Step Up to Run by Myel Jenkins

Author:Myel Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Candidate Myel Jenkins

Office Sought: School Board Trustee

District/Municipality: San Juan Unified School Board (Sacramento County)

Population: More than 200,000 voters covering seventy-two square miles of Sacramento County

Incumbent: One incumbent running for a second term with two seats open on the Board

Personal Information: Age forty-seven at time of election, Myel is bi-racial, divorced, with two children who attend San Juan schools.

Political Landscape of San Juan

San Juan Unified School District (SJUSD) covers seventy-two square miles of Sacramento County and serves students and families that live in the county’s suburbs. Currently, it is the eleventh largest school district in California and has sixty-four schools that serve 40,000 students.

San Juan has a history of competitive elections. There are more than 200,000 voters within the San Juan district, and it is not uncommon for the top candidates in SJUSD races to win by securing 25,000 votes or more.

There were two seats up for election in 2018. One incumbent was running for re-election and the second incumbent decided to not run. The two school board trustees serving in the two seats that were up were white men who were older, retired with no children attending San Juan schools at the time. The 2018 election would shake up the makeup of the school board; with only one incumbent running, the outcome was guaranteed to bring in at least one new member who would be a woman, a person of color, and younger than most of the other school board trustees.

The November 2018 race was remarkable for the San Juan Unified School District in many ways. One was that all four candidates were Democrats, including the incumbent, even though school board races are non-partisan. Even in non-partisan races, local political clubs can support candidates and provide endorsements that they then share with their membership and local voters; donate to endorsed candidates providing funds that can be used to purchase advertising to reach voters; and/or encourage club members to volunteer for the candidate by making phone calls or knock-on doors to get out the vote. The incumbent and three candidates, including me, were all Democrats seeking endorsements and donations from local Democratic clubs. In a school board race with four candidates and two seats, we were competing for club resources that included endorsements, donations, and volunteers.

The second remarkable piece of this particularly competitive race was that the three non-incumbent candidates, including me, were all women of color with kids attending San Juan schools. While there is a history of women running for seats on the San Juan school board, very few of those candidates were women of color running in a district in which their children were enrolled. Before the 2018 election, in fact, it had been over fifteen years since an elected school board member fit all of these characteristics: a woman, a person of color, and a parent with children in San Juan schools. And no seated school board trustees at the time of the 2018 election had any children attending San Juan schools.

Why I Ran

I have had many roles over my life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.