Irene Cepeda interview, April 24, 2019: transcript

i AN INTERVIEW WITH IRENE CEPEDA An Oral History Conducted by Monserrath Hernández Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2018 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Nathalie Martinez, Rodrigo Vazquez, Elsa Lopez Editors and Project Assistants: Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez, Maribel Estrada Calderón, Monserrath Hernández, Elsa Lopez, Nathalie Martinez, Marcela Rodriquez-Campo, Rodrigo Vazquez iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Irene Cepeda April 24th, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Monserrath Hernández Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Talks about her identity as it relates to her Nicaraguan roots and work at Nevada State College; her parents’ migration story; growing up in North Las Vegas; describes her parents and time spent together at Broadacres Marketplace (“Swap Meet”); her time at Canyon Springs High School and her involvement with the Latino Youth Leadership Conference ............................ 1-8 Looks back on her time at UNLV and how she became engaged in higher education; her inspiration to run for the Clark County School District (CCSD) Board of Trustees and transition into the public eye; the challenges CCSD faces; her responsibilities as a Trustee and resolutions to tackle racism and White Supremacy in CCSD ...................................................................... 9-14 Reflects on going to Culinary Union strikes with her family; travelling to Nicaragua and the culture shock she experienced; the shifts she has seen since joining office; describes her ideal school district and the issues with adequately funding CCSD schools; and her opinions on the term Latinx .............................................................................................................................. 14-23 Discusses the difficult and enjoyable parts of serving as a Trustee; the discrimination English Language Learner (ELL) students face; the power of the Latinx community; and advocates for Latinx representation in elected positions ............................................................................... 23-26 1 My name is Monserrath Hernández. Today is April 24, 2019. We are in the Oral History Research Center. I am with… Rodrigo Vásquez. Nathalie Martinez. And we are sitting with Irene Cepeda. Irene, can you spell out your name for us? Irene Cepeda. I-R-E-N-E. Auxiliadora, A-U-X-I-L-I-A-D-O-R-A. Cepeda, C-E-P-E-D-A. Thank you, Irene. First question: How do you identify? I identify as a Latina woman. Right after that it’s the work I do. I’m a college access specialist; that’s what I’ve done for many years. I am the director of a Hispanic-serving institution grant here at Nevada State College. We help create more teachers by recruiting and offering dual enrollment programs at the high school level. We’re hoping to get more students interested in the teaching profession because being a teacher is one of the least diverse professions we have; it’s mainly White women by a really large margin, almost 70 percent White women, so diversifying that teacher pool because then those lead to administrative roles and bigger roles within the district. I guess I identify as a college access specialist. I am definitely first-generation immigrant. My parents immigrated from Nicaragua here; my dad in the seventies and my mom in the eighties. Both of them fleeing instability, financial instability and political instability in the country. It’s always a little jarring because this morning I heard more how that’s coming back with Daniel Ortega refusing to leave power. We see these dictators continue to rise up within our Central American—well, I say Central American—but from these countries. I think I identify as that. 2 I am a daughter, a sister. I’m a photographer. I enjoy taking landscape photography and just driving and being a helper. When your parents came to the U.S., where did they first come? My dad went to Washington, D.C. first, so he went into East Coast. He lived in Rockville, Silver Springs, Maryland. He likes to tell the story of how he did some of the moldings within the White House because his first trade was as a carpenter. He did some moldings with some companies. He eventually made his way to the West Coast, to L.A. My mom migrated straight to Los Angeles because she had some family friends who were living in L.A. I was born in Inglewood, California. My parents met in L.A. through some mutual friends where everyone knew each other. Both of my parents were from Nicaragua, but met here. When did your family move to Las Vegas, and what location did they move? Shortly after I was born, so sometime in the nineties, 1990, because I was born in 1989. They moved late 1990, December of 1990. We still own the house that they moved to here. Granted, my mom has passed away and my dad is seventy-four, so now me and my sister maintain that house. Yes, we still have it, so we never left the house we moved in when they originally migrated from L.A. to Vegas. What part of town is it in? North Las Vegas. I always use the Swap Meet as a landmark because we were like four blocks