Quezada Won’t Seek Reelection : Schools: The board’s first Latina member says she’s making the ‘right decision’ to step down after serving eight years.

Leticia Quezada, who became the first Latina on the Los Angeles Unified School board in 1987, announced Wednesday that she will not seek reelection to a third term in April. Quezada, whose district includes heavily Latino neighborhoods in East Los Angeles and the northeast San Fernando Valley, said she felt that it was time to move on after a decade of public service.

“I’ve always believed in term limits and I’ve been on the school board for eight years,” Quezada said. “It’s not an easy decision . . . but I know it’s the right decision.”

Before her election to the Los Angeles Unified board, Quezada served two years on the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees. In 1992, she ran unsuccessfully for Congress.

On the school board, she was a strong proponent of bilingual education and was viewed by many parents--particularly Latinos--as an advocate for poor and disadvantaged children. But she was often at odds with Supt. Sid Thompson and had a strained relationship with the powerful teachers union’s leaders.

She has been both lauded and criticized for her blunt, businesslike approach, honed by years of corporate experience. She continued working full-time as manager of Latino marketing and community relations with Nestle USA Inc. until she became school board president 2 1/2 years ago.

As president, she guided the board through some of its most difficult times, from the battle against a statewide voucher initiative and efforts to break up the district to a threatened teacher strike and an earthquake.

The board was just catching its collective breath, Quezada said, when the Northridge earthquake damaged 250 campuses in January.

“We had said, ‘Oh great, finally we get to do some positive stuff, some progressive planning stuff,’ ” she recalled Wednesday. “And then the whole world just fell apart. . . . When I sat to write it down last night, I said, ‘How could we have gotten through all of this?’ ”

Quezada’s commitment to education--and bilingual instruction--began in a very personal way: When her family moved from Mexico to California when she was 13 and she found herself unable to keep up with English-only classes.

For Latino education activists, the timing of Quezada’s departure is particularly disturbing because of the recent passage of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration initiative that would force public schools to bar undocumented children.

“What is very good about Leticia is that she not only is a visionary and . . . knows politics, but she’s also very much in touch with the needs of real people--especially Latinos and immigrants,” said Rosalinda Lugo, associate director of Hope In Youth and a member of the LEARN school reform board.

But Quezada said she believes that her successor will also be Latino and that the school board will continue its legal battle against 187 and its leadership in other pro-immigrant-student causes: “If I thought the board would take those kinds of things back once I left, I would stay.”