Activist Toolkit

1. What motivates you to seek this office? What skills, experiences, and perspectives would you bring to Triton College, and why would those contributions be valuable in the role of Trustee member?

Being an urban planner at a research institution at UIC helps me understand the power institutions, such as Triton College, have to the communities it serves and the bureaucracy that occurs within academia. They are supposed to be the resource needed for students and residents to thrive in hopes of having a better quality of life. Unfortunately, the Triton College board is currently doing the opposite and creating even more barriers for marginalized communities from actually achieving equity. This happens too often where we see people hold positions of power for their own political gain versus being there for the people they are supposed to serve. I believe I could really bring in my professional academic expertise as a board trustee with the right intentions and values to the table to potentially have a greater impact. I graduated from Triton College and was once that student who struggled academically and could have benefited if we had more resources. My parents had a 2nd and 6th grade education, so I had to learn how to navigate these hurdles on my own. My lived experiences and challenges are that voice that is missing for the students that are currently attending Triton College.

2. What are the three biggest challenges or opportunities you expect Triton to face in the coming years, and how would you work with your colleagues to address these challenges or realize these opportunities?

Looking at the data, Triton College continues seeing an overall decline in student enrollment and lower student graduation rate amongst students of color. This is problematic because there doesn’t seem to be an urgency to tackle this issue specifically. There is a continued lack of inclusivity and community voice brought intentionally by the board of trustees. It's crucial to understand that people have a right to directly be involved in decisions that affect them and an understanding how we collectively are the ones who must create formal pathways of engagement. I see a lot of opportunities for growth and creating strong programmatic opportunities that can tackle the decline of enrollment and low graduation rates. Creating a cultural center for students that can embrace their diversity is a first step in having a safe space to hold these important conversations. I can see students, student organizations, scholars, and various stakeholders across the district to help navigate these conversations in developing a well thought out strategic plan.

3. How will you balance competing interests, such as your own values and opinions, input from staff and fellow trustees, and diverse views from the community? How would you describe your leadership style and your decision-making process generally? 

I believe we need to keep politics out of our education systems. If you’re serving as an elected board member or public servant, you owe the work you do to the people, not political machines. I have zero ties with any political interest and will always hold my stance for the needs of whom I'm elected to serve. I have gone through far too many obstacles on my own to neglect the challenges that I know many students like myself had to go through. My current work at UIC Great Cities Institute takes research through an urban planning lens on how we make cities great through participatory planning, programmatic work and engaged research. This means that we intentionally involve various stakeholders that include elected officials, organizations, and community residents on how we can work collectively to enhance our communities. It’s important we are able to delegate conversations and meet people where they are because we all come from different walks of life. Leadership also means showing empathy and gratitude, a skill that often gets overlooked.

4. What values would you bring to the budgeting process? What changes do you favor in the process by which Triton conducts its budgeting and fiscal planning?

My main project at work is called Participatory Budgeting Chicago (PB Chicago), an initiative that works with Alderman, their staff, community leaders, residents, and schools around community planning, direct democracy and civic engagement. Through this initiative, I am facilitating conversations with elected officials, city agencies, organizations and community residents on how to spend a portion of aldermanic menu money in a transparent and inclusive way. I also get to provide my expertise to advocates seeking practical guidance on how to start or improve participatory democracy processes in cities across North America. If elected as a member of the Triton Board of Trustees, I intend to focus on equity, inclusion, and transparency, especially in regards to how resources are being allocated. My background in participatory budgeting gives me the knowledge and experience to evaluate Triton College’s finances and refocus the board’s fiscal priorities around student need. It also allows me to express the need to have more participatory and engaged processes where students, staff and various other stakeholders can be a part of this process and have an input on how resources are allocated.

5. Community colleges have historically been “all things to all people,” from preparing students to matriculate, to university-level education, to business-related continuing education, to community support. What is your vision for the future of Triton? How will you promote substantive discussion, build consensus among trustees, and rally public support for your vision?

I envision Triton College being a real asset to the communities it serves and providing a space for learning, knowledge creation, and interactions with different stakeholders on how we can combine our resources for the greater good. I intend on bringing in various township leaders to the table and seeing how Triton College can build more engaged youth pipeline programs in the surrounding high schools and middle schools, specifically in areas with the most need. When we don’t include a community input or create spaces for students to feel like they have a home within the college they are attending, we are serving more as a barrier instead of a resource to the community. Allowing more engaged practices into the school from various stakeholders also helps you problem solve the issues that are at hand.

6. How will you balance the community's desire to decrease the property tax burden with the need to maintain the quality of Triton’s educational offerings, create an equitable learning environment for all students, and address facilities issues?

Historically, we have seen a decrease in state funding in overall education, especially with community colleges. Since state funding has gotten less and less, colleges are faced with having to raise tuition prices and/or property taxes. This is further exacerbated by the administrative bloat within Triton College and the consistent decline in student enrollment. If elected as your board member, I will be a part of finding a solution on how to tackle this issue further. I will be advocating, along with our educators, in Springfield for more state funding and help build community empowerment on why students and residents should care about this issue. I've dedicated my work as a community planner, activist and researcher to address the disparities in our community by developing meaningful civic engagement in local government and empowering people, especially our youth to take control of the issues that affect them and their future.

7. What concerns you most about the state of educational opportunities in the wider community? Is there a particular issue that motivates you to serve?

