Thida Cornes is running for the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District Board of Trustees.
Cornes is a Mountain View resident and has served as a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, vice chair of the Environmental Sustainability Task Force and a member of various Mountain View Whisman School District committees. She lives with her husband and two children, both of whom attended MVLA schools before transferring.
“I’m committed to ensuring that all of our students feel connected, embrace challenges and thrive,” Cornes said. “My experience as a disabled, mixed race immigrant and mother of two children drives my years of public service.”
Mental health and wellness
Cornes said she thinks the district is providing adequate support to students suffering from extreme mental health crises such as suicidal ideation. However, she said that the district should take the students’ cultural backgrounds and possible stigmas surrounding mental health into consideration.
“In many cultures, seeking help for mental health … is not okay,” Cornes said. “Like, in my Burmese culture, if you have a mental health issue, you talk to your family, you don’t talk to a medical professional. And so we need to provide culturally sensitive help.”
Cornes also stressed the importance of working with and providing uniform training to the on-campus police behavioral units in order to better handle situations involving at-risk youth.
“I understand that Los Altos and Mountain View police are trained differently, but we need to work out something so that on both campuses, you have the same kind of consistency,” she said.
Equity
Cornes said she’s a strong supporter of programs like the Parent Institute for Quality Education, which provides linguistic and technological services to disadvantaged and Latino families seeking support.
“We really need to get more families involved [so that] they don’t feel, like, ‘Well, I don’t know how to help my kid,’” Cornes said.
She noted that many parents may not know the importance of sleep and sleep hygiene. Expanding the program would allow parents to better help their kids, she said.
Communication
Cornes said she believes the district’s methods of communication should be more technologically streamlined. She took particular issue with the accessibility of school board meetings.
“As someone who’s observing the meetings, you have to go to the website and look to see if there’s a meeting,” Cornes said.
She suggested some sort of simplified system that would allow people to sign up for meeting notifications instead of having to email the superintendent’s secretary.
Cornes also stressed the need to foster partnerships with MVLA’s partners, such as the K-8 districts, city councils and the county, to broadcast messages to the greater local community.
To learn more about Cornes, visit her website here.