The Brief

Some parents and staff at George Washington Carver Elementary near Compton have raised alarms about two incidents in which students and adult witnesses said they saw Principal Francisca Owoaje mistreating children at the school.

In one, witnesses report that Owoaje shoved an 8-year-old from behind in a hallway. In another, they said she seized a 6-year-old at a lunch table, pushing her down in a way that “shocked” a staff member who said they saw it happen. That child’s parent reported the incident to the sheriff’s department.

In statements at school board meetings, interviews, and letters to the school district, three parents and one staff member described the incidents with the two children. All together, 12 parents and staff members said in interviews that they feel Owoaje’s treatment of students has sometimes been inappropriate and that some kids are afraid of the principal.

Separately, in half a dozen letters to the district since the start of the school year, parents and staff raised other complaints. They said that Owoaje disparaged students for eating unhealthy food; barred parents from volunteering during most of the school day; and shortened the school lunch period from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. In interviews conducted after these letters were filed, two parents said some students struggled to get their food from the cafeteria and eat in the allowed time. According to the district, it has received at least six other letters of complaint; despite a public records request, it has not made them public.

Have a tip? How to share it with us.

Owoaje, who has led Carver Elementary since May, has a doctoral degree in education, was a member of the California Bar, and previously led another school that won several education awards.

In a brief interview at her home, Owoaje declined to comment, saying she needed permission from the district. She did not respond to subsequent emails and voicemail messages. But she sent an email to the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where this reporter is a graduate student, saying that attempts to reach her and a call to her husband amounted to harassment. She also said the reporter had “been contacting disgruntled parents and staff.”

A spokesperson for the district did not respond to detailed questions

Some staff support Owoaje. “I don’t see anything wrong,” said Vivian Padilla, a cafeteria worker at Carver. “If we could tell these kids what to do with authority, maybe they would be better. But she talks to them patiently. She’s a good principal.”

“I would never say anything untoward about parents,” adds Elisabeth Gregory-Obiamiwe, an eighth grade teacher at Carver who backs Owoaje, “but I’m not sure if they have the right information.”

The backstory

George Washington Carver Elementary is located in an unincorporated area near Compton.

(

Jules Feeney

/

for LAist

)

The controversy at Carver Elementary, which is in an unincorporated area, comes at a time when public schools are struggling to emerge from the pandemic and when teachers feel pressure from parents and, in some districts, from the country’s deep divide over appropriate subjects and curriculum for students.

Teachers must adhere to strict rules on how they physically interact with students. California law states: “An educational provider may use seclusion or a behavioral restraint only to control behavior that poses a clear and present danger of serious physical harm to the pupil or others that cannot be immediately prevented by a response that is less restrictive.” Such tactics should be a “last resort,” according to the law, and should “never be used as punishment or discipline or for staff convenience.”

Compton Unified School District has roughly 18,000 students. About 4 in 5 are Latino, and almost 1 in 5 are Black. More than two-thirds of students in the school district receive free or reduced-price lunch.

Enrollment in public schools in Compton and throughout California has been steadily declining for years. But in one key measure, Compton schools have been on an upswing: Student results on statewide assessments have steadily increased, even through the COVID-19 pandemic when statewide scores backslid.

Owoaje earned a law degree from The Nigerian Law School in 1984 and a degree in comparative jurisprudence from the University of Texas at Austin, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was admitted to the California Bar in 1991.

In the early 2000s, Owoaje made a career pivot to teaching. Her LinkedIn page shows she received a master's in education in 2001 and then a doctorate five years later from the University of Southern California. That same year, 2006, she took over as the principal of Laurel Street Elementary in Compton after serving as that school’s resource teacher. While she was principal, Laurel won several awards including the Education Trust’s Dispelling the Myth Award and a Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association.

About the incidents: the lunch table

Witnesses have reported two alleged incidents of mistreatment of students by the Carver Elementary principal to school officials.

(

Jules Feeney

/

for LAist

)

On Aug. 29, about two weeks after the start of classes, first and second graders gathered around a series of picnic tables amid Carver’s teal-painted, single-story buildings. According to a staff person who was present, a 6-year-old girl and a friend sat together, chatting as they ate.

The girl stood up and started to share some food with her friend, according to the staff member who said they saw the event and who asked that their name not be used because they fear reprisal. Owoaje told the girl not to share food, this person said, but the girl didn’t seem to hear. The principal came up from behind and “pushed her down and put [her hands] on the table,” the staff member recalled. “I was shocked,” the staffer said. “I’ve never seen a principal ever do that. Normally, they just walk over and say, ‘Don’t.’”

