When Compton Unified School Board President Micah Ali checked his mailbox last week, he was in for a shock.
The school district has been making headlines as a state and national leader in student performance gains, and it has been upgrading and replacing its aging campuses to help advance that growth. Next week’s ballot includes a $360-million bond measure called CPT, which would keep that momentum going and replace badly dated Dominguez High School.
So when Ali opened a slate mailer titled “Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ Sample Ballot and Voter Recommendations,” he couldn’t believe her advice on Measure CPT.
Vote “no.”
Given Waters’ stature as a congressional representative for 35 years, Ali said, her slate mailers can swing outcomes.
“Yes, it does carry weight,” Ali said, and the thumbs-down recommendation “can literally cripple our ability to pass this bond.”
Ali was doubly surprised because the mailers went out to voters just a few weeks after Waters attended an unveiling ceremony for the new Compton High School campus. Compton High alums and hip-hop heavyweights Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre joined the celebration, and the latter was honored for his $10-million donation to the new performing arts center.
A second district high school, Centennial, is being replaced with a modern campus, and district officials are hoping Measure CPT passes so Dominguez students aren’t left behind, but also because the district’s other schools would get multiple upgrades and repairs, from infrastructure to classrooms to athletic fields.
I met with Ali on Wednesday afternoon at Dominguez, along with Principal Caleb Oliver. The school turned 70 this year, and it shows. The grounds are scruffy, wiring and plumbing are outdated, the gymnasium air conditioning hasn’t worked in years. To walk the campus is to step back in time — to the Eisenhower administration.
While we were talking, Oliver called out to a senior named Angelina Ramirez, referring to her as a superstar student. I asked Angelina what kind of upgrades the campus could use.
“Well, I like to use the cafeteria as an example,” she said, pointing to where it used to be.
What happened to it?
“It burned down,” she said. An electrical problem was the suspected cause, her principal added.
That was more than three years ago, and since 2023, the cafeteria has been an outdoor plaza.
“I feel like that’s affected students a lot,” Angelina said.
The big question, of course, is why Waters’ campaign committee — Citizens for Waters — recommended a no vote.
I’d like to tell you why it is that a rapper has written a $10-million check in support of Compton’s students while a congresswoman has told them to go fly a kite. But I’ve asked by phone, text and email, and I still don’t have an answer.
After contacting Citizens for Waters, which referred me to the congresswoman, I called her office and emailed her press office, which sent me this response at 7:43 p.m. Thursday:
“Per US House Ethics rules, we are unable to respond to your request.”
I don’t know what rules those are, but the rulebook needs some rewriting if a congresswoman can’t answer a simple question about why her campaign mailer recommends a no vote on a school bond measure.
“We have no idea, and we’re baffled,” Ali said. “Who would oppose the construction of a new school in a community like Compton?”
In the working-class community, the student population is roughly 84% Latino and 14% Black.
I suggested that Ali consider having students march over to Waters’ district office and ask for an explanation.
“We’d rather have these children’s butts in seats and learning,” Ali said, adding that “we need … to continue driving up these test scores.”
It’s not as if there is no reasonable opposition to Measure CPT. These kinds of bonds cost taxpayers real money over the course of many years, and CPT would add about $60 per $100,000 of assessed property to annual tax bills.
That would hit working folks and retirees with an added tax burden of between a few hundred and several hundred dollars a year. And taxpayers have been paying off two previous school improvement bond issues, one passed in 2015 and one in 2022.
In addition to the financial burden, according to district parent Anthonia Limon, who wrote the statement against CPT for the L.A. County sample ballot, safety issues have undermined community trust in district leadership.
“Infrastructure alone does not create safe schools,” Limon wrote.
If Waters has similar concerns, that would be one thing. But to my knowledge, and to Ali’s, there has been no public explanation for recommending a no vote. And when you read the fine print on the slate mailer, which advises voters to “take Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ recommendations with you to vote,” it only raises more questions.
“This document was prepared by Citizens for Waters, not an official party organization. Appearance in this mailer does not necessarily imply endorsement of others appearing in this mailer nor does it imply endorsement of, or opposition to, any issues set forth in this mailer,” it says.
Huh?
Are they endorsements or aren’t they?
The Times reported in 2004 that the rep’s daughter, Karen Waters, “has charged candidates for spots on her mother’s ‘slate mailer,’ a sample ballot that many voters in South Los Angeles use to guide their choices.” Last year, the Waters campaign paid a $68,000 fine for campaign finance law violations following a Federal Election Commission investigation that involved Citizens for Waters.
Also in the fine print on the current mailer:
“Appearance is paid for and authorized by each candidate and ballot measure which is designated by” an asterisk.
So are these endorsements or paid advertisements? There’s an asterisk on nearly every endorsement in the mailer, from city council to governor to judgeships to Measure CPT. The way I read this is that various parties paid for endorsements, but the mailer does not reveal who paid, or how much they ponied up. Such mailers, by the way, are not uncommon in California, according to election law experts.
“I think this is misleading for voters,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school. Although he thinks the endorsements are a form of protected free speech, he said this “reflects a very deep problem in our elections with dark money, when we don’t know where the money is coming from.”
On Thursday, I visited Tana McCoy, a Compton High grad and retired city employee who is running for Compton Unified school board. She showed me the slate mailer delivered to her home, but said she’s going to vote yes on CPT despite Waters’ recommendation.
“Children need to feel good about their environment, because that’s all part of their mental health,” McCoy said.
At Dominguez, where graduates have a 96% college acceptance rate, according to district officials, junior Zaiden Ross gave me a tour that included a stop at a gymnasium fountain that he said hasn’t worked in years. Some fountains are dirty, he added, “and some of the pipes on campus produce water that has, like, extremely high amounts of lead and magnesium.”
Zaiden took me to a classroom to show me water samples he’s still testing. Then we visited the robotics classroom, where he turned on a faucet, and the flow was closer to the color of apple juice than water. The air conditioner was rattling, and teacher G.C. Esiobu, who runs the engineering and robotics club, said there had been an “emergency” fix for a busted system. Zaiden gave me a quick rundown of dated computers and other equipment students use to design drones and robots.
And yet despite all that, a display case was filled with trophies. At competitive meets, Esiobu said, “we have been winning with little or nothing.” With equipment upgrades, she added, “just imagine the level we will go.”
There’s still time, before Tuesday’s election, for Waters to visit Dominguez High and maybe get a tour from Zaiden and Esiobu.
If she does, she might rethink that endorsement.
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