Michelle Gates (California)
Michelle Gates is a member of the National Elementary School District Governing Board in California. She assumed office on December 11, 2020. Her current term ends on December 8, 2028.
Gates ran for re-election to the National Elementary School District Governing Board in California. She won in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Gates completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Michelle Gates was born in York, Pennsylvania. She earned a high school diploma from the Christian School of York, a bachelor's degree from Eastern Nazarene College in 1992, a graduate degree from Azusa Pacific University in 2008, and a degree from the University of California, San Diego in 2014. Gates' career experience includes working as an educator, grant writer, editor, and secretary. She has been affiliated with the Southwest Teachers Association, the South Bay Union School District, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir of San Diego.[1][2]
Elections
2024
See also: National Elementary School District, California, elections (2024)
General election
General election for National Elementary School District Governing Board (2 seats)
Cindy Lopez and incumbent Michelle Gates defeated Maria Miranda and incumbent Rocina Lizarraga in the general election for National Elementary School District Governing Board on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Cindy Lopez (Nonpartisan) | 30.5 | 6,400 | |
| ✔ |  | Michelle Gates (Nonpartisan)  | 27.8 | 5,841 |
| Maria Miranda (Nonpartisan) | 21.6 | 4,544 | ||
 | Rocina Lizarraga (Nonpartisan) | 20.1 | 4,223 | |
| Total votes: 21,008 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
Gates received the following endorsements.
2020
See also: National Elementary School District, California, elections (2020)
General election
General election for National Elementary School District Governing Board (2 seats)
Michelle Gates and Rocina Lizarraga defeated incumbent Barbara Ann Avalos, Zachary Francisco Gomez, and incumbent Brian Clapper in the general election for National Elementary School District Governing Board on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Michelle Gates (Nonpartisan) | 31.8 | 8,617 |
| ✔ | | Rocina Lizarraga (Nonpartisan) | 20.7 | 5,602 |
| Barbara Ann Avalos (Nonpartisan) | 19.9 | 5,384 | ||
| Zachary Francisco Gomez (Nonpartisan) | 15.2 | 4,116 | ||
| Brian Clapper (Nonpartisan) | 12.3 | 3,338 | ||
| Total votes: 27,057 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Endorsements
To view Gates' endorsements in the 2020 election, please click here.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Michelle Gates completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Gates' responses.
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- Support students, families, and staff with integrity Our NSD students deserve opportunities for growth - in academics, in career paths, in extracurricular choices. Their teachers and staff need to be supported with curriculum and resources that provide these opportunities and enhance what teachers are doing already in the classroom. I commit to looking for and supporting these opportunities as we look towards our students' futures. I will hold the district accountable for keeping its focus on student growth - in the classroom and in the budget.
- Guide collaboratively NSD students are supported by NSD staff and educators every day. In order to be at their best, teacher and staff voices are essential as they represent the students they work with. Other community groups and organizations work with our students daily, as well. Neighborhood volunteers, School Resource Officers, local businesses, Kitchenistas, and others work to enhance our students' safety and learning. I will listen to and incorporate these voices as I vote in support of student needs.
- Honor all with equity and respect NSD students represent multi-generational families with over 25 languages and various cultures and abilities present in our district. I have worked to provide our students with materials that represent them, as well as equipment and resources that allow every student to participate - whether through books in our libraries that reflect them or playgrounds that allow everyone to play with their friends. I will continue to push our district to honor each student's uniqueness and abilities while listening to their families as they speak for their students.
Student safety is another area of vital concern for me. Whether that safety is physical - security on campuses, relational - bullying prevention and intervention, academic - supporting so all grow and are successful, or personal - equity and respect regardless/because of who they are.
Personal integrity means that, when I say something, I hold to it and it is true. For instance, when I say that I am a teacher, I mean that I have the credentialing approved by the state, I have the education and continued professional development that enhances my skills, and I am currently in front of 130 students every day of the school year. I AM a teacher. It is not something I did at some time in the past, nor is it something I think I am because I sometimes work with kids.
Prioritizing access to school is essential for our district. For parents, this could mean language access or adaptive meeting times. I have voted to have translation services available at all meetings and have pushed for things like parent workshops to be at varying times to meet the needs of working parents. For students, this means adaptive and supportive curriculum and resources that encourages growth in all academic and interpersonal areas. I have been a part of the decisions that impact curriculum choice, provide adaptive playgrounds that enable all students to participate regardless of ability, and continue to look for resources that support Positive Behavior Intervention Support.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2020
Michelle Gates completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Gates' responses.
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- All parties deserve equity - in curriculum, in staffing opportunities/development/voice, in district culture, in being heard and respected when bringing concerns to the School Board. Students, families, teachers, and staff should each be clearly heard and represented to the School Board, with not just the expectation of being heard but the right to demand change.
