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In honor of National Women’s History Month, throughout March, we will be shining a spotlight on four prominent women in the Redwood City community. Four diverse women, from different fields, with unique experiences – these are their stories. This week’s spotlight is on Maria Diaz-Slocum, beloved Redwood City School District Board of Trustees member (and five-time President) who retired last year after two decades of dedicated service.
Being a lifelong Redwood City resident and raising her children through the Redwood City School District, Diaz-Slocum knows first-hand how life-changing our local schools and educators can be to the future of our youth. Since her early teens, she has dedicated her life to helping others. Although she may have retired from her position on the Board of Trustees, Diaz-Slocum can still be found at the Downtown Redwood City Library hosting storytimes for children, running programs in the maker space and helping with outreach to schools.
The Redwood City Pulse sat down with Diaz-Slocum to discuss her journey through the field of education and the importance of continuing to inspire women wavemakers in our community.
Redwood City Pulse: Do you feel there’s a lack of female leadership in your field? What's the most important thing we can do to help change that?
Diaz-Slocum: I think that slowly there has been more and more representation on the policy boards. I think one of the ways to get more people involved is through mentorship, through getting people to serve on smaller committees, whether if it’s in the schools, or start at the site counsel, or the PTA, and then encourage them to attend some of the meetings and to run for the different positions.
It’s important for them to have a knowledge and understanding of schools, and once your child is in school, then you get to see how it works; from what the teacher has to deal with, the custodian, the cafeteria person, and so on, so when you look at budgetary issues and teacher recruitment you have a much better sense of the impact it has on children.
Redwood City Pulse: How did you get here and is this something you always knew you wanted to do? In other words, how did your upbringing, education or early career lead you to this point, and what’s your advice to other women who may be interested in a similar path?
Diaz-Slocum: I started with a summer youth program where you got paid to go and work in the community at different organizations. They would interview you and ask you, “what do you do for fun” and, for me, it was reading – so I got assigned to the library. That’s where I met this librarian, Mary Frances Johnson, who was quite an inspiration to me and who really mentored me. She got me to think about this as a profession and treated me as an adult, taking me to conferences at 14-years old, which were normally just for the professional staff. I got to see other people like me, who were making a difference.
Being a parent, and seeing the struggles that other parents faced, we were ready to go and leave the public system and put our children in private school. But, we talked about it as a family, my children didn’t want to leave their friends, and they asked us the question, “Well, that helps us, but what about our friends?” So we decided we would leave them [at their schools], but wanted to change the way people were treated and how parents needed to have more of a voice.
To me, education is a great equalizer, and I thought about when I was growing up in Redwood City, and we had people who would organize and protest education – one was Fernando Vega. Thinking about their impact on myself and others, then I thought, I can make a difference this way.
For me, it was about building a better community, not just for my child and for my family members, but for everyone. What I want for my child, everyone wants, we all want the best, and this was my way to contribute to that.
Redwood City Pulse: Given that the majority of jobs left, or lost, during the pandemic were by women, how do you see us start to recover from this? What can we do to help?
Diaz-Slocum: Part of what’s hard is that whether you live in the city or the suburbs, the money that comes from the state (if you’re a state revenue system) is the same, but the cost of housing and other things is not, so there needs to be some sort of equalizer there.
Another thing that’s happened is that, for a lot of experienced teachers, suddenly having to learn all this new technology and having to do all this extra work got to be too much and burned out a lot of people. The other issue we have is the licensing for teachers and all the special training that they need to have. This is especially hard for the middle school teachers because you have to have special credentialing for teaching different subjects. And just finding substitutes so that teachers can attend their training is extremely difficult.
The other thing that doesn’t help is the pressure of bringing the children up to the current testing standards when they’ve lost all this time is quite hard. There needs to be more support and better pay for these teachers.
The pandemic changed people. It got people thinking about their own mortality and how they want to spend their time. Not only did we lose a lot of teachers to other places, many others decided to retire where they normally might have hung on a few more years.
Redwood City Pulse: Although we've come a ways historically, what’s one of the main obstacles you feel women still face, and where would you like to see us this time next year?
Diaz-Slocum: I think one of the things that holds us back as females is the perceptions that people had that if you are a woman, this was the path you took and this was what you’re supposed to do, and that is no longer the case. But, there are still a lot of barriers. When you think about having children and females still being the ones picking up the bigger load in many families – not in all – wanting to be there for our families and giving up our time can be something that holds us back.
As far as what we can achieve within the next year: I think having more representation on various boards and commissions, and encouraging more people to serve, because a lot of people don’t understand what it even is they’re volunteering for and why it’s important; that your voice, your opinion, and you being present at these meeting is important.
Redwood City Pulse: To dig deeper into that question, do you feel minority women/women of color continue to face hurdles & pay gaps, and how can we help address this?
Diaz-Slocum: There’s definitely barriers there. There are different ways of exposing people who may be interested in getting on a policy-level board.
The Hispanic Foundation has a course that helps young people get a sense of how to run for a board, how to get appointed to a board, and how to make a difference in that area and not give up. Getting elected you have to deal with all these forms, and campaigns, and fundraising, which for many of us is not something we’re comfortable doing. Those can be real deterrents. Not only that, but how does the election process work, the deadlines, how to get endorsements, and all that, so that’s where you need other people to help you as well.
The League of Cities also has a similar project that people get referred to in order to build connections and learn about how government works and how to get elected.
There used to be an organization, which was the Hispanic Border Academy, that was to help Latino board members be successful. It would teach them pretty much the same thing that the California School Boards Association does, which was finances, and policy, and what to look at when you’re making decisions.
Redwood City Pulse: To wrap up, more of a fun question… Is there a book, film, organization or person you find especially empowering that you want others to know about?
Diaz-Slocum: I love history and finding out more about our own local history. In education, there was a trustee named Sally Stewart. She was on the Sequoia board, and she was the first President in this area of the School Boards Association. She had a great impact on a lot of policies and organizations. She also started the Kent Awards, which is part of the San Mateo County School Boards Association.
Knowing about someone like her was inspirational to me. She was definitely a trailblazer and was always so generous with her time. She stood her ground, she represented the students and she was always mentoring people. She was also very inclusive and a lifetime learner.
It’s always nice for our students to learn about some of the people in our community that they may not have known about and the impact they’ve had.
