What’s at stake in this race

Long Beach Unified School District is one of the largest school districts in the state and the second-largest in Los Angeles County. This election, two seats on the five-person governing board are up for grabs.

Three candidates have entered the race for the District 5 board seat, which represents the airport and the areas north and east of it — including Los Altos and parts of Lakewood.

Incumbent Diana Craighead is president of the board and its longest-serving member. She has seniority and the backing of the teachers union but will be up against two newcomers: Maureen Flaherty, a special education teacher at a local charter school, and Sara Socheata Pol-Lim, former executive director of the Long Beach nonprofit United Cambodian Community.

What does the Long Beach Unified School Board do?

• Employs, evaluates and works with the superintendent. The board also sets the policy for hiring other personnel. 
• Establishes fiscal priorities. The board adopts the budget and the Local Control Accountability Plan (a three-year plan to connect the budget to student priorities). The board also oversees issues related to facilities and the bond money spent to pay for construction and upgrades. 
• Approves adoption of the curriculum. 
• Develops and adopts board policies. These policies govern everything from graduation requirements to safety to equity.
• Sets the direction for the district. This school board has prioritized equity and advancing educational outcomes for all students. Since 2020, this board has taken a “student outcome-focused governance” approach, which means board members make decisions based on how they will directly affect students.

You might know the school board from

Policies the board has passed

• In the fall, school board members passed a cellphone ban that went into effect across the district this semester. 
• Board members also changed how the district approaches safety by giving more power to school safety officers (to avoid involving outside law enforcement) and offering diversion to students who commit small crimes. 

Changes to curriculum

• Board members recently relaxed graduation requirements, mandating three rather than four years of math. They also added personal finance and ethnic studies requirements, in compliance with state law.

Approved cuts

• To ameliorate the district’s $70 million deficit, the board approved a cascade of cuts to mental health support, library staff, parent-support workers, nurses and hundreds of teachers.

Here are some things the school board doesn't do

• Board members don’t oversee day-to-day operations in schools and classrooms. That’s the job of teachers, administrators and school-site staff. 
• Hire, fire or manage district employees — aside from the superintendent, the only employee of the board. The school board oversees and evaluates the superintendent, and currently is leading the search process for the next superintendent. 
• The board sets the vision and policies for the school district while the superintendent implements those policies and oversees the daily operations across the district.

Fast facts about the Long Beach Unified School Board

• School board members serve four-year terms and have no term limits. Some candidates running, including Diana Craighead and Juan Benitez, have served three consecutive terms and are running for their fourth.
• Board members run as nonpartisan candidates, though the board has historically tilted liberal, based on policies and voting records.
• In 2024, each board member received a salary of $18,000, not including benefits, according to the state controller’s database of government compensation.

What’s on the agenda for next term

Long Beach Unified has had a tough year. The district is operating at a large deficit due to declining enrollment, rising costs and not enough state and federal funding. As a result, the school board has already authorized tens of millions of dollars in program and position cuts to balance its budget. And the board will have to make more tough decisions next year.

Meanwhile, the district has work to do in order to meet the ambitious academic achievement goals the school board set for June 2028. The district isn’t on track to meet most of these goals, and the board will have to strategize about how to advance student outcomes.

The board will also have to steer the district as a new superintendent takes over to lead LBUSD following Jill Baker’s retirement after serving six years in the role.

What it takes to win

If one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the June primary, that person will be declared the winner, and the general election will be canceled. If no candidate receives a majority, the two candidates who receive the most votes will face off in the November general election.

The candidates for Long Beach Unified School Board, District 5

Diana F. Craighead, incumbent

Diana Craighead has served on the Long Beach Unified School District Board since 2012. For the past four of those years, she’s been president.

In her own words

Over the past six years, Long Beach Unified has lost about 10,000 students, an amount that exceeds the size of entire school districts, Craighead said. Alongside declining enrollment, COVID and the ongoing threat of federal immigration officers have driven attendance down overall — from about 95% into the 80s. With the help of a public information campaign, Craighead said the numbers have begun to creep back up. But every bit matters because for each percentage point attendance dips, the district loses about $8 million, she said.

“And all these things mean we are now deficit spending,” she said. “Now we’re having to make cuts … very unpleasant decisions, especially when you consider the majority of our budget goes to personnel.”

Making these types of cuts takes an “emotional toll,” Craighead said, but it’s something she’s had to handle before. So she believes her experience with the School Board and institutional knowledge as a whole will be helpful in making the inevitable tough decisions. Craighead said another priority for her if elected will be to finish overseeing the implementation of the district’s Student Outcomes Focused Governance. This is a highly touted educational structure that identifies student goals based on research and community engagement, and then constantly evaluates their progress.

