equoia Union High School District trustee Nori, now 20, was the only candidate in his race to have graduated from the district. Culver City USD board member Ezidore, also 20, is the youngest and also the first Black man elected to the Culver City USD school board. Now 27, Natomas USD’s Mora is the first trustee on the board to have graduated from the district.

“I was pretty surprised when I first heard that I’m now the first graduate of our school district on our board — but I know I won’t be the last,” said Mora, who works in California State University, Sacramento’s Community Engagement Center. “From day one I thought, ‘What can I do to help contribute toward more full-circle journeys like that, where we have more people who are graduates of the school district being part of it?’”

With time, he’ll likely be successful. According to the CSBA member census deployed between December 2022 and January 2023, about 3 percent of board members are between the ages of 18 and 29 — an increase from the 2019–20 member census, in which just over 4 percent of respondents were under the age of 34.

As the son of immigrants and member of the LGBTQ community, Mora said he understands the challenges associated with not always feeling safe or supported being yourself on campus, and of translating messages and information from school for family members.

“I think that there’s a lived experience there that’s helpful for making decisions for public schools. Being someone who wanted to stay and live in this community, I obviously care about where I live and I care about the learning outcomes and the education for students in the district that I am a product of,” he said. When Mora saw there was an open seat on the school board, he was compelled to step up, noting that, “we really need to have someone who’s going to be reflective of Natomas. We need to have somebody who’s going to want to support all of our students — because that is Natomas.”

Nori, a student athlete whose injuries forced him to pursue other activities including debate and journalism, also served as Sequoia Union’s student trustee and on the San Mateo County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission. There, he said, he “got to see a wide variety of youth experiences in that county. I saw how our local school districts did a really great job serving some students, but kind of struggled to serve other students.

“The reason I ran was I felt that the board before me was not representing our community and I disagreed on the direction that they felt they needed to go in terms of what equity meant,” Nori said. Menlo-Atherton High School, Nori’s alma mater, doesn’t offer Advanced Placement (AP) Government or Economics. In the 2021–22 school year, the high school got rid of Advanced Standing (AS) Chemistry for sophomores and combined college prep English with honors English for freshmen in an effort to “de-track” students — a means of placing students with mixed abilities and academic achievement in the same classes in an effort to improve outcomes for all.

“I really felt that the direction they’d taken had not served all of our students, and that there needed to be some change in how our district dealt with an achievement gap,” Nori said. “I believe that equity means no matter who you are, you get the supports that you need to succeed. I think equity should never mean eliminating courses or reducing opportunities for students. The right answer isn’t to bring everyone down to a level where the achievement gap goes away but to give the students who struggle more support and more opportunities so that they, too, can achieve at high levels.”

Ezidore, the son of Jamaican and Vietnamese immigrants, recalled the night-and-day shift in diversity in Culver City High School compared to those he’d attended in Las Vegas as a child.

“It was great,” he said. “I think it’s always good to be in school with classmates that look like you, but I think we start to see the fissures when the structures of support aren’t geared toward the diversity that is on campus.”

After the murder of George Floyd in spring 2020, Ezidore became more involved with student government and activism, and as senior class president during a pandemic year in which none of the usual senior fun week and prom planning took place, he and his peers instead focused conversations on policing, inequitable dress code polices and more.

While attending Syracuse University in New York, “I still was tuned into what was happening because I had to see the rollout for all the work that we did around mental health and social justice, etc., with the idea that it would be rolled out perfectly — and then it wasn’t,” he said. “So, students were coming back on campus without a strong system of support. I think now what we’re starting to see are the repercussions of that.” Ultimately, Ezidore transferred to the University of Southern California and ran for office.

“If you’d have told me that at 18, I’d be running for school board, I would’ve told you you were crazy,” Ezidore said. But he persevered in a crowded race to fill three seats with the support of Los Angeles USD trustee Nick Melvoin, who Ezidore said “was the first serious politician to take me seriously.”

“I never consciously thought, ‘Oh, I should take him seriously.’ He was a kid who was running for school board and that’s all I needed to know,” said Melvoin, who during his tenure in LAUSD has supported the Coro Youth Fellows Program, written letters of recommendation for every LAUSD student board member and has a paid student intern in his office to ensure more equitable access to leadership.

“Running for office is isolating, it’s lonely, it can be very hard,” Melvoin said. “And to Triston’s credit, he is really good about reaching out for guidance or help and support, which I appreciate because I’m not always that good at seeking help or support. And so that’s been inspiring for me. He’s interested in learning.”

There’s a balance that’s important to strike Melvoin noted, recalling his days as a new teacher, showing a veteran colleague how to use new technology while she was able to share tips on classroom management. While there is a critical need for institutional knowledge, “I think there’s such a value in proximity when it comes to leadership, and I think this next generation is more inclusive, more tolerant, less willing to put up with some of the BS, candidly, of politics,” Melvoin said.