away because we’re on Carey and Las Vegas Boulevard and the Swap Meet is on Las Vegas Boulevard and Pecos, just one main street over. That’s where we grew up. What was that neighborhood like growing up? 3 It’s always been Latino to me. I do remember there were a couple of homes. It’s mainly houses, but there are also some multi-family residences in the neighborhood. I do remember there were a couple of houses that people would come and people would go and no one would ever really stay. The only two constants in our neighborhood were our next-door neighbors and—the neighbors across the street from us—we’re on the evens—on the odds, our next-door neighbors right next to us, and then their house on the other end, and everyone else was kind of transient. You always had the eloteros that would come by with the horn. There was always a fruit stand right on Belmont and Carey. Did you used to go to the Swap Meet a lot? Oh yes, every weekend. My mom, that’s what she would do. She would wake us up at six, seven in the morning, and we’d be out of the house by for sure seven because she wanted to get all the good deals. Granted, now it’s changed it bit. Now it’s like a party, the Swap Meet. They have banda and all this other music and more shows. But before it was just where people would go and sell their stuff. We would always go and see what they have. It was like a big yard sale. My mom would always go to this one lady. She would always get plants because my mom loved gardening. What kind of plants? Aloe vera or those telephone plants that just kind of hang everywhere. She was big into aloe and she had a mini garden where she had hierbabuena. She always had rosemary, hierbabuena; things that she could cook with or make tea out of. There is this other one called pata de elefante, which looks like a big root. She always dreamed of having apple trees and orange trees like you see in California, but they would always die here. 4 Yes, that’s what we would go do. We also had a red wagon and she would stick us in it when we didn’t want to walk, so she would pull us. Once we were getting too big, then we had to walk. It was always a fight. My mom would religiously go. My sister was totally a mom’s girl and I was a dad’s girl. I was always, “I don’t want to go.” My sister would always side with her and I would always have to go. What was your favorite family tradition growing up? Goodness, I think it’s just sitting on the couch, watching TV. What would you watch? We would watch Cristina. Later Caso Cerrado came along, so we would watch Caso Cerrado. The Univision news or Telemundo news. I remember we would all just go and jump on top of each other. Just being together would be the best. What was your favorite food growing up? My mom would make really good lengua. My mom was a cook helper, so she was part of the Culinary Union, how we were talking about earlier. She worked at the Bellagio as a cook helper, and so she was a really good cook. She would make lengua and her tacos de lengua were just amazing. Being, again, Nicaraguan, we would have vigorón. We would have nacatamales and fritanga and stuff that I don’t normally see any place. You don’t get that here because, again, there are less Central Americans here. From her, it would be that. She would always cook. She really made our house a home. What were your parents like? My dad was a feminist, but just for us. We were allowed to be feminists, but any other statement he would take more machista roles. For me and my sister, we were allowed to be feminists and make sure we got education and stand up for ourselves. 5 Why do you think that was? I don’t know. I think it’s a great dichotomy because from one perspective I could see him say things that are so obviously sexist, but for us, we were allowed to be our own independent women; he wanted us to stand up for ourselves; he wanted us to get educated; he wanted us to be independent and not have to depend on anybody. It still boggles me. There is the dissonance that I carry on an everyday basis because there are these two contradictory—this is one piece, but my dad would have these contradictory viewpoints. How do they coexist in one person without your brain exploding? I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it. He loved us and he understood us, but I don’t know how those two existed. Where did you go to school? I stayed here locally. I do appreciate that from my family is that we were very consistent and they didn’t move us from place to place, especially knowing Las Vegas is so transient where people just move everywhere and don’t tend to stay for too long. I went to Fay Herron Elementary School and then went to Von Tobel Middle School. I went to LVA for a year and that was way too much of a culture shock being at LVA. Why is that? I went to Fay Herron and Von Tobel Middle School where it was majority Latino. Everyone there was a minority. Then when I went to LVA, I was the minority on multiple aspects, like financially. My dad and my mom both worked, but they were blue-collar workers; my mom was a cook and my dad was a pest control technician. My mom didn’t start working until we were in middle school, her first job. Before that she was our