Why I Fight For Kids: 5C Executive Director Maribel Gonzalez

Hello Contra Costa County Community,

I have been the Executive Director for 5C for nearly a year and during that time I have gotten to meet many of you - where you come from, what your hopes are, and what motivates you to advocate on your children’s behalf. I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you where I come from and what inspires me.

Maribel

When Maribel Gonzalez looks back on her childhood education, she remembers what a fierce advocate her mother was for her. She sees so much of her mom in the parents she works with now as the Executive Director of the Contra Costa County Charter Coalition (5C).

“She was an immigrant. She was undocumented for a long time and spoke little English,” Maribel said of her mother. “I always think my mom would have been an excellent recruit. She had that activist spirit in her and asserted herself. She wasn’t afraid to speak up for her kids.”

Maribel’s career has been dedicated to fighting for quality school access for traditionally underserved communities. Though she began her career as a public school teacher in the Bronx, NY, she found her calling as an organizer. That future was shaped in those early days when she was a child at home with her parents and attending low-performing public schools in South Central Los Angeles.

Maribel remembers some very bad teachers and a number of extraordinary ones like her 5th grade teacher Mrs. Comeaux. “When I came into Mrs. Comeaux’s class I barely spoke English and by the time I left I was not only fluent but also classified for the talented and gifted program,” Maribel said. But there weren’t enough teachers like Mrs. Comeaux. In later years some classes taught by Teach for America (TFA) corps members made up some of the shortfall. “The TFA program was a resource, but I didn’t know they were Teach for America when it was happening,” Maribel said. “Those teachers had a positive impact on me, a positive role in my life and education.”

Young Maribel with her mother and Mrs. Comeaux

After high school graduation, Maribel attended UCLA. On campus one day, she bumped into one of her former TFA teachers. Catching up with her over coffee, they talked about the TFA program. Maribel had seen recruiters on campus, and now with some encouragement, she applied. After graduation, she flew out to New York and began working with 5th and 6th-grade newcomer students from Latin America.

In the Bronx, Maribel threw herself into teaching. She drove herself to work harder than she ever had. “I wanted to believe that if I came in early and stayed late, if I worked weekends, then I could solve the problem of education inequity,” she said.

She learned that being a good teacher was very difficult but also another very important lesson: the value of the collective. As an individual, she had worked incredibly hard and made a difference for her students. But what about the larger issue of education inequity? What about all the students who were not in her classroom? “It was a lonely experience thinking you are facing this big challenge by yourself,” she said.

Maribel and her 5th grade students in the Bronx, NY

After Maribel’s TFA service ended, she returned to Los Angeles. Her brother was sick, and it sent her “into a spiral of feeling lost, disempowered and scared.” Her family’s challenging experience with the medical and legal systems because of her brother’s mental illness inspired her to go to law school.

“I thought, ‘if I become a lawyer, that’ll solve something,” Maribel said. “And now I think, honestly, I should have been organizing. There were like 30 of us in these weekly support meetings, and we were all facing the same problem: our loved ones were mentally ill and lacked access to proper treatment. If we’d acted together we might have achieved more.”

After law school graduation, Maribel went to a TFA event and heard L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy speak. She had never heard anyone speak about education justice that way. “He said, ‘What we’re trying to disrupt and change and rethink makes adults uncomfortable,” Maribel recalls. “But you know what’s truly uncomfortable? Being in the 8th grade and not knowing how to read.”

Inspired, Maribel applied to a number of education justice roles and ended up getting hired as an organizer for Parent Revolution. She had applied for a policy position but was instead offered a job as an organizer, something she knew little about at the time. “I kind of took this leap of faith and became a community organizer and I’m glad I did,” she said.

For the 13 years since, Maribel has worked as an organizer with different constituencies: parents, teachers, college students. All around education.

“I wanted to make a difference for my community,” Maribel said. “That is what organizing gave me. All those things I was looking for in a law degree, I found in organizing and drawing on this collective power that you build with other people.”

Now working with parents of 5C, Maribel said she is inspired by the time and effort they put into making sure their child has a quality education. “There are groups of parents, up to 60 at a time, coming together week after week, she said.

Maribel addressing parents at a 5C event

“I can see that this is very important to them and that their efforts and successes will grow.”

As Maribel sees it, the parents of 5C are doing their part to make the organization successful. If 5C is truly going to live out its mission, though, it will take a more coordinated effort in our broader community.

“It has to be all of us - parents, the 5C staff, and the Contra Costa charter community, getting coordinated, and working well together as a sector, which we haven’t done before,” she said. “This is the first time we’re saying, ‘let's share resources, let's build a charter parent community. We can’t do this work without resources so it will take the support of the larger education community, as well.”

Maribel said that at her core, she believes in parents being able to make their own decisions, including where they send their children to school. “There are so many decisions and choices that parents make daily,” Maribel said. “And then there are some people who think that choosing your child’s school is the one decision parents are not qualified to make.”  

Maribel said she will continue to advocate for parents to be able to choose a quality school for their children.

“For me, it’s been 13 years working in education advocacy, and I don’t care about making adults feel uncomfortable,” she said. “I care about the kids.”

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