Rachael Maves: Hello everyone. You are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. This podcast is part of the leadup to the upcoming measure what we value Summit, scheduled for February 5th through 6 2025 in Fresno, California. The summit emphasizes honoring and amplifying student voices, fostering inclusive classrooms and equipping Educators with tools for impactful change. You can find more information at parsecsummit.com. Today we are talking to Jimena Mendez.

Jimena is the first student elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Education, the largest Regional Education Agency in the country. As a student leader at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, she is active in student government film and the aclu's youth Liberty program. In her role as student board member, Jimena advocates for youth engagement diversity. And specialized schools and systemic improvements in education in Immigration. She aspires to work in Congress to create greater opportunity and equality for all. Jimena, thank you for joining me today.

Jimena Mendez: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here today. I can't wait to share more about my experience as a student board member.

Rachael Maves: Well, I am so grateful that you're. Willing to spend time with us and, like we talked about, thank you for finding space even outside to have this conversation. It does look like a beautiful campus.

Jimena Mendez: Yes, thank you. Yes, I'm super excited. Of course, I had to take this opportunity to share my experiences, so of course, I'll do anything.

Rachael Maves: That's great. So, like all of our podcasts, one of the things that we like. To start out with Jimena is just the opportunity to tell your story. Tell me a little bit about yourself: what brings you Joy, the things that you love and are passionate about. Help us to understand you and how you got to the position that you are.

Jimena Mendez: Yes, so well. My name is Jimena. I, like you said, I am the first student. Board member elected onto the LA County Board of Education, and I got elected on this position in 2022, so it was my sophomore year and currently I'm a high school senior. So I've been on this position for about almost three years, which is pretty crazy to me because, yeah, and I got. So I basically represent the.

LA specialized schools. So we have two specialized schools: our Arts high school, which I currently attend an I steady film there and we I also represent my, the other stem school, which is also a high school that focuses on providing students extensive like math and science courses. So on these board meetings I go and I get to speak the student point of view on certain issues and budgets. And recommendations that the board brings, and something that I just I really love doing is I'm also really involved with like student government and Leadership at my school. So I'm also the ASB president at my school, where I love to organize different food drives and clothing drives, and I love to help my classmates and peers also, like we've recently also. Held a college panel at my school, so we provide different resources to upcoming seniors, so Rising seniors, and with different resources on College and I.

That's something that I really enjoy doing. I just love helping my community and I love getting involved with my peers and other community members and I also, of course, also enjoy like volunteering. That's something I love to. Do, and as most of my community is actually undocumented or their minority community, so I love to get involved with communities and organizations that support them. So, for example, like you mentioned, like the acou of Southern California, I love to go and learn more about how we can bring more Mental Health Resources to our schools and how we can bring more Arts. Education to our schools and, you know, stop police brutality, and those are things I love to learn more about and get involved with.

And of course, I also love to hang out with my family and my friends, of course.

Rachael Maves: How could you not? So tell me a tell me a little bit about your interest in film. That's pretty exciting, and for a senior to have that Focus already where. Did that come from and tell me about that passion?

Jimena Mendez: Yeah so, and when I was a middle school student, I had a really strong interest in film and specifically like writing. I really loved writing, but I always like dreamed of like doing something in film which is really it's like a really interesting thing. Cuz. Now I want to do like political science, but I'll get more into how that.

Rachael Maves: H, that's a. That's a big shift in 2, you see. But yeah, go ahead.

Jimena Mendez: Oh yeah, I was just going to say so. I joined my high school. Well, I, when Middle School, I was looking for arts high schools that had like film programs, and so my high school had a film program for students interested in pursuing like. A cinematic arts career and it's actually quite interesting because my high school I have to like audition or create like a film and interview to get in. So it's like a whole. Yeah, it's like a different process than a normal.

I guess, like high school, that you just like sign up and just attend.

Rachael Maves: But yeah, I'm always, I'm always interested to hear that path into those places in the. Art. So my daughter is in her freshman year and she went to an art school for college on the Savannah College of Art and Design, which is just amazing and it's it's always like watching her kind of go through where she wanted to land and what that process was and whether or not she should focus on art. Or something else like it's. It's: yeah, it's a process and a journey to kind of find what that Niche is.

