New Merced City Schools board member takes seat. Here are his plans for the district
Tuesday’s Merced City School District Board of Education meeting greeted a new member to the five-member board of trustees, as recently elected Area 3 representative Allen Brooks took the oath of office and officially assumed the role.
Brooks, 33, a local real estate agent and president of Merced County’s NAACP branch, ran a successful campaign against former board member Adam Cox. The Aug. 31 all-mail ballot election saw Brooks victorious with about 60% of votes compared to Cox’s 39%.
Area 3 encompasses the central Merced and downtown and includes schools like Hoover Middle, Charles Wright Elementary and Don Stowell Elementary. Brooks is slated to represent those schools through November 2022.
“I’m just so excited to have the opportunity to sit on the school board. My message is that I couldn’t have done it without the people,” Brooks told the Sun-Star prior to getting sworn in.
Plans to advocate for students’ education
The school board’s role is to be the community’s voice in education by listening to constituent concerns, and finding ways to rectify those concerns, Brooks says.
Brooks ran his campaign on a platform of equitable education, community engagement and strengthened relationships between schools, students, parents and the school board.
Now that he’s been elected, Brooks told the Sun-Star that he’s looking forward to using his new role to implement those ideals.
“As long as we keep the parents involved, the schools involved and the board involved, as long as we have open, easy communication, I think our community can go in the right direction,” he said. “My superpower is communication, I have a knack for bringing people together.”
Bringing people together is especially important right now, Brooks said, due to the isolation that many students felt throughout the COVID-19 pandemic-disrupted school year.
Now that most kids are back on campus, educators at all levels need to address the readjustments kids are going through and equip teachers, as well as counselors, with what they need to support students, he said.
Plus, schools must face the resource disparities some students experience, Brooks said. “(The pandemic) definitely showed us the gap, and it increased the gap. The ones that are less fortunate, that don’t have connected WiFi at home, they’re missing out.”
Brooks said that he will work to make technological access and campus infrastructure equitable across MCSD schools so that all students are equipped to succeed. Merced youth should be able to compete with their student counterparts in any county, he said, noting that he intends to visit each school in his district and assess its needs.
Another priority for Brooks is the district’s literacy rates. If rates are up by the time Brooks exits his board term, he’ll look back on his time as trustee as a success, he said.
“There’s work to be done. But we have a wonderful board to do it,” Brooks said.
Brooks said his extensive background being involved in Merced through community organizing, events, advocacy and leadership roles is a boon to his joining MCSD’s Board of Education.
Those that have known Brooks as Merced’s NAACP branch president can rest assured that his new position as school board trustee doesn’t mean he’ll be stepping down from that role. In fact, Brooks said, his new school board position will in turn improve his service as NAACP branch president.
“As president, my agenda has always been education, so I’m giving us an opportunity to approach education more directly,” he said. “We have to become part of the system to make change.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