mom; that was her job. Again, working class, we didn’t have a whole lot of money. When I went to LVA, these kids had private lessons since they were toddlers. They had all the advantages in the world. I had to compete. Kids are 6 mean. In competition we would fight for chairs, so I wanted to be first chair. There were some really mean kids and they kind of sucked the fun out of being in orchestra. What did you play? I played upright string bass. That was a big part of my identity. The conversation started with identity. I was an orchestra person. It really kept me grounded throughout my schooling because it gave me a purpose; it gave me a role. You have to work together in orchestra. It gave me a safe space after school. I wouldn’t just go from home to school or get in trouble in between. I would go from school and then just go straight to the orchestra room and practice and hang out with my friends. That gave me a safe space throughout my formative years. After LVA I went to Canyon Springs and they had just opened as a magnet school and I applied, me and my sister. We both went to Canyon Springs. What did you study there? My major was leadership. There were two tracks at that magnet program; it was leadership and law, so I took the leadership route and my sister took law because we couldn’t be in the same track. How did you like Canyon Springs? I loved it. I loved high school. Looking back, as a magnet kid you are kind of separated from the rest of the population, so we had our own mini cohort of our classmates that we saw on an everyday basis. I was also privy, though, to these Black and Brown race fights. I never really understood it. I still, as an adult, don’t really get it, especially since we recently had two White students at Arbor View High School post terrorist level threats on Instagram where they were targeting specific African-American students and talking about racial cleansing, Columbine Part 7 Two. Again, these very blatant instances of racism are still prevailing throughout our community. Also people either try to put it under the rug or just not try to address it. Acknowledge it. Yes, acknowledge it that it exists. White supremacy is a thing that people still think they’re better than. I was with one of my student mentors at Arbor View on Monday and the teacher, we were doing a presentation to her classroom, yes, she was mentioning how there are some teachers who want to have a White club, kind of like pseudo KKK; that it’s reverse racism, and not really understanding that there are still these things that need to be addressed. We don’t address this cultural piece. You have been a big part of the Latino Youth Leadership Conference. Yes. How did you come about that when you were in high school? My dad killed the bugs of Otto Merida. Otto Merida was the CEO or now he’s emeritus of the Latin Chamber. My dad would go to his house to kill bugs. Otto Merida told my dad about the youth conference. When I would be an incoming sophomore—my sister was a freshman and I was an incoming sophomore—we took a place at the conference and we loved it. What year? Two thousand five. I didn’t stay involved right after. I didn’t get back involved until my second semester in college here at UNLV. I ran into an old alumni. I was like, “I know you.” And he was like, “Yes. You should come and get back involved.” That’s how I got back involved. I was a little older when I came back. Specific to the conference, you build these relationships and you address some of these parts of your identity that you don’t always have those conversations. For me it was really big 8 because, again, you’re able to share and have a dialogue with people that are within your community, similar backgrounds, but different experiences. That was really invaluable and I really, really loved my experience and it gave me a whole lot, again, being Latina and not really understanding our own power. Yes, I owe a lot of myself to that conference. I think of everything we disclosed as a familia, pieces of ourselves that we don’t always share with anybody else. Our familias are our groups that we have within the conference. I think about sharing my own experiences within my family and it was just really powerful and hearing other people’s stories, it just gave me a lot. I just kept sticking around. I haven’t done as much this year because I am trying pass the reins, throw the torch. I’m like, someone has to catch it. What kinds of things would you do with the Alumni Association? It’s a little different and it’s kind of changed over the years. Before, the Alumni Association would kind of coordinate the conference, but now alumni is more social and a lot of our alumni also come back. There are kind of these two separate spaces. Our conference is all alumni run; it’s run by our alumni for the most part. We do get some help. It’s been around twenty-six years. We’re going to celebrate our twenty-sixth year this year. I think that says a lot especially when there are so many conferences that come and go. I think ours is very special because it’s not like one of those sterile conference where you go, you do a session, you learn something and just kind of move on. Hay cariño [There’s love]; there’s solidarity; there’s love that you feel like you’re really part of something. I think of all the leaders now have come out of the conference. We have Olivia Diaz; we have Selena Torres who is up in the legislature now; Edgar Flores. We have people who are in places of power that can really represent our community more than we ever have had before. 