Eduardo Pacheco

For most kids, getting expelled in the seventh grade for bringing a weapon to school is the beginning of a sad story, the first step into the school-to-prison pipeline.

But for Eduardo Pacheco, a recent graduate of LA Unified’s Woodrow Wilson High School, it ended up being a low point from which he slowly rose to become an inspiring student leader and recent recipient of the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s 2015 Sargent Shriver Youth Warriors Against Poverty award.

The $5,000 scholarship award honors 12 high students around the country for their vision, passion and dedication to improving the lives of families in their communities. Pacheco was recognized for work he did volunteering with Inner City Struggle and Brothers, Sons, Selves.

“When I heard I had won the Shriver award, I was astonished by it,” said Pacheco, who is now a freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Pacheco said the money has gone toward rent and books.

Pacheco is the son of two Mexican immigrants, and his life growing up around east LA was often filled with economic struggles. In middle school he said he fell in with the wrong crowd, which is what led to his expulsion. But not long after, something happened that made him see his life and its potential in a different light: his older brother was accepted to UCLA.

“I knew I had to change my ways, it was a bad thing for me, and no good was going to be coming to my future,” he told LA School Report. ” But I saw my bother graduate and go to UCLA, one of the best schools in California and the country. I felt like he was unique because not everyone gets accepted there. It motivated me to thinking that I can maybe be unique too.”

During his sophomore year, Pacheco started attended after-school meetings of Inner City Struggle, a nonprofit that works to improve the Eastside of Los Angeles.

Pacheco soon became a leader within the group and helped lead a task force that explained LA Unified’s landmark Student Climate Bill of Rights to students and adults. The resolution, passed by the school board in 2013, sought to spur a significant reduction of suspensions and expulsions in the district.

“I think [the bill] is really great because it is giving every student a whole new different opportunity in school,” he said. “Because of the injustices they faced before, with the suspension rate because of willful defiance, it was outrageous. When I learned about it, I thought it was a great and that it would help a lot of other students, especially students in my shoes.”

Despite spending much of his spare time volunteering to help his community, Pacheco also tried to help his family. During lunch breaks, he  rummaged through trash bins looking for cans and plastic bottles to sell for extra money. He also joined the Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition, an organization that works to improve the lives of young men of color. Some of his work was in support of Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot initiative that reclassified some non-violent felonies and misdemeanors.

“Brothers, Sons Selves was a huge, different chapter. Not only was it a coalition that involved me organizing, but we had our own campaigns where we would go out with ideas to change,” Pacheco said.

Pacheco said his goal is to stay involved in community organizing. He is currently majoring in political science and said he hopes to earn a PhD.

Community Coalition rally, protesting LAUSD budget priorities

With the LA Unified board meeting tomorrow, two rallies are taking place outside district headquarters that seek support for two different educational issues.

Parents, education advocates and civil rights groups, who represent Communities for Los Angeles Student Success, or CLASS, are organizing a “silent protest” on behalf of low-income students, schools and communities by placing 375 empty desks on Beaudry Avenue. The desks represent the 375 LAUSD students who drop out each week, according to organizers.

“We have a historic opportunity to do right for the highest need students 
who have not received their fair share,” Maria Brenes, executive director of Inner City Struggle, a member of CLASS, told LA School Report. “This rally is calling on LAUSD
 officials to be bold by comprehensively directing funds to the highest need
students, schools and communities.”

As LAUSD is preparing to refine its next budget, CLASS is demanding that $1 billion in extra state funding over the next seven years go to help the students it was meant to serve – low-income students, English learners and foster youth.

CLASS is calling attention to the opportunity to provide more resources and more targeted support to the students, schools and communities that need it most. The group will continue to advocate for more resources and more targeted support for English learners, more money to go directly to school sites, and more funding for foster youth.

The rally is scheduled for 7 to 10 am.

A second rally, tomorrow afternoon, is being stage by LA Unified students who are supporting a resolution to put a student seat on the school board. Some of the students – a group of 25 United Way Student Fellows – did the research and proposed the idea to board member Steve Zimmer who agreed to author a resolution. The seat would be an advisory, non-voting seat.

The goal is to make sure students have a voice on the school board, a voice in the policy and funding decisions that profoundly affect them. Dozens of school districts throughout California already have a student advisory member on their school boards.

The students have collected close to 3,000 signatures from their peers to support the creation of a student board member with an advisory position, far exceeding the 500 signatures required.

Students hope and expect that the board will pass the resolution to make student involvement a regular and frequent activity. The board is expected to vote on the resolution during their board meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Another rally was held this afternoon at the Beaudry headquarters.

A city-wide coalition of community groups and civil rights leaders – including 300 students and parents – gathered to call for greater investment in the district’s highest need schools.

Organized by the Community Coalition, the groups presented a comprehensive, data-driven “Student Need Index” that uses environmental, social and academic factors known to impact student achievement – such as poverty and violence – to produce a district-wide ranking of schools based on need.