No Need to Vote: San Leandro has a New School Board

Nobody in California has yet to cast a ballot for the November elections (being August and all) but three new people have been elected to the San Leandro School Board and one more, trustee Diana Prola, has been re-elected for a second term. 

Corina Lopez will be representing Area 1 (the northwestern area of town), Vince Rosato will do the same for Area 3 (the southeastern part of town) and Jason Toro will be the at-large member.  None of them had an opponent and thus have been automatically elected to the Board.

Corina Lopez runs a technology consulting business in San Leandro.  She is a first generation Mexican-American, her parents were immigrant farm workers who settled in Soledad.  Corina did very well in school, went on to graduate from Princeton and study finance at UC Berkeley.  She worked on Wall Street before co-founding her own company. 

Corina’s background is very similar to that of many of our students, and I hope her personal experience leveraging the public school education she got into a springboard towards a higher education and a middle class lifestyle, will help her in directing our district towards educational policies that help, rather than hindrance, students.

Vince Rosato is a teacher at the New Haven School District.  I haven’t met him more than briefly, so all I know about him is what I was able to find through Google.  He has extensive educational experience, having taught every single grade as well as adult school.  He has experience working with adults with mental disabilities, as well as English learners.  He’s an active union member, has been on the CTA, and is very active both in his Church (Assumption) and with neighborhood watch.

Jason Toro probably presents the other side of the coin to Corina Lopez’ experience.  A first generation Puerto-Rican American, he was born in the East Coast but moved to Hayward in late childhood.  In Hayward he fell with the wrong crowd and became a member of a gang.  At 22, he decided to turn his life around and was able to do with the help of community programs.  He went on to work with troubled youth and later with adults with disabilities.  He is married with four children all at the San Leandro school district.

I’ve met Jason and I’m very impressed by him.  I hope his personal experience will contribute to an educational policy that addresses the realities that our children are confronted with.

With these three new Board member, the San Leandro School Board will have a majority Latino representation for the first time ever (Mike Katz-Lacabe, my husband, is of Latino origin). It’s about time :-)