Everywhere I go these days, folks tell me how disappointed they are that I lost, and that they hope I give it a shot again. Some ask me if I think that the fact that I am Latina affected my chances to win. My hope was that it would affect my chances positively, especially the fact that I am bilingual. With a student population that is 40% Latino, many voters told me they thought it was important to have someone like me on the Board. It seems that my experience, in education policy and as a parent was important for 1,218 voters (out of 4,018 who voted), which is no small thing. Especially when you consider a crowded field and a late start. I'm proud of the results.
Still, my answer to the question about whether I'm running again is simple. I'm not deciding what I will do two or four years from now today. What I will continue to do is what I was doing before I decided to run for School Board: expressing my opinion.
I wrote my first blog here on Patch in April of 2012, when the debate about the El Marino adjuncts was in full force. We were also facing a severe budget crisis and were looking to Prop 30 and 38 to fund our schools. At the time I wrote:
I am grateful for the hard work of so many parents at El Marino, and fortunate that my child has enjoyed the benefits of these funds. But I also know that when our children graduate from El Marino, they join the rest of the children from the rest of the schools, learning together, growing together, in one school. Does it make sense that some children are advantaged by coming from a school where the parents were able to provide more staffing through fundraising?
A year and a half later, you can see that my thinking is consistent, as evidenced in an article entitled "An Equal Education in All Culver City Schools - Vizcarra Has Opinion" written by Ari Noonan. Ari quotes me saying “Every child, no matter what neighborhood they live in, no matter the family’s income, no matter the color of their skin, has the right to the highest quality education”.
While it's unclear that a new set of purple and white bilingual lawn signs will pop up over Culver City in two or four years, you can be pretty sure that you will find me writing here. I also have a group on Facebook called Culver City PEERS (Parents and Educators for Equity and Resources in Schools). I am creating a third platform, from which I will write, tell stories and encourage others to write and tell stories about equity in our schools. And as I did during the campaign, I will not engage in negative personal attacks. I will stick to conversations about the values that underlie our positions about policy.
I intend to talk about what I think happened in Culver City in this election, which is significant. As I told people on the campaign, had I been elected, I would have been the second Latina in Culver City's history to be on the School Board. The first Latina was Julie Lugo-Cerra, who has taken to writing the history of Culver City.
For now, I will follow in her footsteps and make sure that in at least this School Board election goes, it cannot be said that "history is written by the victors". A people's history, as Howard Zinn has shown us, can be written by anyone with the commitment to do it. Or best put in his words: "I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.”
You can count on me for that.
