Name: Roberto Rodriguez

(Photo courtesy of Roberto Rodriguez)

Neighborhood: Watts

Job: Teacher

Age: 25

Like a lot of Los Angeles teachers, Roberto Rodriguez wants Mayor Eric Garcetti to increase funding to schools. His demands don’t stop there, however. He also wants Garcetti to reach out to disenfranchised students, similar to the ones he teaches five days a week.

Rodriguez is a teacher at Basen Higher Learning Youth Program in Carson, Calif. The program is part of YouthBuild, a collection of charter schools that serve students between the ages of 16 and 24 who have left the traditional school system before graduating. Carson, a city outside Los Angles, is still affected by Garcetti’s decisions as part of the Los Angeles megalopolis.

Rodriguez himself knows what it’s like to feel marginalized. He’s from Watts, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles better known for riots than for good school districts. Rodriguez was one of the few from his high school freshman class to graduate and go on to college.

Rodriguez said he became a teacher to keep students from going the same way as may of his high school friends.

Curious, Rodriguez asked his students, who come from many different areas of Los Angeles, what they would like to see Garcetti do. In a conversation over the phone, Rodriguez is contemplative, reasoning out his thoughts as he answers the questions.

What are the top issues facing Los Angeles, and why?

For me, it’s more funds for education. We don’t have the funds, we don’t have the resources to give students the best level of education that they want or require. Honestly, that’s really my biggest concern. The funds that are available to educate many of these students are at basic needs.

The top issue that my students brought up was the need for more security. Many of them noted that they don’t feel safe in the communities they come from, It was surprising to me that they thought that we need to develop more public spaces, like parks and recreational areas.

What should Mayor Garcetti do to address your top priorities?

 There’s two ways that he could adjust it: A small increase in the sales tax or in the gas tax. Just a small increases of a cent--a cent goes a long way. Or, even half a cent, or even just a tenth of a cent. They all go a long way towards providing a better level of education.

A lot of the time, the state collects taxes, but every municipality or locality allocates the funds according to the property tax of that particular area. For example, let’s say West Los Angeles. The taxes that that area pays goes towards their schools, and because a lot more people in that area own property, of course you’re going to have higher property tax returns. An area with a high rent population — a case like South Los Angeles or Compton — usually gives less in regards to property tax. So for me, I think there should be even just a small push for the city to create a general fund that is strictly for education to equalize and add additional funds to those areas that need it.

Did you vote in the May election? Who did you support?

I voted in the May election. I chose Garcetti because he has more experience working within the bureaucratic chaos because, honestly, it’s really chaotic with all the backdoor hustling. He understands more of how that system works, versus Wendy Greuel, who has great experience in the business investment and the money capital aspect. I mean, L.A. has a lot of that available in private hands, but in public hands it is very different.

Have you seen Garcetti do anything to reach out to your community? 

He’s trying. He’s trying to reach out, connect and bring that balance between private enterprise and community work, which is difficult. We live in L.A. and L.A. is a huge, huge city.

He has come down more to neighborhoods. Over the weekend he went to the Community Coalition’s end of the summer festival and he was there talking about education, which was interesting.

Reach contributor Isabella Sayyah here