Looking at it from a community development perspective, what concerns me is the lack of representation within higher administrative positions and board members within educational institutions. This consistently leads to a mismanagement of financial fiscal planning, exploitation of educational resources allocated to communities with the most need and political interests dictating how that money should be spent with zero to minimal accountability. What motivates me is that I understand the ripple effects of what happens when we don’t invest in people, especially our youth, due to the lack of representation in positions of power and political interest. If we continue to have the same lack of representation at top ranks of the higher education ecosystem, how can we expect greater change? I was motivated to bring in the representation that is desperately needed at Triton College. I intend to ask critical questions, challenge the status quo, and fight for participatory decision making with all stakeholders having a voice.

8. How do you define equity? Have recent discussions in the larger community informed or changed your thinking? 

Equity in schools is achieved by understanding that each student may require a different set of needs in order to achieve the same goal and accessibility to quality education. Those who work in schools understand that acknowledging students’ differences and giving them what they need to be successful also means staying focused on outcomes, both academic and developmental. Being trauma-informed in these spaces is crucial in understanding how poverty and violence stems from the generational trauma caused by bad policies. Working as a foster care case manager in the Southside of Chicago and now as a Community Development helps me understand the larger framework on how achieving equity means having good leadership whose values are tied to investing in the community. The pandemic revealed even more the inequalities that arise and how we must take these measures even more seriously.

9. How do you plan to solicit feedback from people who may be experiencing Triton in a different way than you? What barriers do you believe may exist in this process?

I believe surveying and having student/faculty town halls on how we can address the current issues surrounding the school community is one of the best practices. I think we should be able to include student groups and build leadership capacity with them on how they can help facilitate these conversations while also teaching them the necessary skills of delegating with different stakeholders as they navigate their own career paths. Board members and administrators are not experts in knowing all the pressing school's issues, which is why engaging students, faculty and staff is vital. Working together and building community by including their voice creates a positive culture in relationship building and trust that is the complete opposite of what is happening now. The barriers I see myself facing is that the continued neglect of community engagement within Triton, but also the overall district is done purposefully by the current administrative board. People are hand selected for these seats for their own political purpose. But that does not mean I wont be pressing on the need to have more transparency and accountability. The issues should not only be pressed by me, but from the community and elected leaders as well.

10. How should Triton assess its policies and progress with respect to the opportunity gap? As a Trustee, what metrics will you use to determine whether Triton is succeeding?

Currently, the Triton Board does the very minimum to address the opportunity gap. The need for more inclusive and equitable hiring practices is an issue raised by the Cook County College Teachers Union, Triton’s Diversity Committee, and numerous Triton College faculty. There was an article published by the Chicago Tribune in 2019 that stated despite the college being 45% Hispanic and 16% African American, Triton’s administrative staff is still 70% White, 10% African American and 10% Latino. Further concerns are raised that they are intentionally building a less diverse pool of administrators that continue to not reflect the demographics of the student body. As a trustee, it's important for me to speak up and get them to understand the real facts about the benefits of diversity within organizations. Triton College would benefit greatly, as research continues to show that organizations and institutions that have more diverse administratives, tend to produce better quality work and are overall more successful.

11. What lessons learned from the implementation of remote and hybrid learning during the pandemic do you believe will be applicable going forward, even after the pandemic abates?

I think the pandemic has truly shifted the way we work and how we engage with people in the workplace, schools, and in general communication. Through my work with UIC and Chicago Public Schools, we work closely with educators, students, and school administrators. Through this engagement, we get to hear and understand the positive and negative with remote and hybrid learning. I believe we need to have more engaged conversations with students, faculty and staff on how we can have a strategic plan for a safe and just hybrid learning process. Since we are still in early stages of reaching immunity through the vaccine, we must see how this summer and fall play out. Although the virus is not more deadly, it is still more contagious and we must continue playing it safe so we don’t overfill our hospitals. Understanding the complexities of everyone’s living environments and health factors, we must have some type of hybrid learning system that allows students the option of attending in-person class and virtual.

12. In the context of continued reduced state financial support and broader economic uncertainty, what are your thoughts on how Triton must manage through a difficult economic and fiscal situation?

Unfortunately, before the pandemic struck our communities, the Triton College board has a history of intentional mismanagement of funds and financial fiscal planning. Around 25% of Triton College’s budget goes to administrative salaries alone. This percentage is well over the community colleges in the area. This current toxic culture of elitism and privilege within the board administration creates an even bigger problem in trying to solve the issues of loss of revenue during a pandemic. I would address the current administrative bloat in positions and salaries that are ridiculously higher than the state’s average so that we can divert some of those funds to areas that will achieve student success. I would also see how we can find innovative solutions in soliciting funds from different stakeholders from the district to continue expanding wrap-around student support services.

13. Educational and business leaders have begun to use a "cradle-to-career" framework when talking about education. Please discuss the role of Triton within the “cradle-to-career“ framework.

The experience children and youth have along their educational journey strongly influences their ability to thrive. Developing a robust infrastructure to support, sustain, and scale-up an effective cradle-to-career framework requires the right leadership that understands the importance of investing in people and community. It also requires a long-term commitment and discipline across a broad range of stakeholders who are provided a safe space on how this can happen adequately across the district and prioritizing the areas with the most need. Triton College can be facilitating conversations on how we can expand our wide array of resources, including trade school programs. I also think it's important to think about our approach in terms of sustainability and how we begin hosting conversations on how to envision a green economy, specifically within trade school programs. Triton can serve and lead these conversations.