Get to Know Your Board Member: Interview with LAUSD’s Kelly Gonez

In April, FIS launched a “Get to Know Your Board Member” interview series with each member of LAUSD’s Board of Education. School board members can enact meaningful change in a child’s education journey, so parents or caregivers should know who they are and what their priorities are.

This month, we spoke with Kelly Gonez, who represents Board District 6 (the East San Fernando Valley, including Sylmar, Pacoima, Panorama City, Lake View Terrace, Sun Valley, North Hollywood, Tujunga, and more).

Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Gonez has served on the LAUSD board since 2017. She was Board President from 2020-2023, and she currently chairs the Children and Families in Early Education committee. Gonez has worked as a middle school and high school teacher and was appointed by President Obama to serve as an education policy advisor.

Can you share a bit about your life story, and what inspired you to become a board member?

I was born and raised in the Valley, so I am a Valley girl at heart. My mom is an immigrant, and my dad is actually from the Midwest, so I understand Spanish, but my spoken Spanish is not the best. My mom has been a big inspiration for me. Seeing her fight to complete her education at an LAUSD adult school (the Pacoima Skills Center) here in our community and how education unlocked a pathway for our family to have more stability and for her to get a better job that would help her achieve her dreams—that all informed me from a young age about the power of education to transform lives.

My family has always focused a lot on education as a way to change and improve your life circumstances. Whenever I had a hard time at home or we were struggling in some way, for me, books were an escape and a place where I could feel safe. Even though I couldn’t travel places abroad in my actual life since we didn’t have the ability to do that, I could go anywhere through a book, so I found that to be really important for me as a young kid growing up.

Those early experiences and the encouragement of my family made me want to choose a career where I could help support our community and serve others. I’ve never really been interested in a career where I’m making money. I want to help others since I know what’s been possible for me is only because of the help I’ve received from my family and our community broadly. That’s why I chose to become a teacher and eventually run for the school board.

For a time, I was a middle school and high school teacher, and then I worked in President Obama’s administration doing education policy work, where I advocated for our highest need students—students experiencing homelessness, students in foster care, and immigrant and multilingual students. In both of these roles, I felt like I could make a change, but there were bigger barriers that were impacting my students and their families, so I felt that I needed to take on a bigger role to really make an impact on those systemic challenges. Wanting to fight for my students and students like them throughout the East Valley was why I decided to run for the school board back in 2017.

What have been some of your proudest achievements during your time serving on the board?

For my first major achievement, I had the honor of serving as board president from roughly 2020 to early 2023, and one of the things I did as board president was lead the board in setting goals for the school district for what we wanted our students to be able to know and do by 2026. This led us to develop the strategic plan to help us achieve these goals. This was the first time that the board had actually set these district-wide, North Star goals. I believe that setting those priorities and that agenda is a big part of why we’ve made steady academic progress over the last several years.

For my second major achievement, I’ve been a leader on environmental issues as well. Our community in the East San Fernando Valley is heavily impacted by heat, lack of shade, pollution, and heavy industry. So, in 2022, I passed a resolution around Green Schools for All, where we’re making all of our playgrounds at least 30% green space and shade by 2035. Since then, we have had 150 school greening projects that have started, so that is really exciting and especially impactful in the community I represent in the East Valley.

What message would you like to share with our families, and how can families partner or work alongside you?

I want to always start by thanking our families and recognizing that our parents are the first and most important educators of their kids and our students. Our families have an incredible ability to shape and support the educational future of our kids, so I want to uplift that first, as well as our parents being partners with the school district in supporting the educational success of our students.

In terms of working with our office, I would absolutely encourage all families to have meetings with us and partner with us. We have parent advisory cabinets and listening sessions that we do every year on different topics. Right now, our focus is on middle schools and how we can help improve and strengthen the middle school experience for our students here in the East San Fernando Valley. Parents are a huge part of that work, and what we hope to do is to not just listen to families but also work together and co-create on finding solutions to the problems we’re seeing.

I also want to mention that the ICE raids have had a huge impact on our communities in the East San Fernando Valley. In response, we have had a cabinet—the We Are One cabinet—focus on uplifting the needs of our immigrant families. We have parents who sit on that cabinet to provide their voices and their experiences and ensure we’re responding to their needs on a regular basis.

In times like these, what gives you hope?

Our students give me hope. Whenever I am feeling low, I visit a school just to see the brilliance in our classrooms and the amazing things that our kids can do. That gives me hope because I know that they have limitless potential. Fighting for our students is the most important thing that any of us could do in our lives to make sure that our children are well taken care of.

Is there anything else you want to share with our audience?

I want to uplift that, when we’re talking about literacy, we must continue to uplift the needs of our multilingual learners and students with disabilities. As I’m looking ahead to my third term and last four years in office, this is a continued need that I’m hearing from my communities: more focus on students in special education, as well as continuing to support our multilingual learners.

Literacy is not just about English proficiency; it’s about uplifting and supporting the home languages of our students and their families. It’s really important for our families to speak, talk, read, sing, and do anything involving words with their kids in whatever language they speak at home. That’s what’s going to help our kids be successful.