This article first appeared in EdSource.
During 18 years as a school board member, including five as president, Richard Barrera has gained unparalleled influence over the San Diego Unified School District, the state’s second largest, with 103,000 students.
Described by observers as the district’s “moral compass” and “ideological pillar,” Barrera steered the district’s progressive, union-aligned agenda. That included the early adoption of community schools, adding college prep courses in low-income high schools and negotiating above-average pay for teachers.
That record secured the California Teachers Association’s coveted endorsement in his bid to succeed Tony Thurmond as state superintendent of public instruction, passing two higher-profile, pro-labor legislative leaders, former Assembly Speaker Antonio Rendon and former Assembly Education Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi.
“Richard Barrera is a sitting school board president with decades of public service. His track record in San Diego and beyond shows us that when leaders respect educators as true partners, we can build school districts that lift up every student,” CTA President David Goldberg wrote EdSource. “Richard’s bold vision to fight for what every student deserves is exactly what we need now.”
Barrera’s support for CTA reflects his background as a longtime union organizer and labor leader in San Diego. For more than two years while he was on the school board, Barrera served as secretary and treasurer of the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council, representing 135 unions.
Barrera agrees with the CTA’s main contention of its We Can’t Wait campaign: that school districts have been overly cautious in building reserves out of fear of volatile state revenues. That position puts him at odds with school boards statewide and has become a flash point in union negotiations.
San Diego Unified retains only the minimum state-required 2% reserve, Barerra said. Other school board members, especially from small districts, view that as a risky strategy that would force massive cuts during a recession.
“This is a really important campaign that CTA is undertaking,” Barerra said. “In some ways, it’s the first real push back against an austerity framework that school districts have been living with since Proposition 13.”
In the past dozen years, San Diego has raised teacher salaries 50% while continuing to cover 100% of family health care costs. In 2024-25, the district’s average teacher salary reached $105,672 — about $2,500 higher than the statewide average for TK-12 districts, according to Ed-Data.
Fellow board member and protégé Cody Peterson characterized CTA’s endorsement as “an acknowledgment that San Diego Unified is the model of how to run a district with organized labor as a copilot.”
No one has been elected state superintendent for the past 44 years without CTA’s backing.
“On every decision I have tracked over the years, he seems to be on the side that I, as a teacher, would make,” said Thomas Courtney, a middle school teacher and former member of EdSource’s Teacher Advisory Committee. “He makes supporting learning in my classroom Number One.”
Peterson characterized Barrera as calm and articulate, a master of details — not pushy; his strongest influence is in the boardroom, where Barrera frames discussion “with a clear set of values. And so, can make decisions with more certainty than other board members.”
The son of a Colombian immigrant, Barrera, 59, is a native of San Diego and attended its public schools, as did his two sons. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UC San Diego and a master’s in public policy from Harvard University.
Many English learners and low-income families live in his trustee area. Barrera pushed for policies to expand college access and to require that all high school graduates meet the “A to G” course requirements for admission to UC and CSU. Within a decade of its 2009 adoption, the percentage of Latino students meeting A to G standards rose from 25% to 70%, he said. He persuaded the board to mandate ethnic studies in high school and hire more bilingual teachers.
Since 2024, Barrera has gained more visibility after Thurmond named him senior adviser for special projects at the California Department of Education, a paid position. He was charged with leading three initiatives:
- How the department can support districts in protecting immigrant students and families;
- How to help districts build subsidized housing. Barrera knows the issue. San Diego is pursuing an ambitious plan for 3,000 units on district properties;
- How to lower chronic absenteeism. Experts and district leaders created guidance on successful strategies; some visited model districts like Compton Unified. It’s what he’d do as state superintendent, Barrera said, “building communities of practice among district leaders who can learn from each other and lift up best practices, offering a roadmap for other districts to follow.”
Like the other candidates, Barrera opposes Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to restructure the California Department of Education under a governor-appointed education commissioner. The state superintendent would no longer manage the department.
“It’s undemocratic to take responsibility and authority away from the person that the voters are electing to improve schools,” Barrera said. “In practical terms, there is no reason to assume a governor would do a better job at appointing the people to run CDE than a state superintendent would.”
He said his approach would differ from that of his predecessors, all of whom are legislators who won the last eight elections. Their “first instinct” is to create a task force to introduce a bill, he said. To the contrary, he said, “We can’t solve California’s education problems through legislation. And most of the time, bills that are passed are at best a distraction from the work that local school districts are trying to do.”
EdSource is California’s largest independent newsroom focused on education.
