BUSINESS OF EDUCATION - There is a $9.9 billion government institution in Los Angeles with nine colleges, thousands of employees, an enormous construction program, and an elected governing board. Can you name one member of that board?
Welcome to the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), where voters will soon elect members of a seven-person Board of Trustees that receives a fraction of the public attention devoted to the Mayor, City Council or County Board of Supervisors. That makes no sense when you follow the money.
According to LACCD's 2025–26 Final Budget, the district's total budget across its funds is $9.9 billion. About $1.1 billion is in its Unrestricted General Fund, which funds the district's primary operations. Another $338.7 million is in its Restricted General Fund. Student Financial Aid accounts for $356.5 million.
Then comes the number that should make every taxpayer pay attention: The Building Fund is $8.0 billion. That is not $8 billion in ordinary annual operating funds waiting to be spent. The Building Fund reflects the district's massive voter-approved bond construction program, including accumulated bond resources. But that distinction doesn't make the number any less important. It makes oversight even more important. In the past, construction delays, cost overruns, poorly managed change orders, and bureaucratic mistakes have cost the district millions in unanticipated expenses.
But before asking whether LACCD is spending its money properly, a more fundamental question remains: What is all this money supposed to accomplish?
Strip away the bureaucratic language, and LACCD's mission is remarkably simple: educate students, keep them progressing toward their goals, help them complete degrees and certificates, prepare them for careers, or help them transfer successfully to four-year universities.
Buildings are not the mission. Construction contracts are not the mission. Administrative departments are not the mission. Spending money is certainly not the mission. Students are the mission. And that changes the accountability question.
That is also what makes Tonia Arey's campaign for Seat 6 on the LACCD Board of Trustees interesting.
Arey is a realtor and small-business operator who previously ran for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. When I sat down with her, I wasn't particularly interested in hearing another candidate tell me how much she cares about education.
Everyone running for the school board cares about education. I wanted to know what she would actually do. Her answer boiled down to ten words: “Give me the books, and where is the money going?”
That question becomes considerably more interesting after examining LACCD's finances.
LACCD is not a small educational bureaucracy. Its own budget places $8 billion in the Building Fund. Los Angeles voters have repeatedly authorized billions in bonds to modernize its nine campuses.
And then there have been warning signs. At Los Angeles Valley College, the Academic and Cultural Center took approximately a decade to complete. An independent arbitrator concluded that LACCD was primarily responsible for significant delays and ordered the district to pay approximately $3.2 million to the contractor and subcontractors.
At Los Angeles Harbor College, an independent performance audit found multiple change orders on the SAILS Student Union delayed for more than a year. In one instance, work carrying a $30,000 not-to-exceed authorization eventually exceeded $250,000.
Audits over the years have identified other weaknesses involving change orders, documentation, and required approvals. LACCD has subsequently revised procedures, and later audits have documented improvements.
But that history makes Arey's instinct—to open the books and follow the money—more than campaign rhetoric. It is a fundamental responsibility of a trustee overseeing an institution of this size. And the stakes aren't merely historical. LACCD still has billions of dollars in construction ahead of it.
So I asked Arey a question I wish we asked more often about government: Why not use artificial intelligence to audit it? Take years of LACCD contracts, invoices, amendments, vendor payments, and change orders, and run the data through modern analytical systems. Compare the original contract with the final cost. Compare the promised completion date with the actual completion date. Identify repeated change orders. Find contractors and consultants associated with repeated delays. Look for unusual concentrations of payments. Cross-reference contractors and consultants against publicly disclosed campaign contributions.
Let the computer find patterns that might take a team of human auditors months to discover.
Then—and this distinction is essential—turn those anomalies over to human auditors. AI doesn't determine guilt. It tells you where to look. When I asked Arey whether she would support such a forensic examination, her answer was unequivocal. Yes.
That willingness to ask uncomfortable financial questions is one part of Arey's campaign. The other is what happens in the classroom. Arey told me that her priorities include student success and career readiness, a relevant curriculum, campus safety, accountability and oversight, and respect for employees. Those priorities take on more meaning when compared with LACCD's own goals.
The district's current strategic plan calls for increasing first-time student persistence to 67%, successful course completion to 75%, and annual transfers to four-year universities to 8,369. LACCD Chancellor Alberto Román has made persistence and retention, completion, transfer, and closing achievement gaps the centerpiece of his districtwide student-success initiative. Los Angeles Community College District
In other words, LACCD itself recognizes that getting students through the system successfully remains a central challenge. Arey approaches the problem from a practical direction. What do students actually know when they leave? She worries that artificial intelligence makes that question harder to answer. What does a college degree mean if a student can ask AI to write the essay, summarize the book, solve the mathematics problem, and construct the argument?
Arey believes students should demonstrate actual proficiency before moving to the next academic level, and during our interview she raised the possibility of competency or aptitude testing, particularly for students transferring from community colleges into four-year institutions.
Her concern raises a legitimate question for every college in America: Are we measuring attendance, credits and credentials—or are we measuring learning? There is an interesting symmetry to Arey's position.
She wants to use AI aggressively against the bureaucracy while ensuring students don't use it as a substitute for learning. Use it to audit the institution. Don't let it hollow out the education the institution exists to provide. Both ideas ultimately return to the same principle: Accountability.
If LACCD spends $100 million on a building, somebody should ask what taxpayers received for $100 million. How many students used that building, and how did it enhance the students’ educational experience?
If a student receives a degree, someone should be able to say what that student learned to earn it. The Board of Trustees sits directly between those two questions. That is why this obscure election matters.
Trustees approve budgets. They oversee an enormous bond-funded construction program. They set policy. They oversee the chancellor. And their decisions ultimately affect what happens to students across nine colleges. Yet most Los Angeles voters probably know more about candidates for Mayor or Congress than they do about the people who oversee LACCD.
Arey understands that problem too. She offered a simple analogy during our interview. When people are considering spending $15 or $30, she said, they comparison-shop, look at alternatives, and ask whether the purchase is worth their money.
Then they receive an election ballot listing candidates who will make decisions involving billions. “The entire ballot is your money being spent,” she told me. “How do you want to spend your money?” That is the best argument for paying attention to this race.
Tonia Arey isn't promising she can personally solve every problem facing nine community colleges. A trustee couldn't. What she is promising is simpler. She wants to see the books. She wants to know who authorized the expenditures. She wants to examine whether the money is producing results. She wants students to demonstrate that education has actually occurred.
And she says she is willing to question decisions made by the institution she is asking voters to let her oversee. Those are testable promises. If elected, voters should hold her to every promise.
Los Angeles government doesn't suffer from a shortage of money, agencies, consultants, or elected officials. It suffers from a shortage of people willing to ask what happened after the check was written. Accountability.
Tonia Arey says she wants to give the auditors the books. Give AI the books. Give her, and every trustee, the books. And most importantly: Give the taxpayers the books.
When an institution has a $9.9 billion budget, an $8 billion Building Fund, and responsibility for the education of hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles students, there is nothing “down ticket” about the people elected to oversee it.
(Eliot Cohen is a longtime civic advocate who has served on the Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and the Board of Homeowners of Encino, where he was president of HOME for over seven years. A retired Wall Street executive with a 35-year career, Eliot brings a sharp eye to local governance. He critiques the bureaucratic missteps of City, County, and State officials. Eliot and his wife split their time between Los Angeles and Baja Norte, Mexico.)