9 What did you study when you came to UNLV? I was a political science major. Honestly, my teacher in high school, he was a poli-sci major. As a leadership major, you learn about politics. He got us really heavily involved in our local politics. I don’t want to be a teacher and that was one of my original majors, but then I switched over to political science and then I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I took an internship at CSN through AmeriCorps and that’s what got me into higher education. We crafted a service-learning program for our two-year college, so we connected. We were kind of like the connector piece. Students would want to volunteer and we’d connect them with a nonprofit and then they could log their hours through our mini-initiative program that we had through our Student Life. It was a mentor there; his name was Vitaliano Figueroa, who is now a vice chancellor of something in Wisconsin—he’s a force—but he was like, “Irene, you need to go get your master’s degree.” And so I’m like, “Okay.” He got me my first GRE book. He was like, “This is what time the tests are. Go sign up.” Next thing you know, I’m in a master’s degree program. Where? Here. What were you studying? It was a Master’s in education. By that time I was a junior in the poli-sci program. I was like, I’m going to finish this. I really do enjoy politics and I think from that program you do gain critical thinking skills and I you have a lot of reading involved, so I learned valuable skills through it. Did I ever plan on being a politician? Not really. That was a dream I had when I was really little, but not as a college student. I wasn’t thinking about political aspirations. What led you to run for CCSD Board of Trustees? 10 It’s a whole lot of things. I’ve been in education for—again, that’s kind of where my career path led me down. It’s always something I had been interested in. Being in higher education I was working a lot with CCSD schools to facilitate the transition from high school into college. A lot of jobs were going to require—I think the Lumina Foundation at one point had 60, 70 percent of all jobs were going to require some type of post-secondary training whether it was a certificate and all the way through a PhD, so you need some sort of training. We were helping students with that. You don’t need a PhD to do whatever job, but you probably want some sort of training or certification from a two-year college or a trade school; that’s still college. Engraining that that is still college. I was doing a lot of work there. Again, it just came to a point where the person that was currently representing us was a terrible person. He was banned from schools. He was blaming ELL parents for reading deficiencies we have in the district when really it’s just about resources—well, a big piece of it is we don’t have the resources to pay for ELL specialists, some of those pieces. He was a sexual harasser, found guilty. This person was representing District D, which is 70, 75 percent Latino. He had no regard for these communities. Goodness, I went to one of his community forums and he had a room full of Latina moms because the school was Tom Williams. All the moms there were Latinas and we would speak Spanish. He made them say mariachi; that’s what he would bring up to try to connect with them, which for me was really offensive that he would first have them say mariachi. It was just this entire exchange that just made me sick to my stomach. Part of it was getting him out. Part of it was trying to be a representative voice for my community. Third, there was really no one else running. I think had there been someone else that had some sort of educational background or background in leadership, I probably wouldn’t have 11 done it. But there was literally no one. There were two college kids, the incumbent, and then this other guy who does construction, like occupational safety, who was getting into it because he is a parent. I don’t know. It was a sense of duty. It was anger for who was our representative. It was also timing and where you live because our district is fairly poor. It’s one of our poorest districts. Again, it’s got some of the highest transient rates. But that doesn’t mean it exempts us from achieving. It’s just that these are the situations our students face. It was all of that. Then Nora was like, “Would you do it?” She’s like, “We’ll help you. We will find you a support system.” I was like, “Okay.” That’s kind of how it all happened. It is definitely attributing always being ready for an opportunity. I think that’s it, just always being ready for something and being willing to take the leap. How has your life changed since you started? I’ve only been in the role four months. I was sworn in the second week of January. I still need to work on my own mindset because it’s definitely a