School of Public Policy

Rachel Strausman: 
Thank you so much for joining us today, Mr. Galarza. It is such an honor to have you here. Your career is so inspiring because you've accomplished so much at such a young age as a council member and the Mayor pro tem of the city of Coachella, and working closely with the Riverside County Office of Education. You have had such an amazing career. So going straight in, over the past few years, you've had so many different roles and worn so many different hats, all of which have been in service to your community, specifically, focusing on education, why is education so important to the overall well being of communities? 

Neftali Galarza: 
Yeah, education is the fundamental tool that we have in our country to empower communities and create thriving communities. When I was in college, I knew I wanted to study politics and I knew I wanted to be involved in the community one way or another. I interned in many different places. I was a labor studies minor and I had to do internships to complete that  minor too. I interned in offices of state assembly members, here locally and back home as well, did the UC Sacramento and worked on campus with UCR Extension. A lot of international students welcoming them and of the certificate programs that existed, and then I also interned at the County Office of Education, specifically in their Head Start Unit and for Head Start programs across the county. And Head Start, unlike other educational programs, is housing of different department than the federal government, focusing more on the social and housing of people and looking as a poverty program, specifically as an educational program. But they do connect in my internship program, also working at the UCR Extension school, and then being a student here, I decided that my focal point in politics or career will be education. I mentioned these experiences because it took a lot of these different ideas and opportunities and experiences that I put myself into and that opened up to understand by focusing on education. Then we empower communities. And we empower individuals. We empower key points like empowering the individual. As I mentioned, insuring the individual has some self love and knows their place in this community process, understands critical thinking. It also ensures that we have a cohesive and cultural community. And so communities understanding. All of us here, our last teams are very different. And I came from a community where most people that I went to highschool with look like me and talk like me, we were all Spanish speakers and then learned English. And it took me to go to college and take some ethnic studies courses, have classmates of different backgrounds to understand other cultures, how beautiful it would be. Where now, great, thanks to our former Medina, we're going to have ethnic studies in California in the high school level. And now, we're not going to have to wait, or even for students that don't go to college to understand of different cultures and different backgrounds. That's very important to our education and for thriving communities as we grow. And especially a time where we have such divisive communities that don't understand this cultural and other, other people's backgrounds and needs. And why we're here today. And this state and country that was built on it by immigrants for an immigrant community. And so another thing that's very important to me and dear is social economic mobility. Education creates that. I grew up in a mobile home park in Oasis, which is Riverside County. There to this day, a lot of communities don't have access to potable water. That's part of one of the reasons why we got involved in politics too. So the idea that a kid that grew up in a mobile home park that doesn't have potable water. It was until about three years ago that it got its first park where it was a practice, a norm where in middle school and high school we work in the fields every summer. The idea that those students can go to college or go to a workforce, a CT program, and then join the labor union. But through education, you create these opportunities. Now you could jump a few economic ladders. Now you're in a different tax bracket. And that's through education that we have these opportunities to be able to create a community that moves forward, progresses and that we bring everyone together. Those are, I'm sure, look back at my notes and say a few other points, but thinking about the individual, the community, the cultural awareness, and the social economic mobility is very important. 

Raiyan Kalam: 
Thank you so much. I think you deliver a very powerful message about inclusivity and understanding different points of view and different cultural backgrounds and how that ties directly into education. Thank you again for your time today. And we're really honored to have you on the Policy Chats Podcast. Going back to how powerful education is and the impact it has on these communities and how it advocates for social mobility, as well as inclusivity and understanding amongst different peoples. But as you serve your time in the realm of public policy, what are some of the policy reforms within the education system that you can kind of can see that maybe you think aren't really addressing those things of social mobility or perhaps inclusivity? 

