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Roberta Weintraub emerged as a polemic figure in the anti-school-busing movement that swept the San Fernando Valley in the late 1970s.
Elected to the Los Angeles school board as an activist, she became a coalition builder, being elected president four times during her 14 years as a school board member.
After an unsuccessful run for Los Angeles City Council in 1995, Weintraub moved from politics to what admirers call her most important work, blending her passions for education and law enforcement.
Weintraub, who founded the Police Academy Magnet School Program, died early Tuesday after a long fight with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. She was 83.
Former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton called Weintraub ”the guardian angel of the Los Angeles law enforcement community.”
In the late 1990s, Weintraub brought the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Police Department into a partnership, founding the Police Academy Magnet School Program to teach high school students the principles of law enforcement, constitutional law and the criminal justice system.
The program has grown to nine campuses.
“With graduation rates that consistently exceeded other school programs, most of these young people went on to college or the military,” Bratton said in an email to The Times. “Some of my favorite moments with her while I was chief were the graduation ceremonies...