Voters have until Tuesday, Nov. 5 to make their decisions for the general election. NSPR has been interviewing candidates vying for seats on the Chico Unified School Board. In Trustee Area 3, Teisha Hase is running against Michele Cooper. She spoke with NSPR’s Ken Devol about her background and how she would address some of the issues facing the school board if elected.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Tell us more about your background and why you are running for this position.
I have been an educator for 27 years, and my granddaughter is entering Chico Unified School District as a kindergartner this year. I'm very interested in making sure that the school board has members that really represent the community and focus on students.
What do you see as the most pressing issue confronting Chico schools?
I think that safety is an issue, and safety rolls out in a variety of ways. One is just facilities. We have a school board measure up right now, Measure C, and a lot of those issues that are going to be addressed are really safety issues.
There are buildings that need to be repaired. There are buildings that have mold and that were built when asbestos was still a thing. So that's one way, is facilities.
But one of my main passions is mental health, and my platform is to stop the stigma and promote potential. Mental health of adolescents and schools around the nation, really, around the world, have really taken a toll since COVID. But in America, we have more school shootings than any other nation, and I really do believe that it's important that we address mental health issues in order to remediate or address some concerns.
I don't think that anybody grows up thinking, “Hey, I'd like to be a mass murderer.” I think kids get there in a variety of ways, and I think it's truly important to make sure that we're addressing mental health.
I served for five years as a NAMI facilitator. NAMI stands for National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Butte County has a great program. I was a facilitator for Family to Family, and I think that the schools could really benefit by learning more about mental health.
What would you say sets you apart from other candidates, and why should voters choose you?
My opponent is running on a platform of parents’ rights, and on Feb. 15 of 2023 at two hours and 52 minutes and 56 seconds of part one [of the CUSD school board meeting transcription], my opponent says, ‘The changes I've seen in this district over the last 22 years have been horrific, to say the least.’ And she went on to say, parents’ rights are fundamental and supreme.
We are here to support students. When you're looking at the California School Boards Association, they point out that school board members are the only locally elected officials that solely represent student voices, and I take that really seriously. As a teacher, I have been a student advocate, and as a school board member, I'm going to continue to be a student advocate.
As a parent and a grandparent, is my voice important? Absolutely, and in fact, schools are required to get input from parents. The school sites council has to have parents. The LCAP has to have parental input. It's one of the things that schools are graded on, school districts are graded on. And you know, Chico Unified met the requirement for parent and community involvement. So I think the voice is important.
As a freshman English teacher, I guarantee you there were boys that would not have passed my class, had it not been for their parents being my partner in education and getting them through. So I value parents and want to collaborate with them.
But let me just be clear, when my opponent talks about parents’ rights, it's really specifically about the forced outing of our LGBTQ kids, and that's a safety issue.
You know, as a foster parent, I learned why it wasn't illegal for kids to run away. As a teacher, when I look at my student information system, there would sometimes be red flags where it actually stated that this child had a prohibition of seeing a parent because that parent was a danger to them.
So not all parents are created equally, and to say that parents’ rights are fundamental and supreme is simply inaccurate. Parents’ rights do not trump children's rights when it comes to education.