Neftali Galarza: 
I think for education, classrooms look very similar as they did decades ago. And I know we're going to get talking about the investment in technology that's going to be very important, adapting to the new AI world, the new technologies that exist and how we can use those tools to empower communities. But in terms of educational reform that I think are very important. Now I'm a parent, I have three kids. But even before that, I mentioned I started an education through Head Start. And Head Start has these very strict federal poverty guidelines that we followed for families to have access to. In California, the federal poverty guidelines, extreme extreme poverty, because we have a minimum wage in a federal level of $7.25 around in California. That's not true, it's $15.50. When we look at federal poverty guidelines to address federal programs implemented in California, sometimes we have poor communities that aren't too poor to access some services. There are other state programs that address the state preschools that create opportunities. For a long time, we hadn't seen an advancement of early childhood education, but our current governor, and our current legislature has seen, we've seen an investment in universal T K, which is expanding four 4 year olds. We see it as an opportunity for adding that extra grade in the 12 world, K 12, and ensuring that all four years are taken care of. Right now, the advancement on some of the cut off dates that existed in the TK program, but eventually all four year olds will be able to qualify for T K. Then looking at state preschools and the federal schools, and other nonprofits that address also early child education and childcare looking at 3 year olds, how can we now ensure that every three year old also goes to preschool? Those ideas that five years ago or even more recently, we couldn't even think about it being pragmatic. But I think we can see it today in a world where things seem so far. But I also think as a rural community, I grew up in very rural areas when these things are implemented. We also look at populations and where people live. And so when you live in dense areas, you have more access to different types of programs because of I’m not saying that's amazing and perfect is more opportunities because people are competing, organizations or schools are competing each other versus in rural California, like in the Coachella Valley, Chela Valley, or in the Central San Joaquin Valley, you don't have the competition of multiple public schools, charter schools, and other private schools and nonprofits looking. There is existing, but you don't have it as extreme as you have in the dense areas like LA or San Francisco. Now, how can we attract more programs to compete and to create more opportunities for these rural communities is very important. I think the State Legislature has done a good job in addressing some of these things, but we could obviously move forward and expand from those type of things. In terms of K through 12, I talked about ethnic studies and that's very important. I see that Governor Newsom is also addressing a lot of the issues that needed to be addressed with the local control accountability plan. The out cap that was introduced by Governor Brown, that's for having local control and ensuring that we can look at student achievement as well. And how can we ensure that we close the opportunity gap for these communities while we're addressing the funding of the schools. Then in higher education we see so many issues from community college, not being accessible to certain areas or too far where we have to drive. And then there's not even transportation like is the case in the desert. Or we see the year after year tuition increases being proposed. And how does that create- what kind of issues does create for our communities of working class communities but also our middle class families that some of the middle class families don't have all this access to the financial aid. But they're also not super rich to be able to afford the 12,000 plus tuition rates plus housing that could be equal to that, here in California.

Rachel Strausman: 
You talk a lot about opportunity gaps and trying to bridge those gaps, which is very important. Would you say that the starting of bridging of those gaps starts in non profits and non governmental organizations? Or it's the government identifying and then from that nonprofit start to form to address the issue?

Neftali Galarza:
 I think it's a government's responsibility. I believe that it is the government's responsibility to address these issues. There are nonprofits that are available and exist. So one way that government sometimes execute these programs is by having nonprofits apply for these grants and then they do the on ground work. Because some of these nonprofits have the relationship with communities. Versus sometimes when government officials come to communities that they're not from, maybe sometimes communities not as trustworthy of them. So, I think there's opportunity to build partnerships with government and non government agencies. At the end of the day, I do think that education falls in the responsibility of the government, and not on the nonprofit. I think the nonprofit can be the tool to enact these services in partnership with the government. 

Rachel Strausman: 
That's a great way to describe it: the nonprofit is the tool that has the connections with the community to make a more broad policy have a more personal effect. Building off of that, in terms of reforms that need to be made in education, what are some reforms that are currently in progress that hold promise? 