- A school district belongs to the community and should be meeting its needs, which can only be done adequately with full accountability and transparency. For this reason, I will push for all budgets, curriculum choices, and hiring practices to be done with clear knowledge of the Board and with transparency to the stakeholders of the district.
- The only way for a School Board to adequately know the needs of students is to collaborate with the parties who work with them daily. me. Teachers are highly educated individuals who work daily with the students the district is responsible for, classified employees see the intricate details of running the schools and providing students and families with what they need to thrive, and parents know their children's successes and frustrations and how the schools are meeting or not meeting their needs.
National School District also has a higher percentage of low income families than other areas. This means equity is paramount. Our students face food scarcity and housing issues before we ever get into such things as computer and internet access. Policies that provide low-income housing and minimal rent increases are vital to our community. We also must protect and pursue our students' access to resources such as in-hand technology, including updated apps and software that help challenge them to innovate and grow as learners. If the school district doesn't advocate for them in this regard, their opportunities are limited regardless of their intellect and personal work ethic.
School Board is about kids - straight up about kids. It's not about your own vanity, your desire to be recognized - if it is, find the door and use it. Students are our most vulnerable constituents - they can't speak for themselves, don't always know which choice would help them, often can't articulate their needs, and aren't used to having a voice that is heard. Instead, they are spoken for, talked about, have adults assume what is best. Some of that is just the nature of being a kid, but if the people who are supposed to be caring for them aren't actually understanding where they're coming from, how hard life and school really can be when you're young, then they're still stuck as being vulnerable to the whims of the adults around them. School Board members have to have a true heart for kids, believing that every decision we make impacts their lives and futures.
This means School Board members have to listen and learn in order to work effectively for students' well-being. Pre-conceived notions and opinions don't help here. Hearing from families and students, from teachers and aides, from the administration - all of that is necessary to make wise decisions for students. This means allotting time to each group in order to grasp what they are sharing and to be able to look into the issues that they need the School Board to address.
I want that type of legacy for myself. Because of my job and my spouse's job, not to mention my 3 children, I'm around "kids" ranging from 5 through to 30 pretty much all the time. We talk about everything from why S painted her rock turtle pink to L not fitting in with his family and their expectations to D being unaccepted by his parents because of being gay.
I read this book at a time when I was moving across country with my family - spouse and 2 small children. We were moving because my spouse had been offered a new job, one that he'd gone to a lot of school to get. In fact, 9 years of our lives had already been spent in moving to new places for either schooling or research. The book resonated with me for multiple reasons.
The mom in the story and I differed greatly as she felt her life choices and direction were constantly based on her husband's decision and her children's needs, not any of her own choice. This was not the same for me. Though I was in process of moving across the country due to my spouse's hiring, her view was NOT in fact my life. I thrived in my role as breadwinner while my spouse was at school, as Mom to my little people, as contributor to daily needs. I was, in no way, secondary as the mom in the story felt; in fact, my decisions were what opened up this possibility for next steps for our family.
Advocating also means being knowledgeable about what's happening currently. Intentional and purpose-driven collaboration is essential to that advocating. Without the input of teachers, the School Board can't know whether or not curriculum or strategies are working, whether teachers are bending beneath the weight they carry, whether students' needs are being met. Without the input from classified staff members, the School Board is poorly informed about the length of time it actually takes to Covid-level sanitize classrooms and bathrooms on a daily basis in order to maintain safety and health of all who step foot on campus. Without discussion with parents, the School Board is unable to make effective decisions for Special Day students who are unable to meet with their teachers because of state-mandated lock downs.
It is imperative that the district finds ways to reflect the neighborhood for the sake of our students. Children need to see people who look like, sound like, are like them as mentors and role models, to speak into their lives about the possibilities ahead of them and to point out a path to get to their goals. They need adults that can communicate effectively with them - from straight up speaking their language to having faced similar battles and challenges. They also need multi-generational adults in their lives, especially as many come from multi-generational homes or homes where an adult other than Mom or Dad is the head of house.
Educating is problem solving, building a sense of curiosity that leads to pursuit of answering the 'wonderings' students have, helping students realize their own goals and being able to self-analyze and reflect in a way that helps them attain those goals. Educating means giving students a strong foundation in reading, writing, and math when they're young so that they can focus later on critical thinking skills and understanding the world and its happenings.
So it follows that good teaching enhances these things. Good teaching encourages students to engage not only their texts but the world in a way that leads to deeper understandings of the way we are inter-connected and how what that individual has to offer in the future matters - whether opinions, job, innovative ideas, or the way they raise a family in the future.
Good teaching is harder to "measure" than taking a test with preset answers. While utilizing the standards, are students asking critical questions and problem solving to find answers? Do students persevere in engaging difficult tasks, finding the pursuit of the problem as rewarding as finding an actual answer? Are multiple opinions and approaches offered, heard, and valued as long as they have evidence and sound thinking behind them? These should be the markers of good teaching.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