Jimena Mendez: Yeah, it is. And actually that's kind of like I was saying what happened to me. I, when I like first joined, I had the mindset of going to film school. That was actually like my goal and. But then I, when the position. Opened in for becoming a student board member in my sophomore year.

I decided to join because at my high school I was actually the only Hispanic student in studying film at my high school, which to me was actually pretty, really like shocking, because I Los Angeles is very a diverse student population so it was just weird seeing like me being the only Hispanic and that's something that. I wanted to talk about as a representative for the specialized schools, which is why I actually applied for the student board member position originally.

Rachael Maves: So that was kind of your motivation around getting involved and wanting to Advocate, and then how has it shaped that perspective on education for you?

Jimena Mendez: Yeah, so when I first joined the position I that was something I. First spoke about was bringing more diversity into like to minority Comm or to specialize schools and specialized programs and bringing those programs to like minority communities that usually don't have like access to them. And while I was, you know, advocating for that, we were able to establish Like A diversity committee that focused on uplifting certain or. Uplifting minority communities and providing them different resources on how to get involved with specialized schools. But the more I was involved with that work, the more I saw how like important it was to provide a pathway to education to all sorts of students of no matter like their so socioeconomic status, their racial ethnicity, anything, it doesn't matter, it's just. It's so important to give them the opportunity to education, and that's what shaped my passion for advocating for you know, youth representation and advocacy in education, because I think that the students are the ones that you know Point those issues out.

Sometimes adults don't really see it, but we do and we experience daytoday a school, we go to school and so having the accessibility,. To share our experiences in rooms f filled with adults is something that is super important, and I don't think maybe I, maybe if I didn't like mention this issue, maybe they wouldn't have seen it. So it's just something. I'm really grateful for being able to discover this new passion that I have.

Rachael Maves: I love that and it's so I find in my experience in education. Sometimes people aren't. Taking advantage of opportunities, because they just don't even know that the opportunities exist. So having a student be able to share with other students and community members like here are Pathways and opportunities that you can take advantage of also. That's just really powerful, Jimena.

Jimena Mendez: Thank you, yes.

Rachael Maves: So how do you think hearing from students like you at our Summit will help shape? Future decisions in education.

Jimena Mendez: Yeah, so definitely, I think that if we, you know, involve more students in these conversations, I think, kind of like what I me mentioned, it's definitely allows adults to hear our point of view and sort of like pay attention to our needs. So whatever like needs that we, you know have, and if we don't have a student to like voice those,. Needs. I think it's much harder for adults to see our needs because you know they're not the ones that experience the day-to-day educational system, and so being able to have students like myself be able to represent those students who you know are going to school and our classmates, I think that's super crucial for being able to take to creating a better educational system in the future. And so I just think it's super important to have youth voice in those spaces.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, so you've been with the national student board member Association for the full three years that you've been on the board, is that?

Jimena Mendez: So it's around two years, so was actually like my junior year.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, so what's one way you've grown or changed through your work with a national student board? Member Association.

Jimena Mendez: Yeah, so I think when I got involved, well first before I had didn't, wasn't involved or aware of this organization, I kind of felt like sometimes alone through this process because I was the first student and so there wasn't anyone before me to kind of teach me the ways of like how to manage board member role or how to you. Know voice the issues that I had. I kind of just had to figure it out, but by being by discovering this Association. I actually discovered it through a conference that I went, like my very first year or second year actually, and it was in Sacramento, or sorry, San Francisco. There's so many places, but in. San Francisco and there it was just a student like board member training with a lot of student board members, and some student board members were involved in this organization and they introduced me to it and when I was able to join I was able to hear other experiences of student board members and you know what they were doing, what type of work they were doing in their own District or.

County and so that what they were explaining to me, it kind of inspired me, you know, to do more and I was like, oh, I didn't know that I could, you know, do this. I didn't know I can like make my own recommendation or, you know, make like that diversity committee that I sort of helped established. I didn't know. I could, you know, do that until a lot of students kind of helped me like flourish my position and just like discover all the things that I can sort of do with it. And so it was really helpful in that way, and I think that I grew as a student board member because hearing other people's experiences. Helped me involve myself more with my position and take more advantage of it.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, and from what I've heard from others as well, it sounds like there's a just a real Community too, the other members and connecting and learning from each other. Has that been your experience as well, and what has that been like?