Neftali Galarza: 
I mean, I think I talked a lot about the early childhood education. I see that being addressed in the last few legislative sessions. And someone that's a parent and as a council member, Mayor pro tem in our city, we know that childcare for the young kids is tough. And also an expansion of part time centers to full day preschools that those show great promises. I think this year tools following other legislation around ensuring that we have more funding for dual enrollment for high school students to be enrolled in college courses, and by the time they get here, students have college credits. The funding formulas, I think people are looking at different opportunities to fund schools that doesn't just rely on the average daily attendance and then also the ideas of other stuff like discipline and how we discipline schools. I see some legislation targeting removing suspension and expulsion or defiant students. Those things are interesting debates that happen. As long as when we're pushing policy in our state that the topic conversation is always student centered. In the local level in the city, we get a chance to work with the school district and get a chance to, not long ago, but we haven't fully implemented it. We voted to create our youth council in the city too so that way to engage more students. At the end of the day, I’m about to turn thirty. Still young I think, but it takes a lot of when I was in high school, when I was in K 12, I was in college, the needs were very different. So it's important for us to learn from current high school students, from current college students about the needs that exist today and seeing how we can tackle those. 

Raiyan Kalam: 
Thank you so much again for your response. Very young by my count as well. 

Neftali Galarza: 
Thank you. Thank you. 

Raiyan Kalam: 
You did a great job of elaborating for us some of the local and then also the statewide different reforms in education. But is there more of an impact in making important decisions in regards to education in one or two of these areas of policy? Do you think it is more specifically focused at the local level or at the statewide level or perhaps even the national level? 

Neftali Galarza: 
Yeah, Well, I think we need to have a partnership and working- we all these different local, state and local, regional, state and federal government work together to implement programs. Federal government make sure we provide federal and state provides a lot of funding. The state sets a lot of the standards. And then in the local level, we do implement a lot of the work with local perspective. And the local control funding formula does a good job in including local families and the decision making. As a council member and a former board member, very supportive of the idea of local involvement. I am not supportive of local involvement when it means I'm supportive local involvement, but I'm not supportive of communities that want to use that to discriminate against people. Just saying like that. For instance, big conversation today is around the banning of books. And some school districts feel that they have the authority to ban books or ban certain curriculum curriculum that fosters empowerment in their youth. They see these t ypes of education as wrong. But we can look at and they use that local control as saying, we voted for these school board members and we have all decision. I think that's where it draws a gray area for people that are very supportive. Local control but hate doesn't trump, it shouldn't included in the idea of local control at that point, we do need to make sure that state standards are followed and that the state needs to intervene when things like that do happen. And so I think it needs to be balanced. No one agency has control power over the other. There is a relationship. There's the funding and the standards and the implementation of it. But we need to work in partnership. We can't work in silos or else the people that are going to have the service is going to be the students. Because our local government has a different idea than the state does that of the federal government. I think we all need to work together. The party politics, that doesn't matter when you're a three year old trying to get into preschool or you're a ten year old in elementary school or twelve year old middle school or fifteen year old high school. These party politics that are so divisive - they don't matter to these kids. And we need to bring back the conversation centered around the children, not about party politics that we're bringing into our school districts. 

Raiyan Kalam: 
No, I understand completely. Thank you for that response is very detailed and it explains a lot about different levels of policy and how each area of public policy actually goes into the state, local, and regional level. 

Rachel Strausman: 
Yeah. So kind of shifting gears now, and I know you kind of hinted at it earlier, but to look into the future, what implications does the seemingly constant evolution of technology, as you're saying with AI, and you know everyday, I feel like there's something new that's coming out that's changing the way we learn. What implications does that have on education and how can we adapt ourselves and our education system to best support the needs of this changing world and now changing youth? 