The girl’s mother, Mallerli Escamilla, said she picked up her daughter that afternoon. “The minute I saw her, I knew something was wrong,” she wrote in a letter to the district. “Then when she told me that the principal had put hands on her I was like wait. Why and how?” In an interview, she said the principal had “slammed” her daughter’s hands on the lunch table. In a meeting the next day, she said, Owoaje told her she had touched the girl’s shoulder and gently placed her wrists on the table.

In an interview, Escamilla said: “Education is my number one priority when it comes to my kids. And right now I don't feel my kids being safe at the school.”

Escamilla said she filed a police report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in which she and her daughter gave statements to a deputy and were given an incident tag. She said a deputy told her the department probably couldn’t do much to help, because there was no bruising or other physical evidence. When a reporter visited the sheriff’s office with Escamilla, a lieutenant confirmed there was an open investigation and that documentation of her complaint was in their system.

A night-shift custodial worker at a Los Angeles Unified School District high school, Escamilla still makes time to volunteer at the parents’ center. But since the incident, Escamilla says, her daughter has become anxious about going to school on days she doesn’t volunteer.

In an interview at her home in Compton with her parents, the girl said that she doesn’t like going to school anymore: “I’m scared because I’ve never done nothing to my principal, and she’s been doing stuff to me.”

About the incidents: in the hallway

Several weeks after that incident, according to witnesses and complaints to the school district, Owoaje was walking through a hallway past a group of third grade students, one of whom was an 8-year-old girl. As the principal passed them, she pushed the girl from behind, according to Leticia Macias, who at the time was Carver’s community relations specialist, and Yvonne Garcia, a volunteer at the school. Both women said they saw the event.

“I witnessed principal Dr. Francisca Owoaje forcefully push a student” in her lower back “because she was in her way,” Macias wrote in an email to the district’s head of human resources. The student did not fall to the ground, Macias and Garcia said in interviews, but the shove was hard and inappropriate.

The 8-year-old’s mother, Sarah Machai, also wrote to the district’s director of human resources, saying that the incident made her daughter “feel unsafe.”

In interviews and letters to the district, Macias and Machai both said they went to the principal’s office to meet with Owoaje to discuss. During the meeting, they said Owoaje told them she did not recall the incident. But they both recall the principal saying if she had pushed the student, she was sorry.

In October, Macias was transferred from Carver to another Compton school but is currently on medical leave. She said she plans on pursuing a different career path.

The response

After Machai filed her complaint with the district, she says the district’s executive director of human resources, William Gideon, called to assure her that the district would do a thorough investigation and notify her of the findings. A little over two weeks later, Machai emailed Gideon to find out what had happened with her complaint. In response, Machai said she received a phone call from Yolanda Mendoza, the district’s senior director of human resources. During that phone call, Machai said Mendoza told her Macias had withdrawn her witness statement and that without any physical evidence or witness statements the investigation was closed.

In a text message to Garcia, her friend and a volunteer at Carver, Machai relayed what she’d just heard from Mendoza.

“They aren’t doing anything about it because Ms. Macias retracted her story and said she didn’t witness what happened with the principal and” her daughter, Machai wrote.

In an interview, Macias said she did not withdraw her complaint and that she emailed her union representative to notify her of what she’d heard from parents.

Gideon and Mendoza declined to comment citing Owoaje’s privacy.

Machai said she’s currently seeking schools for her kids outside Compton Unified. “My daughter now goes to school afraid of Principal Owoaje,” Machai told Mendoza in an email “And is scared to speak up because apparently nothing gets done anyway.”

Contact us

What’s your experience with Compton Unified schools? We want to hear from you! Please use the form below to contact us.

Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.

Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”

Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.

A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.

In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.

Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.

“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”

What does this say about Santa Ana politics? 

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.

“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”

Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.

“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”

Amezcua outspent Shimell — by a lot

Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.

Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.

“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."

He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.

“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.

Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.

What’s next?

Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.

For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.

Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.

He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.

The broken sidewalk in front of Nazmul Chaudhry's shop in Little Bangladesh.

(

Yusra Farzan

/

LAist

)

He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.

“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.

Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.

Nazmul Chaudhry and one of his customers, Mohamed Hassen. They both voted for Nithya Raman for mayor.

In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.

 "Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.

His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.

Nazmul Chaudry offers a lunch buffet at his restaurant but he has seen a drop in foot traffic after ICE raids ramped up.

(

Yusra Farzan

/

LAist

)

"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."

Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.

A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.

His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.

Shift away from identity politics

While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani,  an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.

In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.

“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.

Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.

Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman poses for a photograph with family members after casting her vote on Election Day during the midterm elections at the Silverlake Community Church.

(

Frederic J. Brown

/

AFP via Getty Images

)

“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.

Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”

”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”

South Asians as a political force

That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.

“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”

This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.

Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”

Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”

“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.

Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.

“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

(

Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

)

Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.