Sacramento Calls Student : Latino Named to State Panel

Next fall, when fellow students at Santa Ana’s Saddleback High School are studying history, Maryela Martinez will be making it.

Come September, Maryela will be sworn in as the newest member of the state Board of Education. She will be the first student of Latino heritage ever to serve on the 11-member board.

Maryela, 16, an honors student completing her junior year at Saddleback High, learned of her selection Monday afternoon, shortly after Gov. George Deukmejian appointed her to the board as the student member for 1988-89. She will be a voting member of the board--a right all student members have held since 1983.

“It is an extraordinary fact that at such an early age, a student such as myself could influence decisions made at a state level,” Maryela said in an essay that accompanied her application for the state board.

Maryela was born in Cuba, from which she and her family fled in 1980. In an interview Tuesday, Maryela said that whenever she thinks of freedom, she thinks of an ordeal she faced as a 6-year-old, first-grade student in Havana. Out of fear for the safety of her family, she had to vote to banish a fellow student.

“My friend was of Chinese ancestry, and her mom had been a political prisoner in Cuba,” said Maryela. “In Cuba all students have to wear red scarfs around their necks to show that they are incorporated into the Communist system. She wouldn’t wear that scarf. So they called a meeting of all the children of the school and said they wanted a vote to see if she should be deprived of the right to learn because she was not wearing the symbol of Communism.

“And so all the kids raised their hands, obviously, and I was one of them. You pretty much had no choice. If I had not raised my hand, my whole family would have been jeopardized.”

Maryela said the episode still haunts her. “I never saw my friend again after that day. I don’t know what happened to her.”

Maryela’s father, an accountant, planned for many years how to get his family out of Cuba, she said. “We left Cuba seven years ago,” she said. “First we went to Venezuela. Then three months later, we came to the United States. My father is an American citizen; his mother was born in Florida.”

Maryela spoke no English when she arrived in Southern California in 1981. She said a fourth-grade teacher worked with her, mainly in English, to teach her the language. She now speaks fluent English with no accent.

“I’m glad I wasn’t taught in a bilingual class,” she said. “I have seen (Spanish-speaking) students who don’t advance because they rely too much on bilingual classes. They don’t learn English as they must in order to be successful.”

Bilingual education is among the topics periodically debated by the state Board of Education at its monthly meetings in Sacramento. The board is a policy-making arm of state government, and it also is influential in recommending for or against legislation.

In addition to being leery of bilingual education, Maryela said, her concerns include book banning--”I’m very much opposed”--and classroom overcrowding--”More money is the obvious answer but one has to take budgets into account.”

The Board of Education will pay for Maryela’s flights to and from Sacramento for monthly two-day meetings. Like all board members, she will also get a stipend of $100 a day for each day of board meetings.

Maryela was chosen from 206 high school juniors all over the state who applied last fall for the 1988-89 position. The list was narrowed first to 12, then to six and finally, in January, to three finalists, who also included John Godfrey, a student at Brea-Olinda High School in Brea, and Voon-Chung Wong, of Clovis West High School in Central California.

Deukmejian, who made the final choice, picked Maryela on Monday. And on Tuesday, a joyful, student-made sign hung on the front entrance of Saddleback High: “Congrats, Maryela.”

Teachers and administrators joined in the praise of Maryela on Tuesday. “She is a delightful student with perfect manners,” said Principal Nancy O’Connor. “She’s highly motivated and very, very bright.”

Maryela’s grade point average is 4.65 in a system where 4.0 is all A’s. She is above a 4.0 because of several advanced placement classes she has taken. Such classes give extra grade credit.

“She is a very mature writer,” said her English teacher, Brenda Borron. She added that Maryela also has a bright personality “and an impish streak.”

Added Jenni Price, 16, a friend and fellow junior, “Maryela is a good, loyal friend. She works hard at everything she does.”

Maryela said she hopes to be admitted to Stanford University when she graduates in 1989. Her ultimate goal, she said, is to be an attorney, and she would like to attend Harvard Law School.

A bright-eyed, buoyant person, Maryela said her favorite hobby is “classic movies . . . my favorite classic movie is ‘Gone With the Wind.’ I love it.”

When she wants to tackle serious topics, the issue of personal freedom is, to her, the most important. In fact, she wrote about freedom in her essay accompanying her application for the state board.

“I was born in a land where totalitarian government prevails,” Maryela wrote. “ . . . An opportunity such as the one made available to students through this program overwhelms me.”

BOARD OF EDUCATION MAKEUP, DUTIES

Each year a new student member is picked and appointed by the governor to serve on the 11-person state Board of Education.

Maryela Martinez, the governor’s appointee for 1988-89, is the second Orange County student selected since student members were added in 1969. Bruce Lymburn, then a student at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, served as an advisory student member in 1970-71.

In 1983, a new state law allowed the student member full voting rights on the state Board of Education.

The other 10 members of the state board also are appointed by the governor, but they serve four-year terms.

The state board meets monthly, usually in Sacramento, but two meetings a year “float” to other cities in the state.

Board duties include:

Adopting textbooks to be used by public schools. The board made international news in 1978 when it demanded that science textbooks include information about evolution.

Preparing curricula (the frameworks for subject teaching) to be used by public schools.

Ruling on school-district requests for territorial changes.

Serving as an advisory body to the governor and other branches of state government.

Being a forum for discussion of educational concepts, ideas and programs.

Acting as an administrative arm of the state in allowing or refusing waivers to school districts in the observance of some education laws and regulations.