Education is the way: Tony Thurmond

This month’s featured leader is California’s elected state superintendent, Tony Thurmond. We talk with him about student leadership, the teacher shortage, and his recent announcement that he is running for governor of California.

Q: Superintendent Thurmond, there’s a lot of talk about how to get more student choice and voice in the classroom. What role do you see students having as leaders, and how do you develop leadership among students in your state?

A: I have been working with student leaders throughout my 16 years as an elected official. When I was a school board member, I launched the district’s first youth commission in 2008. The students had a lot of important thoughts about what they wanted the school board to work on.

As a legislator, I authored a bill that gives students in California the right to be voting school board members. Now, every one of the 1,000 school districts in California has a student member on their school board. The students can make motions, ask questions, and express their opinion on every issue. Their votes are provisional, which essentially means they can’t break a tie, but aside from that, they do everything else that school board members do.

As state superintendent, I have created a youth advisory council so young people can give us input on matters that affect their education. I’m putting those students in front of the governor and the legislature, and I’ve asked them to advise me on ways we can make education better. The students have risen to the challenge, and I’m grateful we have that partnership with great student leaders in our state.

Q: I had an opportunity to have a student school board member in one of my districts, and we learned so much. What from your life led you into leadership?

A: It’s been an incredible journey, and education has been a game changer in my life at every step.

I am the descendant of immigrants. My grandparents came here from Colombia, Jamaica, and Panama. My mom was born in Panama, immigrated to the United States, and became a teacher in San Jose. She worked hard to help her four kids understand the value of education. My dad was a Vietnam vet, who I met for the first time just before my 40th birthday. The trauma he experienced made it difficult for him to return to our family. When I was six years old, my mom died of cancer. My cousin who lived 3,000 miles away took me and my five-year-old brother in and raised us. While she didn’t have a formal education, she knew that education was the way, and she worked hard to make sure we got access to a great public education and could have a chance at a better life.

As I look back on my life, I feel like every educator in my life sent a message to me that education will make your life better, no matter your humble beginnings. And that’s a promise that’s been kept. I grew up on public programs. There were many times when we didn’t have food in our household, and we relied on the free lunch program, food stamps, and cheese from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These programs helped, but it was education that really was the equalizer for me. It allowed me to go to college to become a social worker.

I got elected as student body president in college, and it got me thinking that maybe one day, I might run for office, but I didn’t run for almost 20 years. I spent my time working with young people who were in foster care or the juvenile justice systems or who had developmental disabilities. I spent time working in after-school programs and mentoring programs and in school-based mental health programs. Eventually, I decided to put my name on the ballot, and I’m grateful that the people elected me first as a city council member, then a school board member, then a state legislator, and then state superintendent.

Over these 16 years, I’ve been able to improve funding for our schools and address students’ mental health needs. By reflecting on how education helped me, I realized that I wanted to focus on education all the time. So I decided that I was going to chance it and run for state superintendent of public instruction. I had been successful getting reelected as a legislator, and if I lost this race, I knew my political career might end. But my politics have always been about helping young people. As state superintendent, I knew I could work with our governor, our legislature, and our 1,000 school districts to get the resources that our schools need.

Q: What are some of the things that you’re most proud of that you’ve done as superintendent in California?

A: During the pandemic, I discovered that 1 million students in our state didn’t have access to the internet. It’s hard to believe, but that’s the case. We immediately went to work and secured computing devices and hotspots for students, but what I’m very proud of is that I was able to sponsor legislation to roll out broadband all across our state.

I’m also very proud that we have a universal transitional kindergarten model that says four-year-olds can attend school and be prepared for kindergarten. And I am incredibly proud of our work to establish universal meals for all students in California. As someone who was on the free lunch program myself, it meant a lot to me to sponsor the legislation to give two meals at school to every student regardless of their background or their ZIP code. I’ve also sponsored legislation that secured funding for us to recruit 10,000 mental health clinicians to work in our schools.

And right now, I’m proud of our work to provide a $20,000 scholarship to anybody who wants to get a teaching credential in California. We hope this will make it easier for people to become teachers in our state.

Q: What else do you think needs to be done to make sure all our classrooms are full of amazing educators?

A: We have to do a better job of paying teachers and other school staff who are doing such great work for our students. I’ve worked hard to increase compensation. A lot of people who would like to obtain a teaching license struggle to do student teaching while holding down a job so they could take care of themselves and their family. So we’ve increased our stipend for teachers who are still in the residency period from $25,000 to $40,000 a year. I also sponsored legislation that allows retired teachers to come back into the classroom, at least as a short-term intervention while we’re recruiting more teachers. Many retired teachers were unable to fill vacancies because they would experience a penalty against their retirement earnings.

Our school districts do their own recruitment, but we now have many tools to support those local efforts. We have a state recruiter to help them. We are working to give scholarships to classified staff, including our custodians, our front office staff, and others who work in schools and want to become teachers. We have a program called College Corps where college students get a stipend to tutor and mentor students, and we are now recruiting new teachers from that program. We also are recruiting from the ranks of our armed services. Many military personnel have a partner or a spouse who has teaching experience in another state, and we help them to come and teach with us.

Anybody who wants information about our scholarships or how we can help launch your teaching career can just send me a note at teachinCA@ca.gov. This is a great profession, and we want to hire more educators to help California students.

Q: There’s only been a handful of state superintendents that have made the leap to considering the governor’s office. You’ve added your name to those ranks. If you become governor, what do you plan to do, specifically around education?

A: Our governor has the most influence over the budget in our state and the ability to sign legislation into law, and I believe that by allocating resources that truly reflect Californians’ priorities and establishing policies that respond to Californians’ experiences, we can make a difference. The state’s been good to me, but there are major challenges I want to help our state address. We have 200,000 homeless students, so I’m sponsoring legislation to provide subsidized housing for young people and to get them the kinds of support they need. There is a major lack of affordable housing in our state, and I am sponsoring a bill to give tax credits to developers who partner with school districts who have surplus land to build affordable housing for educators.

California has for many years struggled with an achievement gap, and I’m working on a program to provide professional development to more than 300,000 teachers in our state to help them close the achievement gap once and for all. I’m sponsoring legislation to create a computer science graduation requirement, and I’m working on a requirement to make sure that our students learn personal finance so they can know how money works, avoid graduating with debt, become entrepreneurs, and do other great and successful things.

I’d like to be an education governor. I’d be the first African American to serve as governor of California. And because I’m half Panamanian, I’d be the first Afro Latino to ever serve as governor. There’s never been a California superintendent who’s become governor. But it’s not about those things for me. I think about what it could mean for other students to give them the chance to dream about serving in the highest office in our state and to do great things for our communities. That’s what I’m committed to. I believe that education is the way. It has been for me.

Tony Thurmond was sworn in as California’s 28th state superintendent of public instruction on Jan. 7, 2019. Superintendent Thurmond is an educator, social worker, and public school parent who served Californians for more than 15 years in elected office. Previously, he served on the Richmond City Council, the West Contra Costa Unified School Board, and in the California State Assembly representing District 15. Before becoming superintendent, he had 12 years of direct experience in education, teaching life skills classes, after-school programs, and career training.