CARMEN MONTANO
CARMEN MONTANO
An Advocate for Education and Community Development Carmen Montano is a true "Portrati of Success"
Carmen Montano is a public school teacher and teaches at Franklin McKinley school District. Education is her passion. She truly understands that education is the key to a brighter future. She teaches at a Title I school serving many underprivileged students that have many diverse needs. She is an outstanding school teacher and parents often seek her out for her educational advice. She is a community activist and organizer, a mother, and a grandmother. As a School Board Trustee for Milpitas Unified School District, she has served for nearly eight years on the board.
Carmen has contributed her knowledge and experience in an advisory capacity to better serve the citizens of our county. She has served on boards and commissions. Most of her public service includes the underrepresented and underprivileged sectors of our society. Some of her affiliations include Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County, Bay Area Legal Aid, ESO-Community Action Agency, First Five Community Advisory Committee, La Raza Roundtable, Open Space Authority Advisory Committee, East Valley Flood Advisory Committee, Milpitas Parks and Recreation Commission, Milpitas Planning Commission, Milpitas Library Commission, and others. Carmen is very well in touch with the low-income community of our county and contributes her connected perspective on the boards and commissions on which she serves.
Her qualifications include a bachelor of arts degree majoring in a comprehensive Liberal Studied education from the Humanities Department at SJSU. She can attest to her own personal experience of raising her children as a single mother and who personally felt the pangs of poverty. But she never gave up the pursuit of a higher education to make a better life for her children and herself. She can empathize with many issues that the poor go through, what women go through, what disenfranchised communities go through, and she understands the correlation of how low academic student performance in schools can create low self esteem and antisocial behavior among our adolescence which can lead to crime. That is why she has dedicated her life to being a positive role model and teaching in underprivileged schools.
Her interests and activities have always been to serve others in a capacity that will create a better society. She has taken a stand on issues when she felt it was the right thing to do even though she might have gone against the grain or been one lone dissenting voice. She has always felt compelled to do what was right. One example that she is proud of is co-founding a neighborhood association to beautify a neglected, older neighborhood in the city where she lives. This endeavor came out of a need to rectify a community injustice. From that venture she gained the experience of community organizing and learned how political forces can also be used for the common good.
As with everything, there needs to be balance. In her spare time she sings and has written several songs. She has created a CD of songs that she composed. Carmen has also written childrens stories and songs and would someday like to publish them. This school year she has created a choir for 5th and 6th graders at her school site to expose kids to music appreciation.
Carmen is also a recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Good Neighbor Award” in 2001. Recently she advocated for the new Milpitas City Library to have a reading room named after Cesar Chavez and it was unanimously approved by city council. She also recently formed a new group called C.O.M. O Coalition of Multicultural Organizations in the city of Milpitas because of a lack of cultural arts being sponsored in the city of Milpitas. Carmen believes in the true democracy of fairness and justice. She considers herself a consensus builder and a team player and contributes her perspectives and life experiences in any advisory capacity. Her input and broad range of experience contributes to the discussion to better serve the citizens of Santa Clara County. Lastly, she has a good sense of humor and considers family to be the most important institution in a society.
