Candidate for
Trustee; Sacramento City Unified School District; Trustee Area 6

Maria is an active resident of the Pocket-Greenhaven area. For over 15 years she has worked to make this community a better place for families and children.

Her commitment goes back to 1999, when Maria and her husband Scott decided to move to the Pocket to raise a family. Since then Maria has been an active member of her community and has been a parent leader working to improve the quality of education in our neighbor-hood schools.

Mother to two children currently enrolled in the Sacramento City Unified School District, Maria is familiar with the challenges our children and families face today and shares the frustration of other parents when the school district is unresponsive to their needs.

Nine years ago Maria began her involvement at her son's school as a parent volunteer. She quickly realized students were not receiving basic services due to bureaucratic red tape and found herself advocating for parents and children before the district's central staff and the school board. Over the years she has navigated the district's bureaucracy to solve problems such as securing math books for local classrooms, securing long overdue upgrades to classroom computers, and improving deficient lighting in classrooms.

Budget transparency and accountability have been a top priority for Maria. Collaborating with a core group of parents focused on analyzing the district's budget, Maria helped expose millions of dollars spent on unnecessary contracts to outside vendors. The media's attention to this issue forced the school board to cut millions in wasteful spending. Maria's work also helped expose how the district ends every year with millions of dollars in unspent funding. The mismanagement of school funding is a major concern to Maria because schools in the Pocket area are continuously denied funding for basic items, forcing parents to pay for materials that should be covered by the district.

Maria's leadership continues at the district level. She currently serves as President of the District Advisory Council, advocating for parents to have a greater role in the decisions of the district, and advising the school board on the implementation of California's newly adopted Local Control Funding Formula. Maria also empowers other parents throughout the district by teaching them how to read the district's budget, helping them bring fiscal accountability to their local school.

Maria is running for school board because we need a leader on the board who knows firsthand the challenges facing our kids, parents and the district. Maria's long track record of improving our public educational system has earned her the strong support of parents, teachers and community leaders in the community.

Maria graduated from CSU, Sacramento with a degree in Economics and Environmental Studies, and has over 20 years of professional experience in real estate finance. She lives in the Pocket neighborhood with her husband Scott and two sons.