child care

The Los Angeles Community College District is the largest community college district in the nation, serving 200,000 students with a budget of $10 million.

Voters will elect three members to the board.

Seat 2

Steven F. Veres

Veres is a member of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees and works as a state political adviser. He says he has worked to strengthen job training programs and improve graduation rates and wants to make college as affordable as possible.

Robert Payne

Payne taught at L.A. Mission College, worked on movie crews and ran an import business. He would focus on low enrollment growth. He also wants to make community colleges “cheaper, faster, better” in part by offering students more training for specific jobs and less expensive online textbooks.

Kristina Irwin

Irwin serves on the general advisory board at Santa Monica College. She previously served on the board of trustees at Palisades Charter High School. She wants to offer students more tools to succeed in college and to establish “preentry” programs in every local high school to better prepare students for community college.

Adriana Cabrera

Cabrera served as president of the Central Alameda Neighborhood Council and co-founded Empowering Youth in South Central. She wants to make student services easier to navigate and to strengthen financial aid and other support, including for food, housing, child care and mental health.

Roy Payan

Payan has suspended his campaign.

Seat 4

Nancy Pearlman

Pearlman is an environmentalist who served on the LACC Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2017 and taught part time at all nine colleges. She would focus on improving low enrollment while ensuring students are given the necessary support and resources to succeed. She also cites the need to make sure faculty receive equal pay.

Darryn Harris

Harris is a government and community affairs officer for St. John’s Community Health and teaches at Santa Monica College. Harris wants to tackle the affordability crisis blocking student achievement by building more low-cost housing on district land and making it “easier for students to get help with food, transportation, child care, and other basic needs.”

Adam Bruno

Bruno has worked as a therapist helping children and been a community college student. His main goals are to increase enrollment and make it easier for students to afford college. He’d explore student stipends as a way to make community college more affordable.

Elaine Alaniz

Alaniz serves as a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience. She wants to better prepare students for a changing workforce and ensure classroom instruction “keeps pace with a rapidly changing workforce” in the age of artificial intelligence and other technologies.

Isidro J. Armenta

Armenta did not reply to The Times’ survey.

Priscilla Umana

Umana works as an American Sign Language interpreter. She says the district’s biggest challenge “is the high percentage of students experiencing housing insecurity, homelessness, and food insecurity.” She would work with the district to expand affordable housing, work-study opportunities and food aid.

Jason R. Aula

Aula has worked as a political campaign consultant and in the world of mobile apps. He considers fraud a major issue including people posing as community college students to steal financial aid. He proposed a moratorium on noncitizens attending district schools and a focus on pandemic learning loss.

Seat 6

Gabriel Buelna

Buelna serves on the board of trustees. He also is an attorney and teaches history and political science at Cal State Northridge. He said a key issue is making college more affordable to students and ensuring that they graduate. He also said the board must conduct strong fiscal oversight of the billions in voter-approved bond funds.

Tonia Arey

Arey has worked in real estate, public advocacy and community engagement. Arey would work to implement campus safety plans, support additional academic advising and career education and more closely “examine spending, contracts, program outcomes and administrative costs to ensure resources reach classrooms and directly support students.”

Randall Winston

Winston works as a licensed architect and attorney and serves as Los Angeles’ deputy mayor of infrastructure and climate resilience under Mayor Karen Bass. Winston’s priorities for the district include ensuring colleges are a pathway to opportunity and good jobs, that students can afford basic needs and people historically shut out of higher education are let in.