This time last year, Michael Valdez was a senior at Edgewood Fine Arts Academy on San Antonio’s West Side.
In June, he crosses the threshold to accept his diploma. In November, he was sworn into his first elected office, becoming one of seven trustees to lead the district from which he had just graduated.
Unlike many elected offices, there is no minimum age to run for a school board in Texas. The only requirement is that candidates be of voting age when they take office.
“I have always been interested in local governance. One of the best ways to make a difference is to get involved in local governance,” said 19-year-old Valdez.
Previously, he served on several teen advisory boards, including the City of San Antonio Youth Commission. He recently started his second semester at San Antonio College, where he plans to study public administration.
School board members have a lot of responsibilities – they are responsible for overseeing the district superintendent and deciding how to spend the budget.
But Valdez said he wasn’t intimidated because he didn’t make those decisions on his own.
“I’m learning that we are a team of eight, with the seven trustees plus the superintendent working together to make the decisions for our community and our students,” Valdez said, referencing a popular phrase from Texas’ Lone Star Governance training. for the school board. members.
He considers his youth to be an asset: he knows what the students need because he has been in the Edgewood School District since kindergarten.
“San Antonio is my home where I reside. It is very important to me that even as young as I am, I can make a difference. Inspire others,” Valdez said.
Edgewood Fine Arts Academy’s director of theater arts, Claudia Casso, was Valdez’s teacher during all four years of high school. He was also stage manager for the school’s theater company for all four years.
“He’s always been very productive and reliable,” Casso said. “Even before I could think of anything, he always already knew what to do.”
Casso said Valdez told him he was considering becoming a director starting in his junior or senior year.
“‘He’s always been a champion of the community,’ Casso said. “And I feel like there’s so much more he’s going to accomplish. These are just the first steps of his journey.
Valdez is more than a decade younger than the next youngest director, James Hernandez, 30. The other directors of Edgewood ISD are retired or approaching retirement.
Hernandez is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a part-time college instructor at San Antonio ISD. He said anyone willing to volunteer their time and dip their toes into politics is a welcome addition to the board, especially someone who brings a fresh and youthful perspective.
“Just out of high school, his ideas, maybe his frustrations, maybe the things he’s seen in the community or just in society in general, you know, are different,” Hernandez said. “And that diversity, I’m going to say diversity is always a good thing.”
Hernandez said he played a mentoring role to Valdez, giving him advice and making sure he was enrolled in his college classes.
“Even though I’m about 10 years older than him, it’s still a bit closer than a lot of other board members, with a lot more life experience than me. And I have feel like I tried to close that gap,” Hernandez said.
His main advice for Valdez: Learn a lot and take things in the first year.
“When you govern, the roles are a little different, the responsibilities are different, and you just start to understand those differences,” Hernandez said. “Because we’re not like enforcers, we’re just the ones who set the tone.”
“We can’t think of one situation, we have to think of the whole district. And not only that, but also what we do influences our neighborhood, but can also have a ripple effect throughout the city,” Hernandez said. “When you are in a governance or leadership position, your voice kind of resonates…. Your voice is a little heavier than it was.
Edgewood is one of San Antonio’s smaller school districts – Valdez automatically became a trustee because he was the only candidate. But it had an outsized impact on education in Texas. The Edgewood families led the charge in a decades-long legal battle to make state education funding fairer.
After several lawsuits, state legislators reluctantly created the Robin Hood Funding System to distribute property taxes more evenly among school districts.
But Valdez said as a student he still noticed inequities when he visited other schools for competitions.
“I went to Seguin High School, it was a newly built school, and it was really beautiful. And I also went to Boerne Champion High School, which was also wonderful. New campuses funded locally through bonds,” Valdez said. “And it’s just a different experience — different school districts having population growth and seeing where my school district is.”
When local neighborhood schools amalgamated in the 1950s to create modern school districts, Edgewood’s boundaries remained roughly the same, following the red-drawn neighborhood boundaries of the West Side where the old acts did not prohibit not Mexican Americans. This left Edgewood cut from property taxes from downtown San Antonio or more affluent residential areas, making it harder for them to finance renovations and other construction projects through bonds.
Texas began offering a competitive state grant for educational facilities in the 1990s, but its funding is limited.The state legislature hasn’t allocated funds to it since 2016.
As trustee, Valdez said he hopes to continue the fight for equity in education.
Starting the fight at such a young age gives him more time to make an impact.
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