Neftali Galarza: 
Yeah, I'm not an expert, just my opinions or how I view it. You know AI, at first I was like, what is this? I was seeing images on social media, people creating images with AI and I didn’t understand it and then I made an account on Chat GPT and I started using it. I think obviously it's a great tool that it's going to exist, it's going to be there. And how do we embrace it is I think the conversation that some professionals are having, I'm of the opinion that we need to find a way that we use it in our daily lives and we use it at work and education, obviously not to plagiarize, and I know that educational professionals are looking at those specific students using AI for work, as for educational assignments. I think those are a different debate, but we can't be afraid of it or shut it down because we don't understand it. I think that I wasn't a thing years ago, even when grammarly came around. I was in college and I didn't have grammarly. And then I started working and I discovered grammarly and I connected to my email and it corrects my grammar all the time. And that idea too, like that, seems so new to me and so different. I was even scared like, oh man, this is not me talking but it is, it’s adjusting. Now using AI, how do you embrace that too, into your daily lives, into education, the workforce? How do we empower individuals to see careers in that field, in tech industry? I'm speaking here as a council member and I want to make sure that I say that because I wear the hat at work. And my opinions that I share are me as a council member, but at COE, they have a Department of Education Technology now, they have embraced e-sports. They have tournaments for high school students, and scholarships for e-sports is a growing phenomenon. People are watching, people are watching people play video games. And someone that hasn't played video games since Nintendo 64 was around. I didn't understand it, but I know it's real and people are embracing it. And so how do we now continue embracing these different technologies? I think it will just be a better way once we learn how to properly implement it and not be so scared of it because people worry that using it in thinking of it as a negative connotation. I think we need to look at it as a positive way and seeing how we can ensure that whether we have career tech fields into technology, into these new forms of technologies. There are some desert sands IT programs and other school districts in the county of Riverside many different IT through the career technical education programs that empower students to learn how to obtain the skills to be part of this modernized world. Again, I think it's a great, it can be scary, but if we embrace it and we learn about it, we're not scared.

Rachel Strausman: 
And embracing it is such a unique aspect of education that you have to set policies in place but also be prepared for the ever changing world. And so kind of going off of that, would you say that as policy takes a long time to change and now technology is taking a lot shorter of a time to change as time goes on, would you say that our education system is prepared for the fast changes that are coming and to adapt to the changing needs, or would you say it's something that needs to be worked on for the future? 

Neftali Galarza: 
Well, I'm an optimistic person. I want to say that we have the best people in the universities. Obviously there are some things that, again, we don't understand because as you mentioned, things are ever changing. And socI think we have people that are adaptable and can assimilate to the changing world. I think we trust our diverse community here to help the educational professionals adjust to it. I know that, for instance, Covid 19 was such a troubling time for all of us across the world. And the idea of high schools or K 12 schools from one week to another to go online, we thought about it prior to 2020. That probably wasn't like something we could do, people though there’s no way we could do this with the lack of infrastructure, of internet, the lack of devices. Somehow communities, the counties, the county office, the school districts, local leaders, nonprofits, everyone partnered together to ensure that that happened. It was done, I think that were met again with an emergency to meet these things. I think that we're going to see that unity again and we'll meet them. But I think as we see gradual change, I believe that as an optimistic person, that we have the right folks in positions to make these changes. And if not, then we need to make sure that they are in these places.

Raiyan Kalam: 
Thank you, Mayor Galarza. I couldn't agree more. I think it's hard to say that with these new incoming technologies that they are going anywhere, and I think the approach should be towards adaptability and supporting them. And. Trying to benefit that into our own infrastructure. Really quickly. I just wanted to shift gears here. A lot of our podcast listeners are predominantly university students, ranging between the ages of 18 to 22. I just wanted to ask you if there was any other ways that students like myself or colleague Rachel might be able to get involved in local government or perhaps any career internship opportunities that we should be looking at post graduation? 

