San Joaquin County Board of EducationCandidate for Member, Trustee Area 1

I have lived on our family dairy for 65 years. I have been married for 44 years and raised with my husband three children that all own their homes and are hard workers.  The seven grandchildren are one of my many blessings.  I have spent my entire adult life working with children.  I worked for Manteca Unified for 22 years and the last 5 years I was the union president for the Classified Employees. As a lifelong resident my roots are deep in the dairy background, and with agricultural education.  I have been involved with San Joaquin County 4 H as a community leader, regional representative, and Vice President.  I was named the Virgil Groves Most Inspirational Leader in the County which I am most proud of.

I was hired by the San Joaquin County Ag Commissioner and the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors to coordinate the AgVenture program.  This program served in three events 12,000 third graders to learn about agriculture that is grown here in San Joaquin.

I received numerous awards for my contributions from the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors, Congressman Jeff Denham, and San Joaquin County Ag Commissioner.  I feel these accolades show my involvement and initiative have helped AgVenture flourish with over 500 volunteers that share the same passion as I do.  To support AgVenture which covers the cost of this event which includes transportation, supplies and product is paid by grants that I wrote to the California State Deptartment of Agricluture for over 750,000.

I am proud to say that I am a Californian who believes in her community, county and state, that promotes agriculture.

I have enjoyed the six years that I have served as County Board Trustee Area 1.  The programs that we support and have started are most that I am proud of. We recently have joined forces with the military and began Discovery 1.  It is a program that is in house at Sharp Army Depot.  The students that are selected to come have to be consedered at risk. The students come from anywhere in the state.  At our last meeting we were given a report that we have a 98 % success rate.  This is almost unheard of from the other programs that are conducted nationwide.

 While serving on the board our decisions that we make affect students in how they succeed in the districts that they are in or the districts that they want to transfer to.  Our main objective is to keep families together and at the best school location that will serve the needs of the students and their families.  Interdistrict transfers and expulsion hearings are the two I take a considerable amount of time deciding what is best for that student along with my fellow board members.  It is never an easy decision to make but one that is taken seriously.