I have studied it, worked in it, navigated it as a student, built programs within it, worked inside public institutions, and organized communities around it.”
District challenges: Cabrera said student services are too difficult to navigate, too many students struggle to afford basic needs such as housing, and clearer pathways are needed to economic mobility, She said budget decisions also can feel “disconnected” from the staff and students those decisions effect.
Priorities: “My first priority is invest in students first,” she said. Cabrera would do that by making student services easier to navigate and strengthening financial aid and other support, including for food, housing, child care and mental health.
Secondly, Cabrera wants to better connect education to economic mobility through good paying jobs. Lastly, Cabrera would give students, faculty, staff, labor organizations and community members “a meaningful voice before major budget priorities are finalized.”
Budget: Cabrera would review the district’s spending “to make sure existing dollars are being used efficiently” and “identify responsible ways to generate additional revenue without shifting costs onto students.” For instance, renting out underutilized facilities.
Student success: Cabrera would take steps to ensure student services are more readily available and the public has better visibility and say in trustee decisions. “The overall standard I would bring to the board is simple,” she said. “Can students enter LACCD, understand their options, find the support they need, complete their goal, and leave with more opportunity than when they arrived?”