Daniel Cadena says he wants to make sure kids in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District hit the ground running when they leave the district for high school — and he’s got the connections to make it happen.

That’s why he’s running for a slot on the district’s board of trustees.

Come Tuesday, Cadena, 52, will take on incumbents Ike Ochoa and David Roliquio and fellow challengers Craig Beebe and Ken Milo in a bid to secure one of three open slots on the board.

“Prepare the kids when they’re younger, rather than wait until they’re in high school,” Cadena said.

The mechanical engineer — who does not hold a college degree but has completed a number of college-level courses — first came to the Central Coast 20 years ago when his company transferred him from its Marina del Rey office to Santa Maria.

When it came time for Cadena and his wife Dora to enroll their three children into the Santa Maria-Bonita school system, Cadena grew increasingly involved with their education.

But he really became involved when his daughter, then a sixth-grader, informed him that she did not want to attend El Camino Junior High School because of the less-than-stellar reputation the school held at the time.

Advertisement

However, Cadena insisted his daughter attend El Camino, and teamed up with the principal on a quest to change the culture of the campus.

Cadena’s activism as School Site Council president led to the implementation of the Accelerated Schools Project at El Camino, a program that essentially seeks to turn a “failing” school around by treating all students as gifted or accelerated.

To boot, Cadena — named Santa Maria-Bonita’s 1995 Parent of the Year — convinced El Camino parents to approve a policy requiring students to wear school uniforms, a move he said contributed to a rise in students’ scores on standardized tests and an increase in daily attendance rates.

Eventually, Cadena’s children moved on to high school and so did he, serving three terms as the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District school board president.

Now, however, Cadena said he wants to return to his roots: Activism at the elementary school level.

“People ask me what my three priorities are,” Cadena said. “But there’s only one priority, and that’s to help Santa Maria-Bonita get out of Program Improvement.”

Santa Maria-Bonita has been under Program Improvement, a designation the state puts on schools that have traditionally low scores on standardized exams, for three years.

If elected to the board, Cadena said he would expand the district’s Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, and ask for community members to contribute whatever resources they have available to help improve Santa Maria-Bonita schools.

Most importantly, however, the district needs to take a serious look at why its students might be missing those state-mandated benchmarks, Cadena said.

As a bonus, Cadena said, he would utilize the strong network he has nurtured within the high school district to develop and implement programs designed to help Santa Maria-Bonita students succeed once they advance.

However, Cadena said all these plans boil down to the simple promise to parents he has adopted as his campaign slogan: “Your children come first.”

October 31, 2008