Neftali Galarza: 
Yeah. Before I get to this, I have like thoughts about the last question and then I'll go to, not long ago I read a book. Robert Iger who’s the CEO of Disney. And in this book, I think it’s called an Adventure of a Lifetime, something like that. Attorney of a Lifetime. In the book he talks about when he became CEO, there's all these different challenges with Apple with Pixar. These at one point, the competitors, I think about the idea of Pixar, the former. Bob Igerwas very progressive in the way he thought. It is very progressive the way he thinks. And Pixar had advance and was a lot more progressive in terms of the technology than Disney was in animation. And Disney, at one point was sort of the goat on that. And now you had former employees of Disney now creating better movies that are better technology. And former CEOs thought that as a competition and didn't embrace it. They didn't embrace it and they were losing to Pixar. Movies that Disney was releasing were not getting as many sales theater views that the movies Pixar was releasing. So when Robert Iger became CEO, instead of keeping that idea of we don't understand it, there are enemies, we're not going to embrace them. He embraced it. He worked with Apple and eventually bought Pixar and hired everyone there. And the way he did it, when he bought at Pixar, he told the leads there, you don't need to adjust to the Disney way. We want the Pixar way to teach us. I think that I think about that story and how Bob Iger, you have Disney Pixar and you have all these great movies like Wall-E that came out and New Elemental, and a lot of- Up -a lot of different movies that have Disney Pixar, and very successful movies that have a combination of both because of that idea versus who can think of a world where Disney and Pixar are together today. I'm glad I read that, because now when I see a challenge that makes me uncomfortable, instead of seeing it, just something like I'm going to ignore. I learned through that story that we need to embrace it. Sometimes it's uncomfortable that there's other people that know more than we do or other technologies. But if we embrace it and we learn from them, then we're going to be able to create a greater community of better. I wanted to share that because I just thought about that anecdote as you were talking, but

Raiyan Kalam: 
No, thank you. I think it's a great lesson not only in policy but also in life. 

