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Community Corner

Two Years Out of Liberty High, 20-year-old Runs for School Board

Basilio Bonilla would be the next best thing to having actual student representation on board.

One thing I find really unjust about school budget politics is that students don't get to vote for school board candidates. Parents aren't always perfect stewards of students' interests, and oftentimes adults and kids may have opposing interests. Too often political decisions about education are made on the basis of tax aversion, not what's required for a quality education. If students aren't allowed to vote, the next best thing would be to have a recent graduate's voice on the school board. To hear how a 2008 Liberty grad would improve the schools, I talked to Basilio Bonilla, a 20-year-old running for Bethlehem Area School Board.

 

Jon Geeting: It's been interesting to see some younger people stepping up to run in the municipal elections this year. , an 18-year-old guy, is running in Nazareth, Tim Waitkus is running for Lehigh County Commissioner, and there's even a Tea Party candidate Kenneth Barreto who's 27. Why do you think that is?

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Basilio Bonilla: I think a lot of younger people are standing up now to run because we noticed that a lot of changes are needed. We noticed that in the community there are more young people who don't have a voice, and it's time that we get a voice within our community, within our school district, within our municipalities. So young people are standing up to have a say in what's going on.

JG: How did you get interested in politics? 

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BB: I've been interested in politics since I was 5 years old. It's something that has always interested me. The reason I decided to run for school board is because I graduated in 2008, and I saw firsthand the problems that our schools are facing, but I was too young in 2008. So I put those problems behind me, but my sister graduated last year, and she saw the same problems, if not more problems.

So I started doing research and I started seeing more and more high school students are falling through the cracks within our high schools. You've got kids skipping school and the high schools aren't keeping track of it, the school district's not keeping track of it, and when it comes to graduation time then all of a sudden they want to bring it up.

Or in my sister's case, my sister had a problem and that's why she was skipping school. That's why she was late to school. It's because she was molested by our next-door neighbor and didn't want to go out in the morning to take the bus because he was always outside in the morning waiting for her. If the school would've picked up on that, we could've gone to the police a long time ago and dealt with that. The school is failing our students.

I also volunteered, this year alone, 2500 hours as a mentor and a tutor within the BASD. Because of that I received today the President's Volunteer Service Award. I received a certificate and a letter from President Obama. There are categories, and for an individual to receive what I received they'd have to do a minimum of 400 hours. I went above and beyond that.

And through my time in the BASD as a volunteer, as a wrestling coach and a mentor and as a tutor I've seen these kids at Donegan, at Freemansburg struggling because 1) there's overcrowding in our classrooms 2) there are not enough bilingual teachers and 3) there are principals who don't apply the Code of Conduct to the extent that it's supposed to be used.

Like at Liberty you have girls wearing short shorts - and yes all the guys may like them wearing short shorts - but it's a distraction in class. The teacher takes time away from teaching, which ends up cutting into education time, to have to discipline the girl and send her to the office just to get sent back to class and told not to wear them next time. It's ridiculous. So for all of those reasons I decided I had to run for school board.

JG: So how do you think the district can better serve the kids? One story about BASD that's always stuck with me - I went to Freedom a chilling number of years ago and my history teacher Mr. Marish told us that he wouldn't go to graduation in protest, because he knew that the school was giving diplomas to kids who didn't know how to read. How do you think the schools can better deliver for the students?

BB: I'm gonna be very honest with you: Donegan Elementary this year had to go outside of the district to find funds to hold their summer school programs. That is ridiculous. Our district should be funding summer school programs. What this district is beginning to produce, and will continue to produce until it changes, is illiterate students.

We had a kid at Donegan who I mentor, who just came over from Puerto Rico, he's in 5th grade, and he can't read or write in English. And the district expects him to move on to 6th grade next year without the ability to read or write in English, or Spanish for that matter. We need to get the parents involved. Because if you get the parents involved, the kids will say "Wow, my parents care. I need to do better in school."

The district needs to work with the kids to get the kids involved in the school. If the kids get involved in school, then they're buying in to their own education. We should be creating more after-school programs.

I'm completely against pay-to-play, because you're asking somebody to spend $25 for each extracurricular activity. You're going to have a lot of kids who aren't going to be able to get involved after school. And where are they going to end up? On the streets. They're going to be on the streets getting involved in gangs, crime, getting brought up by the wrong people. We don't need that. We need them in our classrooms, in our sports, getting the education they need to move Bethlehem forward.

JG: There's some persuasive academic evidence to support that idea - that kids who get involved in after-school activities feel more socially attached at school and perform better in the classroom.

BB: Exactly. I'm a perfect example of that. I wrestled. I always had a 3.2 GPA. When I wrestled, I had a 3.5, 3.6 GPA. But when I wasn't wrestling, my grades would go back down again. I had a better GPA when I wrestled because I was always pushed. Coaches always pushed us for the extra - "You've gotta have good grades so you can stay on the team. You've gotta have good grades or you're not going to be able to stay involved in this club" - that's what motivates our students. We lose that when we make them pay to be involved. It's ridiculous to ask kids to pay us to get them motivated.

JG: It's pretty rough out there for school districts because of , and this has been the main issue in most of the school board campaigns so far. How do you ensure that kids get the same quality of education while filling the hole in the school budget?

BB: We need to stand up and say "right now we are facing hard times. We do need to increase the property tax rate at least by 1.7% which is around $50 per household. However, we need to cap senior citizens' taxes where they are right now, because they cannot afford a tax increase. They have not had a Social Security increase in over 2 years and they are at their limit. So raise taxes for those who can afford it, who are working, but not our senior citizens.

We also need to work with our state legislators and our city council to come up with a way to tax citizens who live in apartments. There are more and more people living in apartments in Bethlehem - they want to turn Martin Towers into apartments, and those people won't pay property taxes. Their children will go to the district, but they won't get taxed. So we need to tax people in apartments and keep senior citizens' taxes at the current level, because they can't afford to pay more and more every year.

JG: If you saw the State of the Lehigh Valley report, it showed that Bethlehem's PSSA reading scores declined between 2004 and 2010 - a period which saw a considerable increase in the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which was used as a measure of poverty. How can we better serve economically disadvantaged students?

BB: The elementary school that made the most gains was Donegan Elementary. If we want our school district to improve, we need to look at what Donegan Elementary School did the last 3 years to see how they improved their grades by the numbers they did. Because they did it now just with economically disadvantaged students. They did it with special education, they did it with limited English students. They did it with Caucasians, African-Americans, everybody. Donegan Elementary improved the most of any elementary school in the Lehigh Valley. Our district needs to learn from them, but they haven't been doing it.

I've personally met with Principal JoAnn Durante of Liberty High School and Michael LaPorta of Freedom High School, and they're optimistic about the changes we'll see in high school test scores in the future. They think the Keystone Exams will be a better way to evaluate students, and their scores will increase as a result. However, it's been years since either school has made [Adequate Yearly Progress] AYP, or has made any progress.

That is concerning. One of the reasons for that is the curriculum. The high school curriculum needs to be looked at and needs to be revamped. I was in College Prep. College Prep was supposed to get me prepared for college, but let me tell you, it did the opposite.

I have gone door to door campaigning, I have met with parents, and they have said - their child has gone to Moravian, their child has gone to Temple, their child has even gone to Northampton Community College and they're still not prepared for college. Our college prep courses are not preparing our students for college.

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