Allison Joe is an “anti-racist Chinese-American PTA mom, speaking Spanish, and routinely traversing Spanish-speaking north Sunnyvale to predominantly Asian Cupertino listening to Latin music in my minivan.” She is currently a candidate for the Fremont Union High School Board in 2024.
I loved the recently released, beautifully articulated article Integration, Integrity, and Equity: A Framework for Advocacy. Integrated Schools always sends out the perfect material at just the right time (at least for my own schooling journey). It prompted me to finally sit down and share a recent turn of events in my own Integrated Schools journey and express my gratitude for this movement and community.
Seven years ago my husband and I made the intentional decision to send our eldest daughter, and now our younger daughter, to San Miguel Elementary, a Title 1 school in a predominantly Spanish speaking immigrant neighborhood, as the second class of the new Juntos Spanish immersion program in north Sunnyvale. We live in central Sunnyvale and open enrolled into the program, which existed as a Program of Choice , a special program created by the district to retain neighborhood families, encourage cross-neighborhood school integration, and reduce resource disparities between schools in the district, specifically in the Title 1 schools that families of privilege have tended to opt out of.
There was a lot of discussion within my own family. My husband is a Filipino-American immigrant who attended school and grew up in a similar north Sunnyvale neighborhood. He was initially resistant to choose this school as it pushed against many of the ways even immigrants are socialized to aspire to “good” schools for our children. Choosing a school like this involves a lot of evolution for every family member.
Within days of our child starting kindergarten, I was recruited to get involved in the school’s Parents’ Association (PA). As the only English speaker with an all Spanish-speaking board, I began my journey into learning to speak Spanish, adopting the culture and customs, building relationships in our community, and taking on roles that those who presented as Latinx immigrants faced a harder time filling (like asking for fundraising donations from local businesses). In 2017, I played a key role with my bilingual Mexican counterpart in transitioning the PA to a PTA for purposes of tax ID number, bylaws, and the training and support offered by the PTA.
I was introduced to the Integrated Schools podcast in 2019 and it immediately resonated with me, articulating my hopes, unease, inspiration, discomforts, successes, challenges, joys, and anxieties along this journey. As a parent getting involved with our school community, the Integrated Schools podcast and book clubs/reading lists helped me understand dynamics I was aware of in my gut but perhaps hadn’t yet articulated in a nuanced, contextual, cohesive way. Integrated Schools let me know I was part of a community and something larger than my individual experience. As the Juntos language immersion program, as well as other regional variables, resulted in shifting, gradually gentrifying demographics at our school, the concepts discussed and support offered in the Integrated Schools community helped strengthen our intentionality about centering our school’s historically Latinx culture, language, and sensibilities and trying to implement a PTA without doing harm by imposing white/American raised, middle class norms on the longstanding community.
I have been very active building community at our school, but not with the intention of putting these things on a resume nor for outside recognition. I was just hoping to help build capacity and engagement in a community centered way. So I was surprised when a trustee from our elementary school district board of education called me out of the blue back in August 2022 to run for the Fremont Union High School District (FUHSD) school board. The high school board spans the two Bay Area Silicon Valley cities of wealthier (and now majority Asian) Cupertino and the more diverse, mixed income (although – unsurprisingly – not usually mixed within school sites) Sunnyvale. There was significant alarm about two right wing supporters being backed for one of the available seats, as well as a need for a stronger equity voice on that board. In particular, north Sunnyvale – the more Latinx, immigrant, lower-income side of the district where my kids go to school and where I have been deeply involved in the community – historically has lacked representation on the FUHSD board.
The FUHSD board wasn’t even on my radar, as my eldest was just starting middle school last year and I never thought of myself as someone who would run for a school board position. I did my due diligence but ultimately opted out for health reasons and other commitments. I was approached again this past spring by the elementary school board trustee and separately by a former educator from the high school district due to a FUHSD board vacancy. There would be an application and appointment process where the remaining four trustees would vote on an applicant to fill the remaining vacant term. My health was in a much better place and the PTA I had helped start had grown to where it wasn’t dependent on a few people running it and had a solid foundation built on equity, inclusion, and intentional community building despite the many ways PTA (and all of our institutions) can default towards middle/upper class, English speaking, college educated, American born, parents with privilege.
