By Mary O’KEEFE

Last week, CV Weekly introduced three candidates – Jennifer Freemon, Joy McCreary and Jeremy Spurley – who are running for the board of education. We gave a glimpse into their history and how they will address some of the issues facing the district. This week we introduce two candidates running for the school board for Trustee Area E, which includes Columbus, Edison, Franklin and Cerritos elementary schools that feed into Roosevelt and Toll middle schools and Glendale and Hoover high schools.

Candidate Neda Farid is well-known in the Crescenta Valley area since, for the last 27 years, she has been part of the PTAs at Valley View Elementary, Rosemont Middle and Crescenta Valley High schools; her son attended all three. She then moved on to serve on the board and as president of the Glendale Council PTA. Since her son graduated high school she moved to a neighborhood in Area E.

Farid has experience dealing with issues throughout the entire Glendale school district as a member of the Glendale Council PTA.

“In my Council PTA hat, being first vice president then [in the] president role, allowed me to get involved with all the councils,” she said. “I had the opportunity to go to all the sights … to meet with the principals, to meet with the students and to see what the needs are, to see what was working and what was not working.”

She also saw the differences in terms of equity.

“To see where the gaps are, [being on the Council PTA] allowed me to have an inside view,” she added. “I really began thinking globally by virtue of sitting on the board of the Glendale Education Foundation and being a member of the Chamber of Commerce and, with the other hats I have [worn], I really get to see how pieces of the puzzles came together.”

She added that she has been in the district for a long time as a volunteer and can see the big picture. Her strength, she feels, is how she is able to network all the committees and organizations she has been involved with.

“It allows me to look at the whole district and to have the social capital to call on whom I need to help [in any situation],” she said.

The budget, school safety and mental health are just a few issues the district will be facing in the future. Farid said whatever the issue it is important to follow through with the actions needed.

“It needs to be more than a one-time assembly; if it is an important need, there needs to be a district mandate that offers programs for everyone,” she said. “At every level we need to circle back and finish the projects we start.”

When asked why she wants to run for the district board she said it came down to paying back all those who helped her son succeed.

“I am so grateful for the hands, for every hand on my kid that has made him, in my opinion, the success that he is,” she said.

She added that she heard that a child receives about 300,000 teaching hours in their academic career from kindergarten through high school and that her son received more when counting the additional zero periods at Rosemont Middle School with music teacher Rod Yonkers and at CV High School with music director Mathew Schick. She is thankful for the level of dedication he received.

“I have taken that goodwill,” she said, “and there is goodwill owed back.”

Incumbent Nayiri Nahabedian has been on the Glendale Unified School District board of education for about 12 years and has been a teacher for 20 years at Cal State Los Angeles.

Getting to Glendale was not an easy path. As a youngster, her family traveled back and forth from Lebanon to Boston. They didn’t move to Boston permanently until she was in ninth grade.

“I had just finished 11th grade when we moved to Glendale and I entered Glendale High School,” she said.

It was not easy moving in her senior year from the East Coast to the West Coast. She had asked her parents if she could complete her high school in Boston by staying with relatives, but they said no.

But coming to Glendale High School was beneficial.

“One of the things that really helped me was a peer leadership class,” she said of GHS. “I was a peer mentor to another student.”

She remembers the teacher who helped her when she first arrived at GHS and what her support meant.

“This class really meant a lot to me because, even though I was new, this student [she mentored] was new to [the United States],” she said.

She attended Glendale Community College as part of its scholars program, which had just started. She then transferred to UCLA as a psychology major.

“In the beginning I just wanted to be helpful to people and make a difference in the world. I [thought to do that] I could help individuals change their behavior into [something] more positive,” Nahabedian said.

She soon realized how the environment in which a child grows up affects them and she took a community psychology class.

“And that really changed things for me,” she said.

She realized that when a community came together to create a positive change it helped the overall well-being of the community as well as helping the individual.

“If I were able to impact the environment, if I were able to impact policies that influenced the lives of individual, then I would be able to be of service and make a difference in the lives of [individuals],” she said. 

Nahabedian received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and her master’s deree in social work. Her decision to run for the GUSD board seemed like a natural progression in her quest to help others.

Her decision to run is also very personal.

“I myself am an immigrant to this country,” she said. “I remember my [teacher in Boston] sitting down with me in a small group of students and helping me with pronunciation.”

She discovered how powerful learning could be and also understood the life of a teacher.

“I know the difference of having 32 students in my classroom versus 37,” Nahabedian said. “That is a different level of instruction.”

She has been active in her community for many years, volunteering hours with many organizations. She has faced 12 years of budget struggles and has championed several programs including the recent child’s saving account for kids that goes into effect this year in California.

Nahabedian had worked for years to get a youth savings account established and, in addition to the state’s decision, GUSD also agreed to start a savings account for first graders in the district.

“This is something innovative, meaningful and unique,” she said. “In the larger [meaning] it says to the kids, ‘We are behind you.’”

  Mary Okeefe