School Board Candidate Advocates for Increased Communication in Schools
March 24, 2021 - Northside San Antonio
Irma Iris Duran de Rodriguez attended Northside schools since youth, eventually becoming an English-as-a-second-language alumni. She said that once her own children began school, she realized she could apply her years of experience to serve in a broader capacity within the district. Courtesy Image.
By: Ricardo Delgado - Staff Intern, San Antonio Sentinel
Irma Iris Duran de Rodriguez, candidate for a position on the Northside ISD Board of Trustees, campaigns on a platform of increased communication with families and assisting the diverse families of San Antonio, no matter their situation.
Duran attended Northside schools since youth, eventually becoming an English-as-a-second-language alumni. Once her own children began school, she realized she could apply her years of experience to serve in a broader capacity within the district. Initially preparing to run after a member of the board of over 30 years would step down, Duran committed to running after the incumbent informed them they were waiting for a willing replacement or opponent to step down.
“I think it's the perfect timing for me to run for the school board and use the skills I have, at the business level, at the administrative level, and also both the parent level and being a not-so current-student,” Duran said.
Education has changed in the time she spent away from school, Duran says, especially attitudes around bullying. Cyberbullying adds a new dimension, however; for many suffering from it, there is no reprieve given the constantly online nature of students during a pandemic.
“I think now from the decade I was going to school to the decade now, there's been more of a focus on the causes of bullying, but I think we need to still work more on it,” Duran said. “I think a lot of kids are still staying silent about not only being bullied but also why [they] are bullying other children [because of] other issues at home.”
Duran thinks teachers need to play a bigger role in student’s mental health, rejecting the idea children can easily bounce back from traumatic events.
“We just say, 'Well, yeah, I heard about the death in the family. I'm sorry about that, if you want to talk about it...,' but how is it going to affect the child long term when you have an immediate [death] or immediate sickness in your own family, in your own household, or you were even sick yourself?” Duran says. “We keep thinking that children are resilient, but [we’ve] seen cases where they're not.”
Duran does not think the responsibility is squarely on teachers for failing to recognize the ailing mental health of their students. Teachers often carry many responsibilities surrounding their jobs, leaving them too overwhelmed to preemptively help students.
“You have all these other things on top of having to create a curriculum, and sometimes these warning signs are missed because the teacher might not have the time or might not even have to the training or knowledge,” Duran said. “ I feel that if there were more social support on campus, and not just rely so heavily on the teachers, and we had more staff, such as social workers, helping the teachers and the counselors and the administrators, we would be able to address the mental health and the bullying issues as well.”
Support should extend to families as well, Duran thinks. Having families and communities engaged in the education of their children, especially non-traditional and disadvantaged families, could lead to increased success for students in school.
“What about the parent? What about the family? Why aren't we supporting the family as well? I'm a big believer in, if you support your child, your own child, the child comes home, and they still have that support and assistance at home, the child's gonna do better than just, 'here you go, here's a role model.'”
One of the biggest issues to tackle for Duran is the confusion and lack of communication between parents and the school district, especially surrounding COVID-19 protocols.
“Parents are very frustrated about the messaging - they don't know anything that's going on at the district level,” Duran says. “They don't know anything [about] graduation. What's going on in the fall? How do we do protocol for COVID-19?”
Irma Iris Duran de Rodriguez emphasized that non-traditional families remain a focus during her campaign. Courtesy Image.
Changing the way an entire district communicates with its families is not an immediate promise, Duran says, but she is prepared to commit to the necessary work to make communication more direct.
“[It's] not going to be one person,” Duran says. “That's not going to take a month or so. It's gonna take a while to adapt to becoming more connected with the people you're serving. [...] I wish we would have some sort of taskforce or communication team working on some sort of focus group to see what are the best ways to reach out to the parents and caretakers.”
Non-traditional families are a focus for Duran, as she realizes many students in the district may have caretakers — grandparents or an unrelated guardian — who are not given the same access to the school events or benefits as “traditional” parents. Older caretakers may not be able to assist younger students unfamiliar with the technology required of a virtual classroom, leaving a student helpless.
Duran emphasizes closing the “digital gap” within the district; Northside contains a high percentage of “new immigrants” and disadvantaged families, Duran says, meaning their access and familiarity with technology could vary wildly.
The diversity of the district necessitates documents and school communications in languages other than English and Spanish. This, provided with better engagement with families of all kinds, makes Northside ISD a better experience for all students, Duran asserts. She plans on partnering with San Antonio nonprofits to assist in many of the aforementioned issues in order to ease the burden on the education budget.
“I'm trying to be more proactive in offering services to the family because that leads to success to the child, and that's going to lead to better testing,” Duran said. “It's going to lead to better grades. It's going to lead to more community engagement, and it's also going to lead eventually to a safer and productive community.”
Apart from her tentpole issues of increased communication and closing the technology gap, Duran hopes to standardize quality across schools so no one school pales in comparison to another.
“I want to create standard operating procedures and policies to ensure that that uniformity and that level of quality goes from school to school.”
School district elections may seem inconsequential to some, but Duran insists schools affect every aspect of a community — not just the students and their families.
“I don't think people realize how important school board elections are; this is directly impacting you - you as a parent, you as a property owner, you as a taxpayer,” Duran said. “If you are part of the community school districts affect you.”
Ricardo Delgado transferred to Texas State University at San Marcos to study journalism and minor in political science. He expects to graduate in the spring of 2021. Email him at reporter@sasentinel.com