Lopez can attend board meetings, ask questions of staff and participate in board discussions before casting “preferential votes,” which won’t be counted in the vote tally but will be recorded as a formal expression of opinion.
López, the outsider in the Area 1 race to represent the North Long Beach and Bixby Knolls areas on the LBUSD board, so far had 55% of the vote compared to Flores, who had 45%.
Nubia Flores, Sharifa Batts and Maria Isabel Lopez are vying for the open Area 1 seat that is vacant because incumbent Megan Kerr is running in the City Council 5th District race.
Nubia Flores, a parent organizer with Long Beach Forward, and Maricela de Rivera, founder and director of Long Beach Breastfeeds, announced their candidacies last week for the Area 1 seat.
The two vacant buildings at 999 Atlantic Ave. and 4310 Long Beach Blvd. are among the seven properties the district has designated “surplus” land.
Long Beach Unified expects to rely heavily on its reserves in the next few years as declining enrollment and lower attendance hurt its bottom line.
Last year, Benitez was passed over for the position, drawing criticism from prominent politicians like Mayor Robert Garcia to State Sen. Lena Gonzalez.
The Long Beach Unified School District has rescheduled its Board of Education meeting about the budget to start two hours earlier than originally planned.
“I had multiple people saying that I was wasting my time and wasting my efforts,” new LBUSD Board of Education Member Erik Miller recalled in a recent interview with the Post. “It really only drove me even further and made me work harder.”
At the Nov. 18 Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education meeting, the board bid farewell to longtime members Jon Meyer and Felton Williams, who are leaving the board after more than 33 years of combined service.
