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#  New LA School Board Member Nick Melvoin: Revealed

May 25 2017

Written by Sara Roos.

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ROOS BLUES--It never was very clear why someone who attended private primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools, and then attended law school on a [scholarship intended for the disadvantaged](http://www.law.nyu.edu/financialaid/jdscholarships/rootscholarship) – it never made a lot of sense why he would ally forces with an advocate for a school system that is independent of the district on whose board he ran for a seat – none of this made a lot of sense until reading that all along he considers this entity of which he is an incipient board member, to be “an abstract concept”.

If that’s not Trumpian I don’t know what is. Who else would campaign to be director of an institution with which he has no sympathy, no care, no respect and no intention of complying with its rules? True to his promise, he has systematically nominated one secretary after another whose *raison d’etre* is to violate department policy and indeed to dismantle it altogether.

Well here in [his very first interview as LAUSD’s newest board member](http://laschoolreport.com/respect-parents-choices-new-board-member-nick-melvoin-lays-out-his-priorities-for-los-angeles-schools/), Nick Melvoin betrays precisely this as a core principle of his all along: “…to protect the district at the expense of a parent’s right to choose or a kid’s right to a good education has never made sense to me …”

Mr. Melvoin has just articulated crystal clearly, that the LAUSD is not an institution to which he feels beholden. Just like [Trump who was in substantial violation of the constitution on his first day in office](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/donald_trump_appears_determined_to_violate_the_constitution_on_day_one.html), Melvoin has divulged here that he does not intend to uphold his legally imposed duties. It is the legal [responsibility of a board member](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors) to uphold the “Duty of loyalty”, [putting “the interests of the nonprofit before any personal or professional concerns”](http://grantspace.org/tools/knowledge-base/Nonprofit-Management/Accountability/legal-duties-of-the-nonprofit-board).

And Nick Melvoin is on record as disagreeing specifically with this particular responsibility.

Why did he seek to be caretaker of an institution with which he fundamentally disagrees? Why is he permitted to disingenuously assume the role of caretaker over that which he seeks to sabotage?

*(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at*[ *redqueeninla.com*](http://redqueeninla.com/)*)*

*-cw*

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