Barreto Has Emerged as Prominent Latino Voice : Politics: She develops link between Oxnard school board and constituents. She believes that her community following stems from common experiences.

The day Oxnard school board member Mary Barreto graduated from high school, her father told her that he had saved $2,000 for her to spend one of two ways: to go to college or to fix her teeth, which she described as “hopelessly crooked.”

Although the gawky 1950s teen-ager was intent upon becoming an airline stewardess, the choice was simple--she went to college.

That decision, Barreto later realized, set the tone for her life.

She was a secretary for 16 years, she bound books, she taught kindergarten and she hosted an Oxnard radio show. But whenever given the chance, the soft-spoken single mother returned to school.

Barreto earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in psychology, became a family counselor and two years ago entered politics with a successful bid for the Oxnard school board.

Fueled by publicity from a racially charged struggle on the board, the self-described political amateur has emerged from the periphery into a prominent circle of Oxnard politicians.

As only the third Latino member of the school board, in spite of a student population that is nearly 80% Latino, Barreto, 58, is credited with developing a link between the board and its constituents.

“She’s lived the Hispanic experience,” district Supt. Norman Brekke said. “She can express, with those thoughts in mind, what would most effectively address the needs of the Hispanic community.”

Her supporters say she has done that by supporting a host of bilingual education proposals, as well as the school breakfast program and the healthy start program, which provides health care to students who cannot afford it.

“She stands for everybody, but what is important is that she has stood up specifically for the Spanish-speaking people,” said Pete Tafoya, an Oxnard representative on the board of the Ventura County Community College District. “She has, in a sense, become a role model.”

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Barreto said her following in the Latino community stems from common experiences.

The American-born daughter of immigrant parents, Barreto grew up in East Los Angeles and said she lived a childhood that in many ways resembles that of students in Oxnard today.

Barreto said her father, who worked as a farm laborer, truck driver and chef, always wanted the family to return to Mexico, but her mother wanted to stay.

At home, her family spoke Spanish, but at school, her teachers pushed her to improve her English.

“They did things like work on my diction and articulation, making me repeat words over and over again to get rid of my accent,” Barreto recalled.

At home, her parents had different ideas of what was appropriate for a young girl.

“I come from a culture where you’re not supposed to be assertive,” she said. “I remember I loved baseball, and I decided to go out for the team. When my mother found out, she called the school and complained. She said women were not supposed to do that kind of thing. And I was forced to give it up.

“It was too bad. I was a darn good slugger.”

But, Barreto said, the overwhelming memory of her childhood was the message she received both at home and at school.

“The message was pride,” she said. “Pride in your work, in your education and in your culture.”

And, she added, “pride in doing the right thing.”

It was that emphasis, she said, that led her to Mt. St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, where she studied for two years until the $2,000 from her father ran out.

She spent the next 20 years in various professions, including 16 as a secretary in Los Angeles, but she always sought to return to school.

When she moved with her husband and young son to Simi Valley, she began taking classes at Moorpark College.

“I loved school and was inspired to study more. When I decided to go for a degree, my husband said he objected, but I didn’t think he would really have a problem with it,” Barreto recalled.

She enrolled in a program at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, which allowed her to study counseling and psychology if she agreed to donate time to Camarillo State Hospital. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees there.

But the education took its toll.

“She would spend half the day at school and the other half working in the wards at Camarillo State Hospital,” recalled Chuck Renta, a Los Angeles computer consultant who was Barreto’s husband at the time. “It put a tremendous amount of pressure on her and, in turn, put pressure on our marriage. It was that combination that really hurt us.”

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Barreto and Renta were divorced in 1976, leaving her to raise their son.

While her schooling at Cal Lutheran was free, Barreto says: “Whenever anyone asks me ‘How much did your education cost?’ I say it cost a husband.”

In 1985, Barreto received a Ph.D. in psychology from San Diego-based International College.

Since then, she has been referred to in Oxnard almost exclusively as “Dr. Mary Barreto.”

It is a title she chose, mainly because of the pride she takes in her education.