Melvoin said there is a collective responsibility to cultivate young leaders, show them paths to office and help them get involved through student leadership and advisory council opportunities, commissions, campaigns and more. “When you look at our national leadership on both sides of the aisle, we have an aging leadership, and we’re going to be left with a vacuum if we don’t start to bring up the next generation,” he said.

Nori credits his successful campaign and continued growth in his role as a trustee in part to Sequoia Union Board President Rich Ginn. “I had no clue how to run a campaign in local politics. My idea was just to raise a little bit of money, send out a mailer and call it a day,” Nori said. “He gave me a lot of advice, [and] he’s been a great mentor to advise me. If I have some crazy idea, he’ll tell me what’s more realistic or how to get what I want in the most strategic way possible.”

That mentorship aspect isn’t unique to Nori. In order to avoid running afoul of the Brown Act while still having a support system, Ginn said he believes board members can be more effective if they build relationships with current and former trustees, both in their own district and in others. “When there are tricky issues to think through, these relationships can provide informed perspectives to help,” he said.

For Mora, being a recent graduate of Natomas USD has allowed him to reconnect with teachers, administrators, nutrition staff, parent advocates and others who feel comfortable sharing their knowledge, concerns and everything in between. “For me to have known them pretty much my whole life and [be able to] count on them as resources? It’s not only unique, I would say it’s invaluable,” he said. “It’s these relationships that I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t go first through 12th grade in our district.”

With their support, Mora wants to spend his time on the board ensuring Natomas USD is supporting students with disabilities and LGBTQ students and families; adopting a strong ethnic studies curriculum; improving student safety through more preventative measures; bringing more people to meetings to share their experiences as the board discusses educational equity and civic engagement; and boosting literacy rates by continuing to allow local sites to determine which programs and interventions work best for their students.

“There’s also the other core competencies like math — I have a lot of empathy for students that are struggling in math,” he said. “The path is not going to look the same for everyone. I didn’t advance through math on the timeline that I was supposed to, but I was still able to get my master’s degree and do all the things that I wanted to do. I never want us to lose sight of that, because it’s critical to set goals for our students, but I think it’s always keeping in mind how different they all are from each other.”

As a more recent graduate, Culver City’s Ezidore said there was a bit of a “learning curve” when it came to teachers and school site administrators seeing him as trustee rather than a student, but he still feels it helps him bring something unique to the table. Also informing his views are his past experience serving on the district’s committees on equity, restorative practices, Positive Behavior and Intervention Support, and sexual assault and misconduct reform, which Ezidore said gave him a glimpse of what was happening among students at school sites.

One major concern Ezidore has is the reading competency of Black students in the district. To address this issue, he introduced the Black Student Achievement Plan Resolution, which acknowledges that Black students in the district are underrepresented in honors and gifted programs and overrepresented in suspension rates, and aims to address opportunity gaps in the district.

Since taking on the role of trustee, Mora said the biggest surprise was how much work being a good representative takes. “I don’t think anyone can fully understand how much work it is to be a representative as a school board member. When it comes to your representative duties, you really are a one-person operation,” he said.

To any young person considering running, Mora said there’s no way to fully prepare for the challenges of campaigning, but that it is crucial to take the time to first learn about what the current realities and issues are for the schools that you’re going to be representing. “Take the time to understand yourself, take the time to just be really knowledgeable and really comfortable with your values and your sense of purpose,” he added.

For Ezidore, like many new trustees, the biggest surprises came when the curtain was pulled back. He recalled hearing that things are very different on the board side of the dais, when you are considering the full impact of decisions on students, stakeholders and the community. “The second I was sworn in and sat down, I realized that this is just much more than I think anyone could ever prepare you for,” he said.

What has helped to ease some of the pressure is the rest of the board has “been very gracious with me, specifically with my school schedule, shifting committees and retreats and board meetings around my school schedule,” Ezidore said.

Nori said he experienced a similar wake-up call in realizing one member couldn’t “whip the place into shape” alone, and that it has been hard sometimes to find common ground, “but I think it’s really taught us the importance of compromising, and that progress is slow.

“I think if you care about your school district and you see a problem that needs to be addressed or feel like there needs to be a fresh perspective, it’s really important to get involved,” he said. “People will always say, ‘You’re too young,’ but I think at the end of the day, the majority of people are open to someone who brings fresh perspective and new ideas. I think it’s important to try. That’s all you can ever do is try — and you’ll regret it 10 times more if you never tried than if you tried and lost. I think that’s the most important thing.”

Alisha Kirby is a staff writer for California Schools.