Dr. Juan Benitez is the Executive Director for the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). He’s also a candidate, for a second time, to represent the Third District on the Long Beach Unified School Board. PalacioMagazine.com asked the educator how would he describe himself and his answer was simple.

“I’m a values-driven person. It comes from family. It comes from strong family traditions. It comes from belief, a set of principles, that I’m not always in adherence too, but I try live by.”

Benitez traces the roots of those values to his working class and immigrant family where his parents were from Mexico and never completed high school. But, Dr. Juan Benitez remembers watching his father, who was a welder, working long hours, leaving early, and returning late.

“In one way or another, that shaped my work ethic, education is a priority, but also how you treat people.”

His story about his father continues in the first segment of the Palacio Magazine Podcast. Dr. Juan Benitez was accompanied to the interview by his kindergarten-age daughter, Ixchel, that took place in a very busy and sometimes loud coffee house on Fourth Street in Long Beach.









Dr. Juan Benitez and Education as a Priority

Juan Benitez received his Bachelor of Art degrees in Political Science and History from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It was at UCLA that he also received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American History. According to his bio, “…his areas of specialization are immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border, globalization and U.S.-Latin America affairs, Latino history, Latinos in the U.S., community development and the ethnic experience in the U.S.” Benitez can’t pick one moment when he knew that he would be an educator but he does talk about why his consciousness on the subject grew.

“I guess developed my [critical] consciousness was around what a high-quality education means…and I learned that from having high-quality teachers at an early age. Teachers that cared. Teachers that went the extra mile. Maybe not my favorite people at the time but teachers that challenged me.”

Community Engagement is more than a Slogan

The CCE website at CSULB describes the Center as “university-wide community engagement projects, programs, activities, and engagement initiatives; including but not limited to Community Service Learning, Community-based Participatory Research, and campus-community partnerships & collaborations.”

You can find more information HERE.

Dr. Benitez is also a co-founder of the non-profit community development corporation, ICON CDC (Initiating Change in Our Neighborhoods Community Development Corporation), which focuses on responsible community development in Los Angeles. He was also part of the original team that developed and implemented The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities 10-year initiative in central Long Beach. The Long Beach educator and Executive Director has a long history of work on youth development, parent engagement, equity and opportunity gaps, and school discipline issues in Long Beach schools.

He’s also served as Co-Chair of the Committee for Community Collaboration, which hosted an annual Long Beach Community Issues Forum. The event brought together students, educators, and community members to discuss issues and solutions in key areas such as college preparation completion rates, community health, and homelessness.

With all this experience and workload, we asked Dr. Juan Benitez why he was running for the Long Beach Unified School Board District Three seat.

“So in many ways…I was already working in the areas of community partnerships and parent engagement where it became very concrete to me that if I was going to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.”

Listen to the Palacio Magazine podcast for more of the reasons that drove Juan Benitez to run for the School Board. To find out more about the issues and his platform, visit http://juanbenitez.org/

The primary election is Tuesday, April 10, 2018. See a full list of candidates for all contested seats on the Long Beach Unified School Board HERE