“At first, I wouldn’t use it because I didn’t feel like I had it, like my education was finished,” Barreto said. “But then I became aware of the importance. It sends a message to people that you are proud of what you’ve accomplished.

“I am very proud of it,” she said. “My grandmother was stoking wood in the hillsides of Michoacan and in two generations we’ve crossed the line. I’m proud of where I am, especially because of where I came from.”

It was that pride, she said, that helped her respond when, in 1990, a group of friends looking for leadership in Oxnard’s Latino community asked her to run for the school board.

“I remember we had an easel and we were putting names up there, and when her name was put up, we all knew we had the right person,” said Irma Lopez, wife of Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez and a member of the Latino Coalition for Fair Representation.

“We had been saying for years that we wanted someone on that board who could share the same cultural experiences that the children were having,” Irma Lopez recalled. “She just took the ball and ran with it.”

Barreto said she recognized immediately the need for representation on the board.

“I have an understanding of those children that is unique because of my childhood,” Barreto said. “I think that is evident in the programs I have supported over the past few years. I know how important these issues of language and culture and pride are to the Hispanic community.”

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That shows in Barreto’s work on the school board, Brekke said.

“There is no doubt that this is a very personal effort for her,” Brekke said. But, he added, that does not always mean that she can persuade the board that the programs she supports are necessary.

Brekke said a difference in philosophy between Barreto and longtime board member Jack Fowler has accounted for much of the tension in the boardroom.

Barreto pushes for such special programs as school breakfast, health clinics and bilingual education. Fowler has been an opponent of almost every program that does not deal directly with educating children.

Barreto calls Fowler a bully, saying the two argue frequently in closed session and that tension occasionally spills into the boardroom.

When asked what he thought of Barreto, Fowler said: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Late one evening in mid-November, after the end of a long closed-session, Barreto was handed a letter signed by Fowler and trustees Jim Suter and Dorothie Sterling.

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It was a laundry list of complaints against her.

* She had not introduced them at the dedication of Cesar Chavez School.

* She had spoken at length in Spanish during meetings without translating.

* She had been “overly accommodating to those who do not speak English.”

“I was stunned,” Barreto said.

But the three board members said the issue needed to be laid out in a letter because numerous attempts to settle the dispute had failed. They called the letter “constructive criticism” that was meant to be private.

“Every time we would raise something like this (in person), she would get up and leave the room,” Fowler said. “It was childish.”

Barreto’s response to the letter was to read it publicly, emphasizing the portion of the letter that accused her of racism.

“If I have been too flamboyant in representing myself as a Mexican, as a Chicano, then I have been misinterpreted,” she said at a board meeting packed with her supporters. “But if I have acted in an arrogant way, it is because I believe myself to be an equal.”

Barreto described the feeling of standing up to the other board members as empowering.

Her actions elicited similar emotions in Oxnard’s Latino community.

Parents and community leaders appeared at board meetings in droves to defend Barreto and to condemn Fowler, Suter and Sterling as insensitive.

Spanish-language media jumped on the story, sending television crews and reporters to meetings that had once been of little interest.

After several weeks and a promise from the board that members would meet with a counselor, the crowds and the attention dwindled. Suter, the board’s new president, said he hopes that the counseling session will move board members past the feud.

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But leaders in the Latino community said what is really needed to end the problem is a new balance on the board. Last year’s struggles have sparked early interest in November’s election, where three of the board’s five seats, including those held by Barreto and Fowler, will be contested.

Barreto will run again, but community leaders have begun to ask her about her interest in a higher office.

Over the past two years, says Art Hernandez, co-chairman of the Latino Coalition for Fair Representation, Barreto has grown in stature as a leader in the Latino community.

She sits on a state advisory committee on education and has been honored by several local groups, including receiving this year’s El Concilio del Condado de Ventura Latino Leadership Award.

“We are very happy with her work on the school board, but of course we will push her to consider other positions,” Hernandez said. Added Irma Lopez: “I would think that she would do a wonderful job in any position.”

Barreto, however, remains quiet about the future.

“I think the only way I’ll try for something else is if they tell me I can’t do it,” she said.