On Saturday, Sept. 28, a Hacienda La Puente School District candidate forum invited five school board candidates to answer pressing community questions after the school reconfiguration controversy; two candidates came.

¡Juntos Podemos!, or Together We Can, a grassroots organization founded in 2019 that advocates for social justice in HLPUSD hosted and moderated the forum.

Confirmed candidates attending the forum were Joyce Garcia and Stephanie Serrano from Area 1 as well as Adrianna Quinones and Christine Helen Salazar from Area 3. Garcia and Salazar both excused themselves the day of the forum, said forum moderator Jose de Pasuma.

This meant the forum only had one candidate from each district, current HLPUSD Board Member Serrano and newcomer Adriana Quinones competing with Board President Salazar for her seat.

Quinones introduced herself as a community volunteer with involvement in the Clean Air Coalition and the Hacienda Heights Improvement Association. She said her decision to run for a board position came when she attended the Nov. 9 board meeting where school reconfigurations were being discussed.

“People were only given 30 seconds to speak instead of its usual three minutes,” the candidate said. “I was appalled by how the situation was handled.”

When asked how she felt about Salazar not being at the forum, Quinones said she wasn’t happy about it. “When [Salazar] first ran four years ago, I was one of her biggest supporters and now obviously, I am not because there were a lot of broken promises.”

One community question was how the candidates would foster a safe environment rather than the “longstanding, systemic bullying problem” where employees bully children and parents in the district. One community member passionately stood up to applaud the question.

Quinones started by mentioning board members bullying each other during board meetings, then advocated for bullying prevention training for staff. “If there is a principal, if there is an employee who is bullying our kids, they should be given a warning,” she said. “And if it continues, after training and it still continues, it’s time for them to go.”

Serrano admitted that she has faced bullying from the district and advocated for giving training to parents and staff about bullying. In a passionate speech, she listed solutions such as teaching parents and students how to document bullying, creating a bullying database and documenting how the district follows up with bullying cases. “This person can commit suicide because of bullying,” she said. “This is serious, so it needs to be taken seriously.”

She also accused Superintendent Alfonso Jimenez of fostering a bullying culture by allowing “corrupt politicians” into the district. “If this is what board members are showing, then it trickles all the way down to the culture of the organization.”

Both candidates also agreed that the board needed to do a better job in listening to the community as the community question mentioned Board President Salazar shutting out community voices.

Serrano said she wanted to implement a quarterly town hall meeting with the community that would inform parents what is happening in that quarter. The other benefit of the quarterly town hall, she added, is a two-way dialogue with board members opposed to the 3-minute public comment where some feel they are not heard.

Quinones echoed support to Serrano’s quarterly meetings saying that board members represent the people rather than the few up top. As a community member, she said that she worked with school officials to make multilingual brochures to help inform the community on different school meetings.

Candidates also discussed the recent school reconfigurations and agreed that it wasn’t transparent.

Serrano called what the board named “school reconfiguration” as “school closures” and said that the board’s word choice is not transparent. She reiterated her stance on being against the reconfiguration that started this academic year.

“I asked our president to write a resolution so that we can put in writing that we will not sell our school properties because that’s the only way to get it to happen,” Serrano said. “She refused to put it into writing multiple times.”

Quinones put it simply, “I do not support the sale of any school properties.” She name dropped Lennar Homes, the developer that bought HLPUSD properties, calling the process questionable and not fair to the community.

The forum was not a debate as both candidates agreed with each other on key community issues and recognized each other on achievements throughout the forum.

The candidates also discussed community questions on equity, social justice in the classroom, staff compensation, transportation and special education support.