ISSUES

Alexander’s Plan to Serve Students

Priorities

Preparing Our Students for Success

As a District, our top priority is to help our students achieve their goals, no matter who they are or where they’re from. From a graduate fresh out of high school who’s the first in their family to go to college to a mid-career professional looking to get an industry certificate, from a union apprentice learning a trade to an elderly couple taking a painting class together– we’re here to serve everyone who comes to us and help them become the person they’re meant to be. My number one goal as a trustee is to ensure that the District remains for today’s students what it was for me when I was a student here: a gateway to opportunity, to purpose, to a fulfilling life.

  • For several years running, Foothill-De Anza has been one of the top community college districts in the country for transfers to four-year institutions. Students come to our District from across the United States and around the world because they know a student transferring from Foothill or De Anza is much more likely to be admitted into a top university; the UC admission rate for our transfer students over the past two years is 82% compared to under 70% for the general admission population. While we lead the way in transfer student success, there’s more we can do to help connect our students to their goals– from maximizing the availability of transfer classes to making classes more accessible through hybrid and asynchronous options– so that no student ever has to delay transferring because they couldn’t fit a required class into their schedule.

  • Not every student comes to our District with the goal of transferring to a four year university and getting a degree. Across California, our community college system has trained nearly 100,000 apprentices in the trades—from plumbers and pipefitters to electricians and HVAC mechanics—who go on to build thriving careers working good-paying union jobs. Foothill and De Anza are renowned throughout the Bay Area for our apprenticeship programs, but that reputation didn’t come by accident, and we must work to maintain it. I will pursue opportunities for our District to partner with local unions and cities and create pathways for students to become apprentices, and then qualified journeymen.

  • Community colleges don’t just exist to create career pathways and support professional development: we have a responsibility also to nourish the artistic and cultural lives of our students. Despite this, too often in our higher education system, when budgets are tight, it’s the arts that are first on the chopping block– dance, creative writing, music classes. The devaluation of the arts has very real consequences, not just for students but for our community more broadly. I’m committed to protecting the arts at Foothill-De Anza and ensuring that our art classes are not treated as disposable, but valued and cherished as fundamental to the education of our students.

Caring for the Whole Student

For many, the cities that form the heart of the District– Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Palo Alto, Mountain View– are synonymous with the high-tech affluence of Silicon Valley. But the reality for many working and middle class families in the District is very different, and that reality hits our students particularly hard. About 44% of Foothill-De Anza students are housing insecure, and almost 20% are homeless; over half are food insecure, meaning many of our students are coming to class on empty stomachs. When students are focused on where their next meal is coming from or how they’re going to make rent, they’re not focused on thriving academically. That means our District has a responsibility to care for the whole student– both in and out of the classroom.

  • Our District plays a critical role in bringing down costs for local families through our Promise Program, which enables many first-time students to receive one year of free tuition– a game changer for students who may otherwise not be able to afford a college education. At the same time, there’s so much more we can do to help make life more affordable for our families, focusing first and foremost on the single greatest cost many of our families have to face: the cost of housing. Since I was appointed in January 2025, the District has created permanently affordable housing opportunities for up to 400 students, and I’m committed to finding more opportunities, in partnership with cities and school districts, to make housing more affordable for the families we serve.

  • No student should ever have to choose between paying for groceries or paying for textbooks, and no student should ever have to choose between their education and their health. I’m proud of the strides we’ve made to take on student hunger and support our students’ wellbeing– including food pantries at both campuses and a first-of-its-kind health clinic opening this year at De Anza in partnership with Santa Clara Valley Healthcare. We need to build on this progress towards supporting our students’ health, including by exploring a universal free lunch program to ensure no student comes to class hungry.

  • Our responsibility to our students doesn’t start when they step foot on campus. By making it easier to get to Foothill and De Anza through eco-friendly options like public transit and bikes, we can support our students and make both campuses more accessible while also delivering on our climate goals. Over the past year, the District launched a new electric shuttle service, providing the first direct connection between the two campuses; this is a significant step, but capacity is limited, and for students who take the bus to class, getting from one campus to the other can take well over an hour. In my next four years as trustee, I will work with local transit agencies like VTA to support faster, more efficient transit between the two campuses, and I’ll advocate for better bicycle and pedestrian connectivity.