Jimena Mendez: Yes,. Definitely so like I was like I was saying how originally I was feeling kind of like alone through the process by joining this like Association. I was able to like monthly meet with student board members or even have like a chat with them and just like if I had any questions or if I had like a concern. I. Could just like text, all the group chats and like with the student board members and we would have monthly meetings on like certain things that we would like to increase our or Association, how we could grow our association. And just having access to that Community made me feel like I wasn't going through it alone like this position.

I wasn't navigating it alone cuz we were all like. Going through the same process and it was just really fun to just be able to connect and have a sort of community to just get to talk to.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love that. So I want to hear, like you brag a little bit on the great work that you've done. What's one thing you're most proud of as a student leader?

Jimena Mendez: Yes, so I think. Well, I think I was talking about this earlier, but I think it's definitely involving myself in our diversity committee that we first established. It was last summer and we would meet. We would have this committee to increase our or decrease our racial demographic Gap in our la schools and our diverse students, so it would allow more students to be involved in these schools. And have a chance to be enrolled in them. And so it was me and a few other student, a few other adult board members as well as other cabinet members on the LA County Board of Education and we would sit in the table and for like the whole summer we would meet like once, two every two weeks.

And so we would brainstorm different strategies on how to Target our minority communities and give the give them the information on how to apply because, like I was saying, we have to audition to enter the school. So it's kind of a different process and a lot of students in my community don't really know, understand that, and so we would go to certain communities and we would. Provide them like art workshops or like sampling on how to do these auditions. And also, something else we did was for first generation students. We were able to start like calling them and help them throughout their application process, because obviously, as a first generation student, I think it's difficult to understand, you know, especially with auditions, interviews. It's more difficult to go through that, and so we would like call them and we would have that's some a workshop or that's a strategy that we established to make sure to call them and check in with them with whatever needs they have, and so different strategies like that we brainstormed and we're able to help decrease that racial gap between our schools and our diverse students and.

Like I was saying, that's originally the main purpose why I was joining to. You know see more students like myself in my own school, and so I was really happy that we were able to do that and actually now as a senior the new freshman class I'm seeing way more like diversity, so I'm really happy that those. Strategies were able to help bring more diversity to our newer class and I'm just really happy to be able to take part of that work, yeah, and to see, like, the tangible impacts that it had. That's exactly, yes.

Rachael Maves: So I want to wrap us up, but I'd love to hear a little bit. You're in your senior year, which is. Super exciting. What in your plans? What are your next steps? Where are you headed?

Jimena Mendez: Yeah, so, right now actually, I had just, or a few weeks ago, I finished my college applications, and so we're I'm super happy about that, and all my decisions come out in March, so I have like a month to wait, but I do want to. Study political science and hopefully you know further my advocacy within Youth and just help uplift them and, you know, let them know that these positions are out there and their voice is needed, and so that's something I really want to continue and I also would like to continue. You know my film, so I would love to like minor in film or just like maybe on the outside. Just do my own. Film projects. Continue that, because that's something I really enjoyed doing.

So, yeah, did political science and film so, but I'm just still going to wait for my decisions in March. But we'll see.

Rachael Maves: Awesome, do you have one that you're holding out? Hope for that you're you'd really love to be able to get into.

Jimena Mendez: Yeah, so I kind of want to go to. I want to go to Washington DC, but to get more. Involved with like the capital, so maybe like Georgetown or just like a school out there in the east coast, because that would be really nice to explore a different community and Vibe than here in Los Angeles.

Rachael Maves: Yeah well, I saying all the good thoughts and best wishes for you, Huma, and we'll have to keep. Me posted and I'm really looking forward to meeting you in person at the summit.

Jimena Mendez: Yes, I can't wait. Thank you so much for you know having me. I'm super excited exced, and I'm I was super happy to share my experiences today.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, thank you, Jimena. I appreciate your time today. Parsec education is hosting the measure. What we. Value Summit on February 5th through 6th in Fresno, California. Join us for impactful conversations on empathy, engagement, hard truth s more.

Alongside leaders like Chaka Booker, Rich Stowell, Jamila lcot, pepper Miller and student speakers like Timmy laori and Jimena Mendez, we have a promo for 25% off all Sumit tickets until January 31st. Seats are filling up fast, so make sure you. Secure your spot today. Get your tickets at parsecsummit.com.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.