Mother of six. Teacher. Middle school counselor. Your first Area 6 Boardmember.
I am a mother of six children, all of whom have been educated right here in Norwalk–La Mirada schools, and I still have children in them today. My husband teaches at Biola, a few blocks inside this trustee area. I am also a woman of faith, and our church home is Grace Evangelical Free Church here in La Mirada.
My training is a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, a Master of Science in Counseling, and a California Pupil Personnel Services credential. The work since then has included a university lectureship in human development, substitute teaching, coaching high school track, and serving as a family support specialist. Today it is a middle school counselor’s office.
Track came first. Middle school, high school, and college, and then coaching middle school girls and high school boys. That is where you learn that a kid will tell you the truth about their life somewhere around the third mile.
I have never run for any office before, but now is the time because the schools my children go to deserve to be better for this generation and the next.
These are our district's own numbers and the state's. None of them are in dispute, and all of them point the same direction.
California is in a baby bust. The state's fertility rate fell from 2.21 children per woman in 2007 to 1.48 in 2023. Public school enrollment is down roughly 8 percent statewide over a decade, and more than 18 percent across Los Angeles County. Some of our decline is simply that there are fewer children in California.
Public Policy Institute of California and California Department of Education figures, as reported by the Orange County Register, August 2, 2026.
Five miles away, Downey Unified has roughly 3,000 fewer households with children than it had in 2017. It is not losing students. Its enrollment has held steady and by the Register's accounting has grown slightly, over the same years we lost roughly 18 percent of ours.
Same county. Same birth rate. Same housing market. Fewer families than before, and more students. That difference is not demographics. That is whether a district has made itself worth choosing.
U.S. Census household data and CDE enrollment, as reported by the Orange County Register, August 2, 2026; district enrollment series confirmed independently through CDE DataQuest.
A little ol' board of education can't stop statewide and national birth trends, of course. But we can start actually changing the wrong direction we're headed, because our neighboring district did. Why can't we?
The Board of Education makes decisions about what happens inside your child's classroom. Only one person running has a career inside one.
Running a school district is not something I have done, and there is no point pretending otherwise.
Here is what the work actually looks like. As a family support specialist, I sat in living rooms with new mothers and showed them how to play with their own babies. Small, ordinary things, done on purpose, because that bond is what keeps a child safe. One mother told me she was barely holding on after her delivery, with almost nothing and almost no one to lean on. An hour a week in that living room was the difference between a family that held together and one that did not.
Now it is middle schoolers. A twelve-year-old blows up in fourth period, and the useful question is never which punishment fits. It is what happened, what is missing, and what gets that child reset and pointed back toward doing well. These daily experiences are what compel me to run for the board.
A board does three things. It sets priorities, it approves a budget, and it hires one employee, the superintendent. Nearly every problem in this district is a priority problem or a budget problem, which makes it a board problem, which means it can be fixed by people who know what they are looking at.
All six of my children have been, and four are still, students in Norwalk–La Mirada schools. That means seeing what this district does well, because my own kids got the benefit of it, and seeing precisely where it lets a family down, from both sides of the desk.
My campaign is not a negative campaign against our schools, because some good changes have happened just in the past few months. Instead it is about bringing a fresh set of qualified eyes to the table for more of the change we need, and rejecting rubberstamp agendas. We can't afford to go backwards.
A school board governs. It does not run the buildings. So everything below is something this board has the authority to direct, and something you can hold me to.
Our academic results are better than our reputation, and we have never once made the case for ourselves. Set a district standard for what every school publishes about its own results, and market this district to the families inside it the way a private school markets to them.
Cerritos College is already our key partner in dual enrollment, and La Mirada sits inside the Cerritos College district, so those are our own community's college seats. Families leave our district for more rigor every year. Every student deserves a shot at real college credit without the fear of an AP test, and we should be adding new pathways and programs alongside it rather than standing still.
When a child has an IEP or a 504, that plan only matters if it actually happens at a desk, in fourth period, on a Tuesday. Our teachers are carrying more than any one person reasonably can, and the accommodations a family fought for are what quietly get lost in that load. Give teachers the training, the staffing, and the classroom support to deliver what was promised, because a plan nobody has time to follow is not a plan.
When a teacher sends a student to the office, something should happen. A student should not walk back into class as though nothing occurred. Teachers need to know that when they use their judgment, administration follows through. Follow-through is not the same thing as harshness. The point is a response consistent enough that a student learns something from it and comes back ready to do better.
Finally, because the district has stuck its head in the sand for too long, we need to survey every family that withdraws and publish the reasons every year to hold ourselves accountable. Asking them is free. Not asking has been expensive.
Districts are funded per student in a seat. When a student leaves, the money leaves with them, but the campus, the buses, and the front office cost exactly what they cost. That is why more than 600 California schools have closed since 2015.
So I am not going to promise you that no school will ever close. I do not know that, and anyone who tells you they do is asking you to trust a promise they cannot keep.
Here is what I will promise. Before this board makes another decision that big, it will have actually asked the families it is deciding for. That did not happen last time. It should have.
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