Nick Melvoin for LAUSD School Board

Nick Melvoin has spent his career fighting for our city’s schoolchildren. He believes that together, with the right leadership, we can ensure that every student in Los Angeles has the opportunity to succeed.

Nick served as a 7th and 8th grade English teacher at Markham Middle School, an LAUSD campus in Watts. There, he saw firsthand how LAUSD failed to support schools and 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 and others to bring a ground-breaking civil rights lawsuit which argued that LA’s layoffs violated the rights of students. They won.

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 as a legal clerk.

Today, Nick leads and facilitates efforts by students, parents, teachers, and community members to rethink and shape the future of our city’s schools. In working for nonprofits such as Teach Plus and Educators 4 Excellence, Nick helps to improve the support teachers across the state receive before and during their time in the classroom, as well as amplify teacher voice in policy-making.