“You’re in a position of making positive change for the education of thousands of students, and somebody says, 'You’re going to have to work harder but your students are going to do better,'” she said. “Well, sign me up.”

More voter resources:

• Website: https://dianacraighead4schoolboard.com/
• Endorsements: Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson; Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB).
• Full endorsements list here.

Go deeper: 

• PTA Leader to Fill District 5 Seat (LBSchools.net)
• LBUSD Board of Education adopts equity policy, elects Craighead as president (Long Beach Post)
• Long Beach Unified School Board District 5 candidate questionnaire: Diana Craighead (LAist + Long Beach Post)

Maureen "Quinn" Flaherty, special education teacher

Maureen Flaherty

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Courtesy Maureen Flaherty

)

Maureen “Quinn” Flaherty was born and raised in Long Beach and has two educational credentials, in addition to a master’s degree in education/counseling. She said she’s currently working as an education specialist at a “virtual independent charter homeschool.”

Flaherty said that in 2020, COVID prompted her to become an activist. She launched a speaker series to educate the public on their constitutional rights and later founded the Long Beach chapter of the Eagle Forum, which emphasizes “pro-family” values and identifies itself as “America’s oldest conservative grassroots movement.” She said she also volunteers with Moms for Liberty.

In her own words

Flaherty said LBUSD is facing an ongoing budget crisis that affects everything from staffing to student achievement. If elected, she said she’d conduct a line-by-line audit of district spending to identify where cuts could be made that don’t impact “classroom-facing resources.” That’s because 60% of LBUSD students are performing below standards in reading, writing and math — and parents have lost confidence in the district, Flaherty said.

“When I’m out talking to the voters … they don’t really like what they’re hearing about the school district,” Flaherty said. “They feel that there’s a socialism/Marxism agenda.”

She said parents want a candidate that’s “for their values” and are critical that the district is not “teaching the constitution.” Flaherty says she doesn’t support vaccine mandates and believes that transgender students should only be allowed to play sports in accordance with the gender on their birth certificates. Flaherty has also stated that when it comes to allowing federal immigration agents on campus, she’d have to take it on a case-by-case basis.

Flaherty said reviewing LBUSD’s curriculum and addressing student’s mental health needs would be among her top priorities.

More voter resources:

• Website: MFlaherty4LBSchoolBoard.com
• Endorsements: Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff and Republican candidate for California governor.
• Full endorsements list here.

Go deeper:

• Long Beach Unified School Board District 5 candidate questionnaire: Maureen Flaherty (LAist + Long Beach Post)

Sara Socheata Pol-Lim, educational consultant/parent

Sara Socheata Pol-Lim

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Courtesy Sara Socheata Pol-Lim

)

Sara Socheata Pol-Lim was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and separated from her family under the Khmer Rouge regime. Forced into labor camps, many of Pol-Lim’s family members died, while Pol-Lim and her mother eventually escaped to California. Pol-Lim says she’s passionate about education because she was denied access to it for so long.

“Being a child who survived the genocide era in Cambodia during the political turmoil … I was without formal schooling for over eight years,” she said.

Pol-Lim began learning English through ESL classes in the U.S. She went to college and then graduate school, and in 2018, she received her doctorate in educational leadership from Cal State Long Beach. She was also the first woman to serve as executive director of the United Cambodian Community of Long Beach — a position she held from 2007 to 2015. In 2025, she released Coming to Terms with Historical Trauma: A Memoir.

In her own words

Pol-Lim said the trauma of life under the Khmer Rouge persists even decades later, and she hopes to serve as an example for her Cambodian community in Long Beach, home to the largest Cambodian community in the U.S. She said she’s made a concerted effort to overcome her “chronic distrust” of institutions and break free of the deference she was coerced into during the genocide.

Now, Pol-Lim said she can’t afford to stay silent. “To me, being American is being involved,” Pol-Lim said. “It’s the time where I, on a personal level, believe that being just a spectator is no longer adequate.”

If elected, Pol-Lim said her first priority would be addressing LBUSD’s budget deficit; specifically, evaluating how funds could be shifted to prioritize teacher retention and to avoid more layoffs. She said she’d also use resources to keep students — and educators — safe from immigration enforcement. This would be accomplished in part through more campus security and ensuring confidentiality of student enrollment information, she said.

More voter resources:

• Website: SPolLim4SchoolBoard.com
• Endorsements: Vice Mayor Roberto Uranga, District 7; former City Council member Tanya Uranga, District 7

Go deeper:

• The Historical Society of Long Beach Presents: Sara Pol-Lim
• Long Beach Unified School Board District 5 candidate questionnaire: Sara Pol-Lim (LAist + Long Beach Post)

How to get involved