hard role being in the public eye. I’m definitely an introvert. I like being in the background, listening, and problem-solving from that way. I don’t mind having to be an extrovert, but it’s really exhausting. Sometimes I want to do more, I want to change more, but, again, we have this bureaucratic system where we have open meeting law. I feel like there are a lot of obstacles where you can’t just change something. The power you have doesn’t come from you being an individual; it comes from the board of seven, so there’s that as well. I don’t know. It’s such a massive school district and I think it’s not proportionate to other large districts. The other four large districts are L.A., New York City, Houston—There’s another one that I’m missing. But all of those correlate to—they’re big cities in the nation. We’re the twenty-second, twenty-first largest city in the nation; yet, we have the fifth largest school district. There is some 12 disproportionality there. Not to mention we are one of seventeen school districts. When it comes to representation, we’re getting gipped because there are seventeen and there is just one of us. We have 74 percent of the population down here. There are a lot of challenges and some days it’s really hard to stay positive. There is a lot of work to do. I think just being in the public eye, you become this punching bag, like, this is everything that is wrong and you’re not fixing it, when there is so much more that goes into it, like we don’t properly fund our school districts. The times we have asked—last four or five years where we’ve asked for increases in revenues, specifically with the state with the room tax, specifically with the marijuana tax, that money doesn’t come to education; it gets redistributed; it gets supplanted. It’s never supplemental; our bucket never gets bigger. For the marijuana legislation, wasn’t it a big thing, a big part of its platform to get it passed for education? Yes. It was the same thing with the room tax. It was like, this money is going to go to education, but it didn’t. Again, what happens is that it technically all did go to education, but the additional funding did not add to our bucket. Basically, they took other monies away and used that money. Honestly, it’s frustrating because, again, it’s lying to the people to some degree, right? There is additional revenue that is taken out from you in taxes that’s going to go to education, but really it kind of did and it kind of didn’t because other monies just went other ways. Part of that is our funding formula. We could go down a very dark alley of all the things that are wrong. To clarify, what is the role of the CCSD Board of Trustees? What is it that you do? We oversee policy and regulations for the district. I think the best way is making sure that the processes that are in line are working. We’re making sure processes are working; I would say that’s about 25 percent. Then the rest of it is being that check and balance to the superintendent. 13 We’re in charge of his evaluation. He is the one who is actually executing everything. He has a staff that he will go and tell to do. We’re in charge of the evaluation piece of what we deem important that will be on his evaluation. We now have a new strategic plan that we’re monitoring so that other pieces monitor progress and just making sure that our platform, whatever that may be, whether it’s making sure that achievement gaps are reduced or that we’re making sure that we’re making a concerted effort to hire more people of color that are more representative of our population; all that will go into the evaluation piece and monitoring piece where we ask for updates. It’s checks and balances, but it becomes so much more because—it’s hard for me to explain and I’m in the role, so how do you explain that to the population when they see so many things going wrong? That’s the kind of the role what it is. I think we definitely have a PR issue where it’s hard to explain what the role is. Is there an instance in the last four months where you realize, I’m in over my head? Every day. Every single day. There are so many things that people—The other piece is that we hear what the people are saying, what they want, and we hear their complaints. If we see a trend, then we bring it up. That’s how I run it; if I see a trend of something, for instance, recently it’s been how parents are not notified of any type of emergency. For instance, with bussing, if a student’s bus is two hours late, the parents aren’t really notified; they just have to wait until their kid shows up. They’re supposed to, but it doesn’t happen because, again, the policy is only as good as the people who are going to implement it; otherwise, anarchy can reign. There’s been these complaints about just not being communicated to, or when they do find out about something, it’s through a third party, like the news or a friend of a friend, and that takes away from your legitimacy where as an organization you’re not able to communicate to your 14 constituents; in this case, parents, students, stakeholders, and then we have a real issue. That’s kind of where my brain has been in addition to the racial relations within our district. What