Candidate for
Board Member; Ravenswood City School District

A native Californian, I was born at Stanford University Hospital where I was given the name of Mary Helen but my family, friends and neighbors call me "Maria Elena". I attended Menlo-Atherton High School, Caņada College and College of San Mateo from where I received an AA in General Business. I am bilinguel - fluent in Spanish/English.

My work experience started when I was still in high school as a soda fountain clerk at Walgreens. In my senior year I had the opportunity to manage a restuarant for two weeks, while the owners were on vacation. Then I went on to Pirelli Tires as a general clerk, and from there to Lenkurt Electric in payroll.

I went to work for the Regional Occupational Program of the San Mateo County Office of Education from 1972 to 1976 before I entered the airline industry where I remained until 2002. My duties have encompassed everything from taking dictation to processing invoices for payment, working on and with budgets, to dealing with the general public as well as administrators and directors of other Regional Occupational Programs and Centers, airline executives and managers, security departments, customs officials, and corporate headquarters in and out of the United States. Other duties were registrations, maintaining logs of programs successes and downfalls, translating brochures and flyers, maintaining instructors informed and updated on policy, instructional or corporate changes. Representing Company at conferences, trade shows, seminars.

For the last 20 years I have worked, on a volunteer basis, as an Executive Director, General Director, Secretary, Program Development Person, bookkeeper, Proposal Writer, Production Manager, and Stage Manager (all rolled into one) for a non-profit dance school/company based in East Palo Alto. I have promoted cultural dance and traditions in the schools, and to the general public. Be it through dance classes or shows, diverse cultural dance forms have been offered to children and adults alike in school and theater venues.

I have been responsible for the organization of conferences, workshops, programs and productions. I have worked with a team of up to seven different Managers/Supervisors multitasking their needs, my own responsibilities, and other employee duties as well. And, I have also formed part of a team of fifteen individuals responsible for the dispatch and arrival of international aircraft. My responsibilities also entailed making decisions regarding programs, expenses, purchases and aircraft dispatch calculations.

I have been married for 28 years and have raised three daughters. We moved to East Palo Alto from Menlo Park on July 01, 1983. My three daughters attended school in the Ravenswood City School District for one year before my husband and I decided to sacrifice and send them to school in Palo Alto because of the substandard education offered in the Ravenswood City School District.

Now my granddaughter, 8.5 years old, is repeating history attending school outside of the Ravenswood City School District because we are still dissatisfied with the quality of education in the district.

During the last twenty years I have witnessed many changes in East Palo Alto, and more so especially over the last five but there is still much work to be done and I pledge to work diligently to make those needed changes a reality.