A Chicana, First Generation Graduate, and HBUHSD Alumni
Priorities
"By meaningfully including our diverse community’s voices, I will create policies that ensure all stakeholders’ needs are met."
Equity
In our community, there are individuals who are often not represented in the activities offered and the decision-making process. At the school level, a number of students are excluded from activities due to their socioeconomic status. The high fees to be an athlete excludes a large portion of the student population. The costs of AP exams and textbooks and club fees have also excluded many students from participating. Although these activities are considered extracurricular and voluntary, these activities help build a student’s high school resume for their college applications.
Not being involved in these activities, and many others, could hinder a student from being a competitive candidate for a spot in a college of their choice. Not having a higher socioeconomic hinders students from being represented in activities in their school.
Additionally, other aspects of a student’s life, such as housing insecurity, legal status, and family troubles, affect a student’s involvement and performance in school. We need to build greater capacity for programs that support students facing situations that affect their ability to learn and thrive in school. For example, we must do better to help undocumented students and students facing housing insecurity get the help they need to succeed and gain a greater sense of stability.
Research shows that student outcomes are better when they have teachers whose background reflect their own. Lack of diversity in our staff and leadership can make minority students feel unrepresented and alienated from their academic environment. During my time at Marina High School, I felt like an outsider among my peers because of the lack of representation of Latinx members amongst my peers and teachers. I only started to identify as a Chicana until my second year of college when I learned about the history of Mexican-Americans in the United States. Representation plays an important role in the development for teens during their high school years. As a board member, I will be an advocate for programs and resources that improve equity in our district.
​
In addition, we must address the rules and protocols that inequitably target ethnic minority students. I have personally witnessed and experienced the unfair enforcement of school policies. Such experiences build up and negatively affect students' relationship with school.
We must work together to create a more equitable environment where all students can learn and grow.
​
Well-being​
The safety and health of all members of the school community is vital. As a Trustee, I would advocate for the development of more robust and holistic resources that better serve the needs of our diverse student community.
With regards to COVID-19, school opening policies need to start from community input. Community consultation requires genuine inclusion and listening of the community's feelings and needs. Policies should be created with those needs in mind beforehand rather than having community input after the fact. Physical and mental health of teachers and students are vital to a thriving learning environment. School nurses, wellness specialists, psychologists, and counselors are even more important now more than ever and we need to ensure schools have the resources to maintain inclusive access.
While I was a student at Marina, I experienced firsthand the inadequate access to School Nurses, School Psychologists, Career and College Advisors, and Academic Advisors at our schools. Both funding and more creative solutions (such as starting peer counseling programs) need to be put in place to begin addressing this issue for students, teachers, and staff members.
Community Engagement
The voices of parents, students, staff, and teachers within our community must be heard and accounted for in order to create a more robust and outstanding experience for all community members. By meaningfully including our diverse community’s voices, I will create policies that ensure all stakeholders’ needs are met.
The traditional way of creating policies for our school district has been a top-down approach in which policies were written to meet the needs of teachers with little to no input from the teachers, staff, parents, or students. A way to change this is to have a bottom-up approach in which community members are consulted to create a more effective policy.
In addition to creating a platform for individuals to voice their needs and concerns, I will also take steps to better ensure underrepresented members of our community have the resources and tools they need to gain access to the platform and voice their concerns as well.
As a daughter of Mexican immigrants, I experienced the difficulty of translating and explaining paperwork and policies to my Spanish speaking parents. Although some documents are available in Spanish, the Spanish used in these documents were difficult to understand for them. This is just one example of how our current practices and policies fail to meaningfully include all members of our school community.
As a Trustee for HBUHSD, I will leverage my experiences as a former HBUHSD student to better connect with the entire student community to better identify and address the issues they face. In addition, I will develop inclusive forums that enable teachers, staff, and parents to voice their concerns and influence district policies.