Villaraigosa joins UCLA faculty with new class

By Marjorie Hernandez
Daily Bruin Reporter

Former Speaker of the California Assembly and mayoral candidate
Antonio Villaraigosa returned to his collegiate stomping grounds
Monday, but this time as a visiting professor at UCLA.

The course, Education 162, will explore research analysis and
its relationship to the education policy-making process.

“I hope to bring a feel for how policy makers create
public policy and the process by which they deliberate and come to
legislation,” Villaraigosa said.

Professors and administrators said Villaraigosa’s
political and first-hand legislative experience will better expose
students to the law-making process.

“One of the things the education department tries to do is
to have faculty members involved in education policy,” said
education professor James Catterall, who is teaching the course
with Villaraigosa. “Having Antonio work with us gets us more
connected with things going on in the legislature.”

In 1998, during his tenure as Speaker of the California
Assembly, Villaraigosa authored the largest school bond measure in
the history of the country, earmarking $9.2 billion to mostly urban
schools.

Villaraigosa, a ’77 UCLA alumnus, co-authored the largest
parks and recreation bond in U.S. history, while also fighting for
access to the University of California for underrepresented groups
after Proposition 209, the 1996 voter initiative which banned
affirmative action statewide.

He included funding for outreach programs in the 1998-99 state
budget as an effort to increase accessibility for minority
students.

During his first lecture, Villaraigosa connected his own
experience of being a student in East L.A. and then at UCLA.

After class, students approached him to exchange viewpoints.

“I’m really glad he’s teaching this
class,” said fourth-year urban education student Rosa Romero.
“His experience is tremendous, and it’s really going to
help me get more of a feel for the day-to-day activities of policy
more than a theoretical concept that a lot of the educational
classes teach.”

Aimee Dorr, dean of the Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies, said Villaraigosa not only brings personal
experience, but talent.

“He’s a very dynamic person, energetic and
he’s got passion ““ all things that are important in
teachers,” Dorr said.

Villaraigosa said that issues he has fought in the legislature
have been shaped by his own experiences growing up in L.A.

The son of Mexican immigrants who was raised by a single mother,
he was in and out of trouble during high school. Prospects for
higher education seemed unreachable to Villaraigosa, who was kicked
out of Cathedral High before enrolling in Roosevelt High
School.

Returning to school meant he would be placed in shop and
remedial reading classes because “that was what they did back
then,” he said.

Schools in his neighborhood of Boyle Heights and others around
East L.A. suffered due to the disparity of resources while drop-out
rates continued to soar, Villaraigosa said.

With the support of his mother and teachers, Villaraigosa, who
graduated with a 1.4 GPA from high school, began to realize the
importance of a higher education. He eventually worked his way up,
graduating with a history degree from UCLA and he later attended
law school.

He said his struggles in life and as a student continue to
resonate in the issues he champions, which include school bond
measures, bilingual education, expanding charter schools and access
to universities.

“My own experiences have led me to take a lead on a number
of those issues,” he said. “They have formed a
foundation on a number of public policy priorities that I focus
on.”