Why I’m Running for School Board
Because Literacy Is Personal to Me
I didn’t begin this summer expecting to run for the Sonoma Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees, yet life moves in unexpected ways. I live in Glen Ellen, and when it appeared that no one was going to run for the Area 1 seat, a former school board trustee approached me and asked me to step up.
So I did.
As I went through the endorsement process, began learning more about the district and talked with teachers and members of our community, what began as an unexpected opportunity became something much more meaningful to me. I’ve also been asked what draws me to serve our schools when my connection to public education isn’t through being a parent.
My answer is that our schools belong to the whole community, and supporting our students is an investment in its future.
I see that same sense of shared responsibility in friends who mentor young people and make a meaningful difference simply by taking an interest in a young person’s success. I lived in Hawaiʻi for a number of years, where I came to appreciate the tradition of hānai and a broader sense of shared responsibility for the keiki, the children. Living there exposed me to a way of thinking about children and community that influenced me.
I believe all children are our responsibility. They are our future, and we have a responsibility to make sure every child has the opportunity to learn, thrive and reach their potential. For me, that starts with literacy. And my connection to literacy is very personal.
When I was in first grade, my teacher contacted my mother and told her that I was a child who could not learn to read. I would need to repeat the first grade. My mother and grandmother did not accept that.
My grandmother went to a bookstore in downtown Washington, D.C., and ordered elementary school reading primers. Then she began working with me herself, no more than 20 minutes at a time. In the evenings, while my grandparents cleaned up after dinner, I would read aloud as my grandmother dried the dishes and helped me with the words. Within about three months, I was reading at a fourth-grade level.
Clearly, I wasn’t a child who couldn’t learn to read. I was a child who needed some additional help and a different approach. There is a certain irony in that story because words eventually became my life. I became a writer. I’ve worked in journalism and communications, and today my work involves taking complicated information and making it understandable, accessible and useful to people. I’ve also pursued personal storytelling projects, including documenting Hawaiian oral histories.
So when I talk about literacy, it isn’t abstract for me.
Recently, a teacher at Flowery Elementary talked with me about students who are bright and eager to learn but sometimes need additional support or a different kind of scaffolding. That resonated with me. I saw that same principle firsthand during my time at Girls Inc. of Alameda County, where our work supporting underserved girls and their families showed me what the right resources, encouragement and opportunities can mean in a young person’s life.
Every child’s circumstances are different. But my own experience taught me what can happen when, instead of deciding what a child can’t do, someone asks what that child needs in order to succeed.
That is the primary reason I’m running for school board. I want every student in our district to have the opportunity to develop the skills to read, write, comprehend and think critically. Those skills have always mattered, but they matter even more in a digital world and in the age of artificial intelligence.
Our children need more than access to information. They need the ability to understand it, question it, evaluate it and form their own ideas.
That’s an investment not only in our students, but in the future of our entire community.
Students First. Accountability Always.