Ahead of the November general election, the Southern California News Group compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below. Questionnaires may have been edited for spelling, grammar, length and, in some instances, to remove hate speech and offensive language.
MORE: Read all the candidate responses in our Voter Guide
Name: Jose Lalas
Current job title: Professor of literacy and teacher education
Incumbent: Yes
Other political positions held: None
City where you reside: Corona
Campaign website or social media: https://joselalas.wixsite.com/jl4schoolboard, Facebook, LinkedIn
How can the school district best meet the needs of all students, including those learning English, those who need mental health service, those in special education programs and those from low-income backgrounds?
First of all, the school district must recognize the diverse identities and special needs of ALL students so it can distribute or redistribute its attention and resources. Then, a realistic policy followed by administrative regulations must direct the school system and allocate resources to do a thorough job of identifying the specific special learning needs of ALL students from each diverse group especially the EL, special education learners, those from low-income families and those who need mental health and counseling needs. Attending to the needs must focus for the students to have a sense of belonging and opportunities to experience self-confidence, competence, and autonomy or valuing their interests. Paramount to these efforts will be effective professional development for teachers, staff, administrators and parents. Corona-Norco Unified School District has started this scenario effectively and must continue to maintain, sustain and improve on its delivery.
Some school districts have adopted transgender notification policies to notify parents if a student says they are transgender. If your district has such a policy, do you support or oppose it? Why? If yours does not, would you support or oppose such rules? Why?
The Corona-Norco Unified School District has the policy of respecting the rights of students and their parents or guardians in connection to the privacy of their personal values and beliefs and the confidentiality of their personal information. The district has also passed a resolution to recognize the plight of LGBTQ+, including transgender, staff and students and its commitment to a whole-child approach of meeting the academic and social needs of all students including LGBTQ+ students and creating inclusive policies and administrative regulations and practices that uplift and promote a sense of belonging, acceptance, motivation and engagement for all students including LGBTQ+ youth. For me, while this issue is very important, this debate can take away our energy in focusing our attention to knowing, respecting and valuing who our diverse students are including our LGBTQ+ students who have been experiencing bullying and high percentage of them thinking and attempting suicide, how to motivate ALL our students including the LGBTQ+, and how to engage ALL diverse students including the LGBTQ+ academically, socially, cognitively and affectively. With this rationale, I have to oppose the transgender notification policy.
What is the biggest issue the school district faces, and how would you address it?
While safety and security is one of the important priorities of the district, the biggest issue facing Corona-Norco Unified School District will center around making sure that ALL students learn the necessary foundational skills and critical thinking strategies in literacy or reading and writing and mathematics including art. While the district has all the necessary curriculum materials and instructional know-how because it has hired well-qualified teachers and its current teachers have demonstrated excellent and effective teaching, it has to further improve its program delivery by making sure that all teachers, classified staff, administrators and parents are included in the planning and implementation of its program of instruction. The district is in the right path of putting learning at the center of what we do by adapting the Professional Learning Community where all the stakeholders’ voices are included. For this to be effective, we must make sure that recognize who our students are, how to motivate them and how to engage them. This involves providing them the opportunities to experience a sense of belonging, competence, and autonomy and giving them activities to use art and other content areas such as social studies and science to teach literacy and mathematics.
Why would you make a good leader, and how would you represent the diverse communities within the school district?
I would make a good leader and I have been putting that into practice and action in my service to the school district by recognizing the diverse social and cultural identities of our students, teachers, administrators and parents. It is through this honoring and valuing of everyone’s backgrounds that I am able to collaborate with teachers, classified staff, administrators and parents in our school community. I am very conscious and intentional in using best practice approaches that are based on research in my interactions with all the stakeholders, may they be in discussing curriculum and instruction that will benefit all students and listening to and involving parents, tackling difficult issues related to employer-employee relations, finance and budget decisions, safety and security, equity for all and professional development for teachers, administrators, classified staff and parents. I always visit schools, which provides me with the appreciation and insights on what to do and how to serve our diverse students better and listen effectively to ALL parents’ concerns quickly including Hispanic/Latino(a) parents, African-American parents, parents of students with special needs, Asian-Pacific Islanders and many other parents from diverse cultural and social identities.
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