Bringing Classroom Experience to the Board

As the only member of the Board of Trustees with college level teaching experience, I bring a critical perspective to Board decisions. I’ve seen firsthand the challenges and obstacles that college students struggle with every day, because my own students have shared those challenges and obstacles with me. I also know the challenges facing teachers in the classroom, because as a university professor, I’ve dealt with those same challenges– from learning to spot ChatGPT’s fingerprints on student papers to navigating changing student behaviors and expectations in the post-COVID world. If we want to deliver a first-rate education for our students, we need first-rate educators, and that means we need to ensure our faculty have the support, tools, and career development opportunities to succeed. I will continue to be a voice for our teachers, because when our faculty and staff thrive, our District and our students thrive.

  • Part-time faculty represent over 60% of our District’s professors– they’re the backbone of our district, but too often, their needs aren’t part of the conversation. As a part-time professor at a university outside the District, I know how difficult it can be for part-time faculty to receive the same support and engagement as their tenure-track colleagues. That’s why I’m committed to working with our administration and our faculty union to ensure that part-time professors benefit from career development opportunities, have equal access to institutional resources, and receive equitable compensation and benefits.

  • Our District is renowned as an excellent place to work and teach, but as a college district in one of the most expensive areas in the world, we lose out on great teachers who simply can’t afford to live locally. Some of our professors today spend hours on the road commuting from Tracy or Stockton; that’s deeply detrimental to our teachers’ quality of life and to the quality of our students’ education. If we want to attract the best teachers, we as a District need to bring costs down for our employees. I’m proud that, since my appointment last year, we’ve added 50 units to our stock of affordable housing for faculty and staff, and one of my top priorities over the next four years will be ensuring that our progress doesn’t stop there. We need to continue to make housing more affordable for our staff so that Foothill-De Anza remains a place where the best and brightest can come to work, teach, and thrive.

  • Decisions made in the board chambers have very real impacts in the classroom. I understand how policies around curricula and academic standards play out for students and teachers. I know what it’s like to spend hours designing a class curriculum and then take it into the classroom to teach it to students, and I know the complex processes and difficult choices that go into assessing student performance. As the only trustee with this experience, I will ensure that the decisions we make as a Board help our faculty and staff succeed– and that those decisions reflect what actually works in the classroom.

Protecting Academic Integrity

Across the United States, our higher education system is under attack. The federal administration has gutted programs that have been a lifeline for working families and first-time college students– slashing $300 billion in higher education spending and imposing new restrictions on Pell grants that will slam shut the door to college on thousands of students. At the same time, we are seeing an unprecedented assault on the academic freedom of our colleges and universities, one of the basic principles of our democracy. My Board colleagues and I have made it clear we will not take a single step back from our values as an educational institution, and I will continue to be a champion for policies that protect our most vulnerable students, including our undocumented, immigrant, and international students.

  • Independent schools, free from political influence, are the foundation of a healthy democracy. But today, our federal government is taking a sledgehammer to that foundation, strongarming colleges and universities into changing their policies. Coming from a refugee family that saw their home country struggle with authoritarianism, and as a political science educator whose work focuses on democratization, I know that democratic institutions are weakest when they allow themselves to be picked off one by one, and I’m committed to ensuring that doesn’t happen at Foothill-De Anza. I’m proud that our District is leading the way to organize a coalition of community college districts throughout the Bay Area to make it clear that an attack on one is an attack on all. The only way we will protect the academic independence of our colleges is by standing together against pressure and coercion.

  • At the heart of Foothill-De Anza’s mission is the belief that every student has the right to an education– no matter who they are or where they’re from. One of my very first acts as a trustee was working with my colleagues and the administration to move forward a sanctuary district resolution, declaring unequivocally that our District stands in solidarity with our undocumented students. This year, in response to the federal government hijacking a community college campus in southern California for immigration enforcement, I spearheaded a policy to make it clear that District facilities are never to be used to target our undocumented and immigrant students.

  • I’m honored to represent a college district with thousands of international and immigrant students– it’s a testament to our excellence as an educational institution that people from around the world choose to begin their college education at Foothill and De Anza. However, these students are also the ones most vulnerable to the federal administration’s anti-immigrant and anti-education policies. When the administration announced its reckless and discriminatory travel ban last year, hundreds of Foothill-De Anza students were left in limbo, caught between continuing their education and seeing their families back home. These students are a cherished part of our community and I am committed, as a trustee representing one of the most diverse and immigrant-rich cities in California, to defending their right to a college education.