This article was a winner of Lookout’s 2026 Journalism Scholarship Challenge, which invited high school students to highlight an unsung hero in their lives. Learn more and find all of the winners here.
We are often told that power belongs to those with suits behind mahogany desks. We are given a script to follow, regardless of whether it is fair to us or not. The podium at the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) board meeting can be a lonely place. It is a piece of wood, standing between a teenager and a room full of adults, all with the power to erase a curriculum or ignore a community. For most, it’s a place of intimidation, but for 17-year-old Mark Mendoza Luengas, it’s home. Born in Santa Maria (and later moving to Watsonville), this high school junior at Pajaro Valley High School has created ripples in a system that intended to eliminate a whole curriculum.
When the PVUSD board of trustees voted not to renew its ethnic studies contract in September 2023, many were outraged. Many were taken aback and believed their rights as students had been violated. Among these was Mark. As Mark puts it, “As an ethnic studies student, that was really upsetting to hear because ethnic studies was like what changed my point of view on a lot of things. … Once we heard it was being cut, we were really upset because it had been something that was taught to us and that we really loved.”
At an early age, Mark realized that the most powerful thing you could do in the face of adversity is to ask “Why?” It’s a question that challenges the ink on the page way before it dries. “We don’t ask enough, ‘Why is it happening?’” Mark ponders. “Why are there different types of Powers… why does one person’s value feel more important than others?”
For Mark, it wasn’t just philosophical inquiry, but a survival tactic inherited from their mother. The world attempted to hand Mark a script that emphasized compliance and the traditional gender roles, but their mother handed them a different set of tools, teaching them to fight back, to use their voice and not to be afraid to take charge.
“She was like, ‘I’m not gonna allow myself to be like the stereotype of what women are supposed to be,'” Mark states. That defiance then became the foundation for Mark’s own identity as a nonbinary youth in a community that often lacks a role for those who live outside the binary. When the ethnic studies contract was not renewed, a clear “script” was formed for students in Watsonville: attend class, accept budget cuts and remain a footnote in the district’s history. Instead, Mark chose to stand up on that podium and speak their truth. As Mark says, “We grow up Mexican and we’re told, like, we don’t really have quote-unquote rights, but like the moment I stepped onto that podium and talked to all the board members, it made me feel really powerful. It made me feel that I have a voice.”
“They never give up, and they’re not afraid to share what’s on their mind … even if it might bring controversy,” said Miguel, a classmate and bandmate of Mark. “I think it [the community] would be different without, like, all the stuff they advocated for, especially in board meetings, because I know they share a lot of personal struggles during these board meetings, and I think it’s very impactful, and it brings not only the trustees to think about what they’re doing but, how they should operate … but also other students who are struggling similarly or just want change.”
The impact of that personal struggle went beyond a single speech. For Mark, tearing up the script meant dedicating over 40 hours of community service to school board meetings – a grueling school year spent fighting and enduring for what they believed in.
“We went to board meetings over like 40 hours … it was like my whole life for a good school year,” Mark recalls. It was during these hours that the academic became personal. To the district, ethnic studies was a line item on a budget, but to Mark, it was the curriculum that finally answered the “why?” they had been asking since childhood.
Even so, Mark’s vision extends beyond the classroom walls and the strawberry fields of Watsonville. They fight not only to save the curriculum of today, but also to protect the people of tomorrow. Mark’s transition from student advocate to legal defender is a natural evolution of the “why?” they’ve always been asking, and they intend to go through with it.
“I hope to be a lawyer to defend the families that have lived in areas that have been neglected,” they say. “I want to be able to be the voice that they couldn’t have.” The script of the Pajaro Valley and the schools in the PVUSD district is changing. It is no longer being written behind closed doors by those in suits, but at the podium, not so lonely anymore, with those who have found their power. Mark Mendoza Luengas is no longer just asking “why?”. They are not sitting idly by, and they are not going to allow anything to get in their way.
Because in the words of Mark, “Advocacy isn’t just change. It’s community. It’s your beliefs, and it’s our families. Advocacy always starts with us, and you’re never alone; you’re always going to have your community around you.” Mark is tearing up the script, and now
Watsonville’s youth are no longer reading off the same page.
Orlando Cazales Mendoza is a student at Diamond Technology Institute