NORTH COUNTY -- Latino school board members bring an important perspective to education, but Latinos are underrepresented on boards throughout the state, a report released last week says.

Among the school boards identified in the report as being especially unrepresentative of the community they serve are three in North County: the Escondido Union High School District, the elementary Escondido Union School District, and Fallbrook Union High School District.

Across North County, few Latinos hold school board seats in districts that often are more than 50 percent Latino. Among 20 North County school boards, only one of the 100 board members is Latino.

In the Nov. 7 election, the number of Latino board members in North County has the potential to grow many times over, with five Latino candidates running for school board in five different districts. Area Latino leaders say that while having Latino candidates is a good step, North County has a long way to go before Latinos play a strong role in setting educational policies.

Bill Flores, a former San Dieguito Union High School District board member and a leader in the Latino community, said that with Latino students' high dropout rates and often limited post-secondary education, more Latino voices are needed on school boards.

"The Latino community has some tremendous challenges to turn some of these trends around," Flores said. "Having more Latino school board members would be a part of the answer."

Few Latinos on area school boards

The report released Monday by Latino Issues Forum, a nonprofit public policy and advocacy institute based in San Francisco, compared the percentage of Latinos living in a school district, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, to the percentage of Latinos on the school board.

The organization compiled the report from information provided by 693 of California's 979 school districts. From this information, the report identified 24 districts where Latinos are considered to be severely underrepresented because of a high number of Latinos in the community but few Latino school board members.

The report also lists 148 other school districts as simply underrepresented, with a significant but less extreme disparity. This list includes the two Escondido school districts and Fallbrook Union High, as well as two other south San Diego County school districts.

Raquel Donoso, associate director of Latino Issues Forum, said last week that while the study's overall findings weren't surprising, the range of school districts lacking in Latino representation was.

"What we were able to see is that this is an issue across urban areas, rural areas, big districts, small districts," Donoso said. "When you look at it regionally and district by district, you really get to see the disparities that are occurring."

In North County, only the Oceanside Unified School District has a Latino school board member, homemaker Emily Ortiz Wichmann, who has served on the board since 1994.

A different perspective

In Oceanside Unified, where more than half of the 19,600 students are Latino, Wichmann said she is able to give a unique viewpoint and offer a greater cultural sensitivity on some of the issues challenging students. At the same time, she said, she can address certain issues, such as those surrounding English learners, without being bound by political correctness.

"I can say things as a Latina that an Anglo can't say," said Wichmann, who grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. "I can (talk to) parents and the administration coming from my perspective."

Flores said being a Latino gave him insights his fellow board members didn't have.

"All my colleagues on the school board, they are all good-hearted people, intelligent, well-meaning and extremely giving people," Flores said. "But every once in a while, issues would come up where I felt if I did not mention its impact on the Latino community, either good or bad, it wouldn't come up."

For example, he said, when the board held expulsion hearings for students, the students often would arrive with an attorney in the largely affluent San Dieguito district. However, many Latino students had no such luxury, and often their parents didn't even understand the purpose of the expulsion hearings, Flores said.

"You try to be a balancing force, to make sure that kids who go there are represented, to make sure they don't end up with the short end of the stick," Flores said.

The Latino Issues Forum report cites a New York study that says diversity, or lack of it, on school boards can have a direct effect on Latino students.

According to the report, "researchers discovered that absent Latino school board members, Latino students were subject to more suspensions and expulsions, were under-represented in gifted and talented classes, and were over-represented in special education classes."

Ability, not ethnicity

Some current school board members said last week that no one should be elected to a school board simply because of ethnic background.

Royce Moore, board president of the Escondido Union School District, said the board is meeting the needs of the 18,500-student district, where more than 60 percent of the students are Latino.

"I feel very qualified to serve all students as a school board member, and if I didn't feel qualified, I wouldn't serve on the school board," said Moore, a retired, longtime teacher and principal in the district.

He said that having different perspectives on the board is useful, but that voters shouldn't choose board members solely because of their ethnicity.

"One of the things that we teach our children in our schools is the Martin Luther King (Jr.) philosophy to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin," he said.

Sharon Jenkins, president of the San Marcos Unified School District board, whose seat is being challenged by three candidates, including a Latino teacher, said she works for all students.

"I feel they are represented by all five of us," Jenkins said of herself and her fellow board members.

The Latino candidate there, Carlos "Charlie" Ulloa, has campaigned not on his Latino background, but on his experience as a teacher and on his education.

Most Latino school board members, candidates and leaders interviewed last week all agreed that a board member's qualifications is the most important factor, but said diversity is still important.

The president of Fallbrook Union Elementary School District board, Patty de Jong, who isn't Latino, said she hopes that a more diverse board is chosen in the upcoming election.

The incumbent candidate has formed a coalition with another incumbent and newcomer, Abel Lopez, who de Jong said she supports because he is a district parent, while none of the board members are.

"I think it's very important to have that kind of parental representation on the board," de Jong said. "That he's Latino is an added bonus."

Latino leaders needed

But with dozens of school board positions open this election season in North County, and only five Latino candidates running, the road may be long to see a true representation of the Latino community on the boards, Latino leaders said.

In addition to Lopez in Fallbrook Union Elementary and Ulloa in San Marcos Unified, other Latino candidates in North County are:

- Jose Fragozo, in Escondido Union;

- Tania Bowman, in Escondido Union High;

- and John Ramirez, in Poway Unified.

The reasons so few Latinos run for office are varied, Latino leaders and the report say.

"A lot of the times people don't know the process to run for office," said Donoso, of Latino Issues Forum. "And running for office is becoming more costly."

Wichmann said Latino candidates must have "a foot in each culture," both the mainstream American culture and the Latino culture.

"We need to know both cultures, and both cultures well," she said. "If we haven't bridged that, it's very hard to run for office."

The Latino Issues Forum report gives several solutions to increase Latino representation.

The report suggests creating task forces and programs to identify potential Latino candidates, to train them, and to help fund all candidates' campaigns so that financial barriers are eliminated.

Also, school districts where voting is at-large -- a system in which the top vote-getters are elected, one that is used in most school districts -- have a slightly lower percentage of Latino school board members than districts in which candidates are elected to represent specific neighborhoods and geographic areas, the report says.

Tania Bowman, a Latino candidate for Escondido's high school district board, who ran unsuccessfully for Escondido City Council two years ago, said the number of Latinos running for office is slowly increasing. Eventually, there will be better Latino representation, she said.

"I think that it's an evolution," Bowman said. "It will change. You will see it slowly, but surely."

The full report, entitled "Beyond the Classroom: An Analysis of California's Public School Governance," can be seen at www.lif.org.

Contact staff writer Paul Eakins at (760) 740-5420 or peakins@nctimes.com.

On the Web:

"Beyond the Classroom: An Analysis of California's Public School Governance"

www.lif.org.