With the end of the recall election on Oct. 7, its time to get down to business that has an impact on Cerritos College directly.
The Nov. 4 election is only a week away, and yet what is so important about this election? And why should students care?
This is a local election and one that effects Cerritos College directly. There are currently 12 candidates running for Board of Trustees at Cerritos College. There are four seats open. Three of the four candidates are current board members running for re-election.
Bob Arthur, Ted Edmiston and John Moore are the current board members and are running for re-election.
The other seat that is open is current board member Mary Loya seat. She has chosen not to run for re-election, which has made the number of candidates grow. Even though she is not running, she is supporting candidate Leonard Zuniga.
Here are three of the candidates that are running for the seats on the board of trustees.
Isidro ‘Skid’ Rodriguez
Isidro ‘Skid’ Rodriguez grew up knowing that education is one of the most, if not the most, important things to accomplish in life.
With the power of exposure of one field trip to UCLA when he was young, he was able to follow his dream of attending the school and live his dream out.
Rodriguez has a degree in Sociology from UCLA. He is also a lifetime member of the UCLA Alumni Association.
His journey to success has come a long way from where he grew up. He comes from a strong work ethic where he learned from his parents, that were hard working immigrants. From growing up poor to going to a major university to also having and starting a family, he wants to give others the same chance for those opportunities.
He has been happily married for 12 years and is the father of two boys and two girls. He also likes to watch and play sports, listen to music and be active with kids in school. He says that he is not one to stay still; always wanting to do more.
Rodriguez has set some high goals that he would like to accomplish if elected to the Board of Trustees.
One of the main reasons why he wanted to join the school board is because he is looking at his kid’s future, looking at the value of the institution, and the need that more still needs to be done in the communities to let people know that we are here to serve them.
“My parents always taught me to be as educated as you can be, so in spite of the fee cuts, I want to make sure that students have access,” Rodriguez said.
He also thinks that outreach is very important in getting students educated.
“If you are not given the opportunity to find something out, then you won’t,” he said.
He also wishes to make sure students, before coming to college, are being prepared for the experience of college as early as junior high and high school. Rodriguez also believes that the Board of Trustees make it important to work with K-12 so that long term changes will take place.
Another goal of his is to start college programs in young students good opportunities for the future.
Along with some other candidates, Rodriguez agrees that the Board of Trustees need to have a vision. Currently, he feels that there is a lack of vision, a status quo philospy.
“If it’s broke, why fix it? I look at it as broke,” he said.
He wants a vision with the students in mind and wants to see what students see as a priority. That is why Rodriguez says if elected, he would have an open door policy with office hours so that anyone could come in and talk to him about anything.
“This gives the students a chance to voice their opinions and concerns [while] letting us know what we should be focusing on,” he said. He also sees that we should be looking at the school’s transfer rates because they are not where they should be.
“This should be the premier college and its not, because its starts with leadership. If they (Board of Trustees) don’t have vision, it will never be what it could be,” Rodriguez said.
There is also a need to tap into other financial resources and looking at how money is used.
Also if elected Rodriguez would like to be a part of appointing a president that has the vision to make Cerritos College, the premier college.
“It needs to be given the vision to get to the next level. If the college moves to the next level, the students will move to the next level,” Rodriguez explained.
The main points of his campaign are:
- Strong and accountable leadership
- To dramatically improve the transfer rate at Cerritos College
- Make Cerritos a resource center for the community
- Budget issues- to ensure that services will be continued and improved
- To go out and get money from other financial resources
- Find students money so they can go back to school
- Make this the premier college in Southern California
- To increase the vocational programs and make them better
Lastly, Rodriguez thinks that “it’s important to give back to the community and to let people know that we are here for them.”
He is about education and making Cerritos College the place where everyone wants to come and learn.
Laura Sanchez-Ramirez
A soon to be two-year-old energetic girl, Laura Alicia is running around campus, getting to know students that hopefully her mom Laura Sanchez-Ramirez will be able to represent if elected to the Board of Trustees on Nov. 4.
Laura Sanchez-Ramirez is one of two women running for the Board of Trustees. She is running mainly for Loya’s open seat. She has nothing against the current Board of Trustees. Sanchez-Ramirez supports the incumbents and compliments them on what they have done for the school during the budget crunch.
She is active in her church community and has worked in broadcast radio to help make people aware of community events such as finger printing children at local police stations.
