Nick Melvoin is proud to serve the dynamic communities of District 4 on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. Born and raised on the Westside of LA, Nick’s election to the Board in May of 2017 follows a career fighting for our city’s schoolchildren as a teacher and advocate.
As an LAUSD Board Member, Nick has focused on putting students and families at the center of District decision-making by increasing parent and community engagement, making the district more transparent and accountable, directing more resources to schools, protecting our most vulnerable students, and bringing a new spirit of partnership and collaboration to LA Unified. He successfully implemented an “Open Data Portal” to increase transparency with publicly accessible data about the District’s budget, academics, enrollment, and more; worked to reduce the District’s structural deficit by over $6 billion with common-ground solutions; fought for principals to retain more local control over school-site budgets; and has directed hundreds of millions of dollars to schools to modernize campuses, bridge the digital divide with classroom technology and student devices, and put more resources into classrooms across his district. He chairs the district's Facilities & Procurement Committee, focused on bringing more transparency and accountability to campus projects and resource processes. He also serves on the Innovation Committee, Parent & Family Engagement Committee, and Greening Committee.
Nick began his career as an English teacher at Markham Middle School, an LAUSD campus in Watts, where he also coached soccer and baseball and helped his students launch a school newspaper. At Markham, he saw firsthand how poor governance neglected the needs of our city’s most vulnerable students. When he and two-thirds of Markham’s teachers lost their jobs due to budget cuts, he fought to be re-hired and worked to end the indiscriminate, seniority-based teacher layoffs that harm so many LA families. As a teacher, Nick joined the ACLU, Mayors Riordan and Villaraigosa, and others to bring a ground-breaking civil rights lawsuit which argued that LAUSD’s layoffs violated the rights of students.
Nick holds a BA from Harvard University, a Masters in Urban Education from LMU, and a law degree from NYU, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Service Scholar. He was recently awarded a certificate in education finance from Georgetown University. In addition to serving as a teacher, Nick has worked in the Obama White House with the Domestic Policy Council and the US Attorney’s office where he took part in various civil rights investigations. Prior to his election, Nick led and facilitated efforts by students, parents, teachers, and community members to rethink and shape the future of our city’s schools. He also served as an adjunct professor at LMU where he taught a course on Education Law. In working for nonprofits such as Teach Plus and Educators 4 Excellence, Nick helped to improve the professional support California teachers receive, as well as amplify teachers’ voices in policy-making. Nick has recently served on the boards of the Brentwood Community Council, Teach For America Associates, University Synagogue's Social Justice Committee, United in Harmony, The Jewish Center for Justice, and the Los Angeles County Young Democrats—where he also received their Young Democrat of the Year Award in 2018. He is a graduate of the Jewish Federation’s New Leaders Project and the New Leaders Council and has chaired the Jewish Federation’s Educators’ Network. Nick is a recent recipient of the Young Democrat of the Year Award for LA County, the Courage Award from SpeakUp Parents, and the Elected Official of the Year Award from the California Charter Schools Association. Nick is also proud to serve as a director of Camp Harmony, a camp for homeless and underserved children. His commitment to solving educational inequity was first sparked as a volunteer at Camp Harmony more than sixteen years ago.