The people who asked me to apply for the board suggested that I could be a bridge in the community. I realized that as the anti-racist Chinese-American PTA mom, speaking Spanish, and routinely traversing Spanish-speaking north Sunnyvale to predominantly Asian Cupertino listening to Latin music in my minivan, I might have a unique understanding of both worlds. My upbringing in, and unlearning of, Asian achievement culture, as well as my experience in integrative, Latinx centered community building gives me a unique perspective.
Integrated Schools was at the forefront in my mind as I was crafting my application and preparing to participate in a series of two open public meeting interviews that were broadcasted via Zoom. I can draw a direct through-line from the Integrated Schools Podcast and reading recommendations to the ideas I articulated in my application and interview responses. None of the other applications or interviews addressed these issues nor had similar experience in equitable community building. I was new to the process but was able to articulate my ideas and held my own with more experienced and politically seasoned candidates. I had really strong community support from a diverse range of other north Sunnyvale parents and from throughout the community, including many monolingual Spanish speaking parents from my school who attended the interview meetings and spoke out with their support, voices shaking, and with my PTA founder friend translating for them. I felt so moved to hear their words of support. It made me realize that every little gesture, greeting, hug, and knowing their names and details about their lives and families made such an impact.
Among the eight highly qualified applicants, I was one of the top two finalists. The four trustees were deadlocked (interestingly along gender lines) between me and the former mayor of Cupertino. As midnight approached, and the threat of a $2 million district special election loomed if they didn’t make a decision that night, one of the trustees flipped her vote from me to the former mayor. It was deeply disappointing to see the north Sunnyvale community show up so strongly and still be denied a seat at the table. It was an eye-opening process, and increased awareness of how decisions are made that affect the school district and our children’s education.
Although I wasn’t appointed that night, I surprised myself and a lot of others by doing as well as I did and bringing such strong, diverse, grassroots community support including the hardest to reach and historically underserved groups. We began to shift the narrative about which families “care about education,” what it looks like to shift systems to meet a community where it’s at, what it takes to bring equitable practices to life on a community scale, how to embrace bilingualism on the terms of the underserved, and how to build community in ways that don’t perpetuate systems of privilege and marginalization (or concentrations of resources and vulnerability).
As of a few months ago, I surprised myself again by deciding to start a campaign for election to the high school board in 2024. As Integrated Schools founder, Courtney Mykytyn, used to say: “People like you do things like this.”
I extend my thanks to everyone in the Integrated Schools community for all you have done to make it possible for me to even consider running for a school board position. I felt very alone when I first chose San Miguel Elementary back in 2016. It is also not a coincidence that that election year galvanized my decision to dig into my school community, living my values, and building the fairer, more just world I want my kids to grow into. The Integrated Schools movement came along at just the right time in my own personal, school, and community journey. The podcast and readings gave me the intellectual foundation and courage to guide our fledgling PTA in ways that prioritized serving and centering our community while acknowledging hegemonic and potentially alienating systems and processes. It helped me to articulate and lean into what I already knew was the right thing to do and the right way to be in our community. It gave me the language and ideas to articulate larger issues in education and society that align with equity work and anti-racism. It is also 100% not lost on me that these opportunities fall on those of us with relative privilege, and I hope my campaign leads eventually to more Latinx representation of the north Sunnyvale community. In the meantime I hope to serve as an ally, bridge, and hand up for many others in the process.
Integrated Schools makes a difference in ways I never could have predicted seven years ago or even a few months ago. It is shifting the narrative and culture about public education, school choice, what constitutes a “good” education, and what living your values looks and feels like. I’m sure this work is making an equally large difference for other individuals and their communities nationwide.
Allison, You are an inspiration. You BUILD COMMUNITY with Authenticity and grace. We are GRATEFUL to have you as a community leader. YOU’LL be a great trustee.