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LWV League of Women Voters of California
Los Angeles County, CA March 4, 2003 Election
Smart Voter Full Biography for David N. Tokofsky

Candidate for
Board Member; Los Angeles Unified School District; District 5

This information is provided by the candidate

David Tokofsky was elected to the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education in June 1995. As the Board Member for District Five, he represents a population of over 600,000 stretching from Northeast Los Angeles through East Los Angeles to the Southeast Cities. Communities in his district include: Atwater, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Highland Park, Mt. Washington, and Highland Park in the northeast; unincorporated East Los Angeles, El Sereno and City Terrace in the east; and Bell, Cudahy, Huntington Park, Maywood, South Gate and Vernon in the southeast. David is chairperson of the Committee of the Whole of the Board of Education, the Ad Hoc Committee on After School Program, and the Ad Hoc Committee on Parent Community Advisory Councils. In addition, he is a member of the Curriculum & Instruction Committee, the Human Resources Committee, and the School Safety, Health and Human Services committee. He also represents the local School Board on the California State Board Association and the County Committee for School District Reorganization. He serves on the Boards of Project Restore, Junior Statesmen, Arts Net, and the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Art Initiative.

David taught Government and English as a Second Language courses at John Marshall High School for 12 years. He coached the Los Angeles Unified School District's first National Academic Decathlon Championship Team in 1987. He was active in drafting John Marshall's School-Based Management plan and served on various governance committees during his tenure there. As a grant writer, he secured $750,000 from a foundation for his high school to develop a Next Century School. David also served on two working groups that helped to shape L.E.A.R.N., which is Los Angeles' major educational reform effort.

He graduated with honors from the University of California at Berkeley in 1983 receiving degrees in both Spanish and History. He earned his teaching credentials in History, Spanish and Social Studies from California State University at Northridge. While in the classroom, David received several honors for leadership and excellence in teaching, including the United States Department of Education's Christa McAuliffe Fellowship. He has received three National Endowment for Humanities study grants and was a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar in Mexico and Central America. U.C. Berkeley's Law School awarded him a Clio Fellowship for the study of the U.S. Constitution. Stanford University twice gave him COE Fellowship to study 20th century United States History.

SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER DAVID TOKOFSKY Partial List of Accomplishments

HUMAN RESOURCES • Consistently supported pay raises for teachers and district employees (1995-2002) • New Investment Policies for the California Teachers' Retirement System (April 2000) • Coaches Count for Kids- Created salary differential for P.E. coaches (October 1997) • Established Human Relations Commission (June 1998) • Extended pay and benefits for LAUSD employees who are currently military and National Guard reservists (May 1996, September 2002) • Supported PARS legislation to include non-credentialed teachers • Proposed bonuses for teachers with National Board Certification

CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION • Voted against class size increase (2002) • Made quality early childhood education a central part of LAUSD's mission (October 2002) • Supported policy to study alternative testing (May 2002) • Class Size Reduction (July 1998) • Restoration of Music Education Program for All Students in Elementary School •Increased magnet school seats to address inequities in geographic distribution in district, created first middle school magnet in District J •A Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for Learning, Standards of Conduct and Safety, and Standards for Achievement (UTLA sponsored, June 1996) •Raised awareness on lack of textbooks that led to passage of Schiff-Bustamante Bill that provided $1 billion statewide for textbooks

FACILITIES Early Childhood Education Expansion- Added $50 million to Measure K for construction of Early Education Facilities (July 2002) •Safe and Clean School Environment (February 2001) • Created an independent Environmental, Health and ACCOUNTABILITY •Proposed creation of Office of Inspector General •Created Proposition BB Oversight Committee •Created the Belmont Oversight Committee

BUDGET •Proposed additional budget cuts targeting District administration, totaling over $30 million, to replace school-level budget cuts. Three of these motions were adopted, totaling over $5 million in reductions •Increase in Federal Funding Proposal (September 2002) Increasing Federal Funding for Special Education (August 1999)

AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAMS •Support for Proposition 49: The Afterschool Education and Safety Act (October 2002) •Created Beyond the Bell "LAUSD Extended Learning and Enrichment Programs" (October 2000) •Support of Federal Bill 882 Afterschool Education and Safety (July 1997)

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: February 18, 2003 16:14
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