would be a solution for a school like Arbor View to apply? What do you think would work there? Would it be an increase of P.O.C. teachers or would it be maybe bussing in colored students to that predominantly White community? What do you think would be a solution? It’s all of the above. It has to be a multi-facet solution where we are recruiting teachers of color, teachers that are more representative, more males in education. Again, the teaching profession is primarily White female, so more males in education. We need more people of color in education, more males of color in education. In addition to that, because you could be a person of color and not know how to facilitate conversations about race or identity or any of these other marginalized people, and if you don’t know how to manage those conversations, then we have a big issue. If you don’t know how to facilitate a conversation like that then you’re probably just going to throw it under the rug and not address it and things like that tend to fester and then we see a blowup like we did at Arbor View. They are getting racial climate training. I don’t know who the organization is. Again, that’s training that all our schools should get. We do have a department for that and that’s another piece we’re currently working towards is making sure that that department is training our school sites and our leaders within our schools, our teachers, to be able to facilitate those conversations. But racism is still there; that White supremacy piece that someone is better than you. We definitely need more strategic hires, training, being able to compensate appropriately. I know there are plenty of times where if you’re a bilingual teacher or Latina teacher, you get thrown all the ELL kids because you can speak to them. That’s not fair. And it’s not just Latino. 15 If you are a special education teacher and have that certification, maybe you’re not in a special classroom, maybe you’re not teaching special education students, but you get them anyway because of the need. Being able to properly— This just brings me back to there is a bill this latest legislative session that would pay teachers based off class size. You get additional monies if you had an overcrowded classroom. Is it nice? Yes. But it doesn’t solve our issue. It doesn’t solve our class-size issue. What do you think is a solution for the oversized classrooms? We need more teachers. Do we have the space? Do we have the infrastructure to hold more teachers? There are definitely some areas of town that are growing faster than we can. This year we saw a decline in enrollment because of charter schools. I think the charter school is definitely an interesting new piece to the puzzle. I know there are some that are doing really great jobs that are catering to their communities that are very methodical and practical. We have some of them that are five-star schools. Then again, we have others that are just not keeping up to standards, so their teachers don’t have to be certified and there is some concern there. It’s interesting. I definitely don’t want to consider charters as our enemies. I think we should just be doing a better job ourselves, at least that’s how I see it. If I’m worried about the competition and trying to stop the competition, that is a whole lot of wasted effort, at least that’s my perspective, one person. Me as an individual, I definitely believe we should be focusing on making our schools the best. NATHALIE: I want to quickly go back to your mom. She worked with the Culinary Union. Was she a part of the Frontier strike at all? Is the Frontier on the Strip? No, no, no. Growing up we did go to a couple of strikes. There was a Binion’s one downtown. I remember I was at that one. 16 What was that like? I don’t know. For me it was a lot of fun. I was a little kid. We would go around in a circle and I got to bang on a bucket. I remember banging on a bucket. As a little kid I didn’t know the implications of what was happening. I just knew that my mom went out to support me. Our whole family went. We never go and do anything individual, so if one of us went, we all went. I was little. I don’t remember much of it. There was a lot of people in that and we were there banging on buckets. If it wasn’t for the Culinary Union, we wouldn’t have—growing up we had great health care. I’m a state employee now; our health care sucks, so I definitely see the differences of what being able to be unionized could do because state employees don’t have a union. They did a lot for our family, all families. I saw it when it came to our health care and when my mom got sick how she was able to get care and not have to forego one or the other, forego food over medicine, even though we were a low-income family. Our total income was like forty-five thousand dollars a year, forty, forty-five depending on the year. In high school was there a SOL chapter or Latino based chapter that you were a part of? Yes. We started our SOL club at Canyon Springs High School, me and my friend Juana. Granted, there are always those fluctuations with organizations, but, yes, we started our SOL chapter. I know there was an HSU at other high schools, but we wanted a SOL because