She is married and has two girls and two boys. She is an assistant cub scout master for one of her son’s cub scout troop and is also a part of the Citizen Task Force (CTF) in Bellflower.
Sanchez-Ramirez can relate to Cerritos College in many ways. She can relate to the new Avalon at Cerritos otherwise known as the senior center because when her mom was sick, she knows how people feel when they are taking care of his/her parents.
“I am seeing the changes in the community and want to help prepare for the years to come,” she said.
She is a diplomatic and enjoys working together with peers. She comes from a diverse community.
“I love diversity and to help out all in need. I hope with me being on the board, it will help students and my children,” Sanchez-Ramirez said.
She also wants to make sure to study all the issues. If someone brought it up at a meeting, that means that it is important and we should take pride in it.
Her main goals for the college include making the daycare available to students that need to and want to attend school. The daycare is right on campus so that children are close to where their parents go to school. She wants to make people more conscience of the opportunity that one can take by having the child be at daycare while attending college.
Like many other candidates, Sanchez-Ramirez is also focused on the budget issues concerning the state and the college.
“His ( Gov. elect Arnold Schwarzenegger) focus is on education. We will have to wait and see. I think he is well rounded when it comes to his relationships with the Republican and Democrat party. I admire it and I think that it could be a positive,” she said.
Sanchez-Ramirez wants to stress that the Trustees don’t have control over the budget for the state.
Her solution is that as a college, we can lobby it to be changed.
She grew up in a single parent home with only her mother and brother. She saw her mom fight to keep the family going and pushed education on her children.
“That is where my strength comes from, my mo
ther. She always pushed us to have the things we needed and to get an education,” Sanchez-Ramirez explained.
Another main point of her campaign is to make Cerritos College a safe place to come to school. She wants to get better lighting on campus and let people know that there is an escort service on campus available through campus police.
“If you don’t feel safe, you are not going to come to school,” she said. Also a goal is to establish a crisis-hotline for students that are having trouble with life or school.
“Students are stressed during finals, so the teachers need proper training to make sure the students are OK and believes that they will succeed better to know when they are cared for,” Sanchez-Ramirez said. She also thinks that you can see the changes when you instill positive ideas.
Raul Havice Morales/b>
A young boy playing hide and go seek with his friends on this very campus is now dreaming of the crown jewel (Cerritos College) as a place where he wants to make some changes and become a part of the Board of Trustees.
His mom and dad attended school here and he grew up living across the street from the college.
His father had a career as a steel worker and his mother is a professor at the college and also was a state assemblywoman.
Morales has a AA degree in History and finished his Administration of Justice classes. He has been a police officer for 18 years in La Palma. He is married and has four kids, two are twin girls that currently attend Cerritos College.
He is being supported by the Faculty Federation.
“I believe that Cerritos College is the crown jewel of the community. There is no other school that has such impact on its residents in the community,” he said.
Morales wants to keep it (Cerritos) accessible to as many students as possible and offer the classes they need so they can transfer to universities.
One of his main goals for the college is to get technology in the classroom. It is important to have the students be able to step out of here and go into the business world.
Morales also wants to continue teacher training and believes that the campus needs updating.
“The college has looked the same since my mom and dad went here. It needs modernaization, so it can be a place where students can relax,” Morales said.
Morales feels that he has the right vision for Cerritos College. He has always been an active member of the community and a public servant.
Another way that Morales wants to make some changes in the college is to fix parking on campus.
“I want to make it easier. The parking here is bad and it needs to be a lot safer,” he said.
He also wants the trams to be active again. Campus safety needs to continue for night and day students.
Morales says that there is ways to get grants for things like the trams. He has help write grants for the police department to enhance campus security. It is something that will keep the students safe and there is a way to push it through to get a grant for the maintence and up keep of the tram.
“This campaign is about a strong leader for the college as a whole, not just for one or two programs, so it could benefit the college and enhance the educational process,” Morales commented.
He really wants to be a part of a leadership team and focus on the students where the chalk hits the board.
Morales jokes that students always tell him that “I’m at Cerritos College for now” I don’t why people say that, I think this is a great place to come and prepare you for the university.
As a member of the board, Morales would like to work with the state more to make sure that something is done about student fees.
* Note from the Editor- Due to time constraints the writer did try to contact every candidate for a interview.