Neftali Galarza: 
Yeah. Embrace change. Back to the internships, as a council member in Coachella has been internships. There was already internships in the city. But we embraced it and grew it too. We have in Coachella now we partnered with One Future Coachella Valley, the educational organization. They focus on college and career readiness in the desert area. Coachella desert areas- Worked with all the three school districts are the community college and all the different higher education institution, even One Future. They started as a committee under another organization, and they were called Pathways Careers, and now it's called One Future and they're bigger entity. They outgrew their organization that they were once part of. We partnered with them. And now what we're doing is we have paid interns at the City Coachella every summer. Students like us that go back home. Before when I was in college, when I had to go back home, I would work at Del Taco. I worked at a guitar string company where we did a lot of packing and coiling guitars. I worked at a Chinese restaurant. And I'm very thankful for these experiences, but had I had an opportunity to intern in the city and for the summer. And it being an educational opportunity that also pays me that save some money to come back to college. And I'm not broke that idea. I thought about it. And so, I worked with another council member, Stephanie Burkin, to bring up this proposal to our city. And we were able to fund these now summer interns in the city of Coachella, and in partnership with One future Coachella Valley. Big shadow to them to being partners and health career pathways that they've been using for a while. Those it's a growing thing. When I was in college, I mentioned I was an intern in Head Start at our COE. At the time, there was no paid internship. I was an unpaid intern. But I'm glad I did it. I knew I had to take. And make myself uncomfortable to learn more about the different career opportunities. But it wasn't a popular thing to have paid internships. Now it is then mentioning in my day job I mentioned I worked at the County Office of Education. Through there we have paid internship programs for college students throughout the County, Riverside, and now Imperial County. Because Impro County Migrant Head Start is also part of our COE, we have 20 positions of paid insurance throughout the year. We have two cohorts, one in the school year from September to end of May. That's one cohort of students that when you're in college. So you're at Riverside or local school, you can be an intern with us here in downtown or you're in the desert and you're a college desert student going to college in San Bernardino out in the desert. And you can enter with us in Indio. In Marietta, we also have offices there where students that are in San Marcos, state or community colleges down there. They can also intern with us in Imperial County. There's a lot of different Imperial Valley College, San Diego State, and now we have paid programs for students. That's one goal word. And then we also use that summer program idea idea for it is we do understand that during the school year we don't discriminate against anyone. A lot of our interns during the school year are students that are here for school. Not all of them necessarily live here throughout the year, so sometimes they go back home for the summer. And then we have all these other students that are from Riverside County Schools, that go to UCLA, go to UCSB, other schools out of the area. But they come back home and now we have summer internship for them to be here and working on educational issues. Education, for our students listening to the idea of working in the school districts, not only for teachers. You have physical departments, you have technology. It's, you have different mental health, social emotional learning. All these different programs that exist within educational institution. That isn't just the idea of teacher principal, there's just various various opportunities that exist in education. I really encourage people to look into those. Look into municipalities and if your city hasn't taken on paid internship in the summer, it'd be great to approach your local council member and say at the City of Coachcella, they're doing this, why not here? Right. I'm more than happy to advocate. I think that this approach of having paid internships, paid internships should not be a replacement of other employees. It should be an educational learning opportunity.  Or both. It's an enrichment opportunity for both the municipality and the student. If your city doesn't have a summer paid in program, you should advocate for one to exist, ensuring that they can use some of their savings or some of the general funds or looking at state grants that I know that our State legislature too. Former Speaker Brandon has talked about Pashi programs and started paid internship programs in Sacramento. I also did UC Center in Sacramento when I was in college. I learned a lot when I was there and Assembly member I worked for, Garcia took good care of me and I learned a lot. But through the UC Center program, there was an opportunity to get paid. I was doing it for free while also going to college. And those things are changing though. I graduated in 16, it's not long ago. But thinking about it now, seven-eight years later, we're seeing a lot of paid internship opportunities come up. And they're valuing the labor and creating these educational opportunities for the students. Because we know that the students are going to be the next generation that are going to be in these jobs. And I mentioned it's very important to have paid internships too, that institutions need to get. Because those students that can take advantage of unpaid internships are probably students, that don't have the need in terms of socio economic issues at home. I had to take loans to do these internships and I'm paying them off now. I'm grateful that things have worked out for me, but it was a gamble on myself and the organizations that I wanted to intern in for. When we have a paid internship program, we can ensure that a college student isn't working at a fast food restaurant, going to school full time, and then looking for unpaid internship program. Why not ensure that they just go to school full time and have a paid internship program without having to look for other ways of making money? They could be learning while making money should be an idea. And I know that we have different opportunities. Also paid jobs here on campus and continuing to enrich. Hopefully the university is embracing and creating more jobs for students. I was a employee here when I was a student. I mentioned, I also worked for UCR Extension at the Hub for a while, a dining services. But a lot of times when I when I worked here, I also had other jobs. I worked at a local library, home gardens as well. And then mentioned the different fast food restaurants that we worked on. And I'm glad I did, but I wish I didn't have to do it. I learned a lot in terms of like work ethic and time management, but I think I could have learned that without having to put myself in positions where my social life was impacted or I was you know behind school work because I had to go to work. And sometimes we would lose that idea of like I need to make money to pay rent, but but I'm here to go to school. And those are just different thinking out loud. But look for paid internships in the field that you want to work for. I don't shy away from emailing. People say you go through the website and they don't have an internship. Email them, they might create something. I mentioned my experience when I was in college. I went through the RCOE website and I didn't see a college internship opportunity. I emailed them directly. And then they found a spot for me. And fast forward I'm employed there, take risks. And at the end, like the worst case scenarios, you're in the same place that you are right now. And that's not a bad place. You're on your way to graduate from college. 

Rachel Strausman: 
Yeah, something that you've mentioned throughout the conversation we've had today is a mid diversity, whether of background or diversity of need. What really is important is unity through change. And unity despite change, whether it's unity of each other to grow together and handle that change together. Or unity of even looking into government of the different branches of government and the different levels of government to help create effective change that works for everyone. I think that that represents exactly what education needs is a good foundation in unity and bringing communities together. And a good foundation that adapts to the changing world and everything around us. And with that, it has been such an honor to get to speak with you and we are so grateful to have you here today. Thank you so much for coming.

Neftali Galarza: 
Yeah, thank you for having me.