Her special-needs son was ‘harmed repeatedly’ at Fresno Unified. Now she’s running for district’s board
Emma Villa thought about her 10-year-old special-needs son — and how the Fresno Unified district failed to give him the proper intervention — when she decided close to the filing deadline she would run for a seat on the school board.
Villa said she became convinced she could tackle the dysfunction and disconnect plaguing the state’s third-largest school district instead of “waiting for someone else to do it.” So, this election Villa is challenging incumbent Andy Levine to represent the Fresno High Area on the school board.
“I don’t worry about my election, I worry about the students,” Villa said. “I think we can fix Fresno Unified.”
Villa’s teaching career began inside a kindergarten classroom in the rural Tulare County community of Earlimart more than 20 years ago. Since then, Villa has served as an adult school teacher and school administrator. She launched an education consulting company to help children with special needs. She’s an active member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, where she helps families call for the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities.
For Fresno Unified’s school board races, The Fresno Bee sat down to talk with every candidate. Here are five questions for Villa. Answers are edited for length and clarity.
Why are you running for the school board?
I have a master’s in education, a teaching credential and an administrative service credential, and I’ve been in education for most of my life. I’m bilingual in Spanish and I’m a certified advocate. I’m also a mother, adoptive and biological, of neurotypical and neurodivergent kids. That’s probably the biggest reason that I’m running.
When I see what our kiddos are going through and what they’re not getting, I’m shocked and dismayed. I guess I was waiting for Superman, and so I felt compelled to do something. I want to make a difference.
I adopted my youngest child when he was 10 and was diagnosed with a disability. Once he got into the public school system, there was nothing but barriers. I saw the value of early intervention. I saw the failure when appropriate intervention was stopped. We’ve had to make a lot of changes for me to be able to stay home and homeschool him because he was harmed repeatedly at Fresno Unified. We weren’t listened to, we weren’t supported. So I’m very passionate about literacy and early intervention so that our students can be successful. Without literacy, we don’t have a seat at the table, the gap will continue to grow, they will never be able to compete with their peers. To me, literacy is a civil right.
What are your priorities?
We’re graduating over 40% of high school students who are not reading at the grade level, and we’re expecting them to be career- and college-ready, which is absurd. We’re concerned with absenteeism, but students who cannot read do not want to be schooled, they’re not going to be engaged. I’m looking at facilities, we say we’re really interested in literacy, but it’s not reflective of our decisions. We’re remodeling the school board building and spending general funds on that.
What about literacy-for-all and equity access? My adoptive children struggle with dyslexia, so I look forward to a strong academic program that can do for all. In a nutshell, I’m looking at the learning environment. A safe and inclusive environment, especially with the new bond that’s coming up.
How can Fresno Unified improve student literacy?
I’ve listened to the board meeting and they don’t realize, in my personal opinion, that there’s institutionalized discrimination. They blame the parents for the student’s inability to read or for their academic achievement. Parents didn’t go to college to learn, teach or become an administrator. It’s what you do with the students when you get them into the classroom.
You have children whose parents don’t help them with their homework, what are we supposed to do? When I get that child in my classroom, it’s my job to teach them from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. It’s not the parents’ job to do my job. I hope they give me support, but I have to consider worst-case scenarios. If you have that socioeconomically disadvantaged group of students in your school, you need to give them more support than those who don’t have those concerns.
What is the district lacking?
I heard Superintendent Misty Her say we have this district-wide plan, but then we allow every school administrator to decide how they’re going to do it. It should be evidence-based, and we should have data that shows it’s successful. Every school should be using our adopted curriculum and everyone should have the appropriate training because when you allow different schools to do different things, you’re going to have skewed results.
Teachers might be teaching students not curriculum, but as teachers, we look at pedagogy. You do the basic things and then you individualize it for those students.
In terms of the facilities, I think we have serious issues with equity and accountability. The board made the decision to use an equity lens with the new bond, Measure H, then there was a meeting where some trustees took that back, but you just paid all that money for an equity report. That discussion should have happened before they invested in the report.
I heard Bullard say they have mold in the gym, and I was thinking “What? You didn’t address it quickly.” Health and well-being should be non-negotiable, in my opinion. We should have minimum standards of what every school site should have before we start looking at the wishlist. Is their air conditioning working? Are there any safety issues? Let’s take care of that, and then we look at the next level.
We have a wonderful school for alternative ed. I’m glad they have a place like that, but my question is, what could we have done when they were in kindergarten so they wouldn’t have to go there? It should be a school of choice, not because of credit deficiency.
Some say bureaucracy and inefficiency exist in large school districts. What do you think?
My first degree is in business administration and marketing. You train your staff on how to treat customers. If Macy’s doesn’t train their personnel on how to treat customers, no one is going to shop there anymore. So no, I think it’s an excuse.
When there are issues, as an administrator, you know who you’re supposed to call right away.You have a list of people to call and you think, “Oh, parent, we can call them later,” or, “We don’t have to pay attention to them.” It depends on your own idea of who’s important and who isn’t.
When it comes to the board, there are a lot of disconnects. I see a lot of internal fighting instead of working on those common areas and meeting the needs of the constituents. When I try to reach out to them, they’re often too busy and don’t have time to hear me. I see that they aren’t focused on what is best for students.
We need to work together for the good of our community and our students. That should be a priority — creating an infrastructure and focusing all our resources aligned with our goals.
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