CMS school board member announces campaign for Mecklenburg County board
Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member Jennifer De La Jara, a Democrat, says she’ll run for the Board of County Commissioners next year. In the two years since being elected as an at-large member of the school board, De La Jara has been a voice for many in Mecklenburg County’s immigrant and refugee populations — literally.
The 47-year-old speaks Spanish as a second language and regularly takes Spanish-language media interviews to keep the public informed about the public school system.
“A lot of our residents are unaware that of the 140,000-plus students within CMS, for 44,000 of them, English is not their first language,” she said. “Our demographics have changed drastically over the last 20 years, (and they need someone) who understands the various contributions from and challenges that our immigrants face.”
De La Jara says she wants to bring her voice to a grander stage: announcing Thursday morning she will run at-large for the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners in 2022. She spoke to The Charlotte Observer ahead of announcing her candidacy.
If successful in the county board race, she’d need to resign from the school board and forgo the last year of her four-year term. CMS board members would then appoint a replacement.
“As a former educator, involved community leader, mother, and public servant, our children and our school system are my first priority,” she told the Observer.
The nine members of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners are currently all Democrats. The board has three seats elected by all voters in the county, with the rest elected from districts. At-large incumbents are Commissioners Leigh Altman, Pat Cotham and Ella Scarborough.
De La Jara says she wants more collaboration between the commissioners and the school board. The boards — both controlled by Democrats — have had some high-profile disputes in recent years.
The latest revolved around $56 million in county funding to CMS and animosity over providing the funding without certain agreements to address inequities in the school district among Black and Hispanic children. The county board later voted to release the money to CMS, but not until the school board launched a mediation process and the two sides engaged in bitter back-and-forth discussions.
“Neither our challenges nor our solutions exist in governing boards independent of each other,” De La Jara said. “We need stronger relationships and more pro-education voices on our county commission and in all levels of government.”
De La Jara running for county seat
While her focus has been on schools, De La Jara says she’s also concerned about local access to health care, operations of parks and recreation services, and the region’s lack of affordable housing.
The lingering pandemic last year — which roared back locally and nationwide earlier this summer despite vaccines being available — has challenged elected leaders with the school district as well as county government.
Earlier this year, De La Jara called on Mecklenburg County Public Health officials to begin categorizing pediatric COVID-19 cases by traditional public, private, charter and homeschool students so the public had better information about where community spread was occurring.
“I’m happy to say that Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell (District 6) has now asked (Public Health Director Gibbie) Harris to follow through with this initiative,” De La Jara said. “It will provide more complete public information, and it’s a prime example of the good things that can happen when our two boards work together.”
De La Jara’s platform includes expanding access to public health and parks, and boosting educators’ pay and CMS’ facilities and resources.
“Cuts to public education are a disservice to the future of our county,” she said. “We should be allocating resources that assist disadvantaged communities, not eliminating them.”
De La Jara’s education roots run deep — she’s a former K-5, ESL teacher, used to be be an instructor at Central Piedmont Community College where she ran family literacy programs in partnership with CMS and served on the board of directors for the Charlotte Bilingual Preschool. She and husband Jorge have been married 24 years and have two children, ages 13 and 15.
De La Jara holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in education from UNC-Charlotte. She was raised in Valdese, N.C., close to Hickory.
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 9:30 AM.
