Las Lomas filmmaker faces incumbent for Pajaro Valley Unified School District trustee Area 3 seat

Incumbent Oscar Soto and newcomer Gabriel Medina are competing for the Area 3 trustee seat on the Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board in the upcoming November election. 

Soto was first elected to the seat in 2020 to represent Area 3, which includes the north Monterey County portion of the district and southwestern Watsonville to the coastline. The area has the district’s lowest number of registered voters: 1,236 out of a total of 54,550 in the entire district.

Two other seats among PVUSD’s seven-member board are up for election this November: Newcomer Carol Turley is facing incumbent Georgia Acosta for trustee Area 2 and incumbent Adam Bolaños Scow is facing newcomer Jessica Carrasco for trustee Area 6. Lookout sought in-person interviews with all the candidates, and this story is the second of the three races to be published. 

Soto, 53, is a longtime construction worker whose goals include continuing to advocate for more resources for students, addressing declining enrollment and staff retention. 

“I’m just a regular guy, running for office. I’m not a politician. Either you support me or you don’t. I’m just looking out for the kids,” he said. “I know a lot of folks don’t agree with me. They see me in a different light, but that’s OK. I stand by my decisions. I stand by my view of things, and nobody’s going to sway me on that.” 

Medina, 33, said he’s running to improve transportation for students, especially from outlying areas including Las Lomas, south of Pajaro in Monterey County, and to ensure students get the resources they need. 

“We have a history of just people using PVUSD as a political steppingstone. That’s why I try distinguishing myself as a community candidate – I have no political aspirations,” he said. “I’m an artist. I love making films – which is why I’m trying to also argue that producing has given me that insight. I work with budgets, I work with people with differing ideas.” 

PVUSD is the largest school district in Santa Cruz County, serving more than 15,000 students and employing 2,379 people across its 31 schools. Its boundary stretches from Aptos south to Pajaro in northern Monterey County. The district, like many across the state, has struggled to recover from learning loss brought on by the pandemic, declining enrollment and budget challenges, teacher retention and the youth mental health crisis. 

School boards are responsible for steering the direction of the district as it navigates those kinds of challenges. This past year, the board voted to hire a new superintendent, Heather Contreras, and also voted to place a $315 million bond measure on the November ballot to improve its aging infrastructure. 

Soto: Longtime Royal Oaks construction and maintenance worker 

After being raised between Salinas and Watsonville by parents who worked in agriculture throughout the Pajaro Valley region, Soto served in the Army from 1989 to 1997. He got married, moved to Royal Oaks, had four kids and has been in construction for over 30 years. 

This summer he started working in code enforcement for the City of San Juan Bautista. 

“I kind of liken it to where, I’ve done it, I’ve run it, I’ve owned it, I’ve taught it, and now I’m regulating it in my capacity and what I’m doing now,” he said about his career in construction. 

Thinking back to his first campaign for the school board in 2020, Soto said he decided to run as his youngest was aging out of high school. He was driven to help improve PVUSD schools because he felt that his kids weren’t getting the attention they needed in large classes and that the curriculum was lacking. 

Three of his kids graduated from private schools while his oldest graduated from Watsonville High. 

“We felt that they were missing something [in the public schools],” he said, adding that he feels his kids received more attention in smaller classes at private schools. 

While serving on the board for the past four years, Soto said he’s proud of the work he’s done. He said two of the highlights include hiring new district superintendent Contreras, and guiding the work to renovate and repair Pajaro Middle School after the Pajaro River levee breach flooded it last year.

“I’m blessed to have this opportunity to even be here and be in this position,” he said. “So that’s another big accomplishment that I feel as a person, and the fact that I can be part of something bigger than me and be a contributor to that.”

In his four years on the board, Soto has also had significant disagreements with community members and fellow board members. In 2021, Soto and Georgia Acosta, serving at the time as vice president and president of the board, respectively, voted to remove the former superintendent. 

First the majority of the board voted 4-3 to remove then-superintendent Michelle Rodriguez. After an outcry from the community, and no reason given for her removal, the board voted to reinstate her days later. In the same meeting the board reinstated Rodriguez, the board also voted Acosta and Soto out of their positions but they remained on the board. 

“All I can say is there were some contractual issues,” he said. “Based on the fact that the people that voted us out of our positions, whether they had animosity or didn’t really know me or didn’t like me at the time, prompted them to make that decision. When that happened, that was huge. I was getting death threats, even though people denied the fact that I did.”

He reiterated that he couldn’t add any further information about Rodriguez’s removal and the board voting him and Acosta out of their positions. 

Soto faced further disagreement with community members this past year, after the board decided not to renew a contract in September 2023 with a firm that helped the district develop its ethnic studies curriculum. Community Responsive Education (CRE) worked with the district for between 2021 and 2023. 

Board members Acosta and Kim De Serpa accused the firm’s founder of antisemitism, in contrast to several district officials – including the former interim superintendent – who have said they haven’t found evidence of antisemitism. 

At that September meeting, Soto motioned to renew the contract, but no trustees seconded his motion so it failed. The board then asked staff to bring a different firm for consideration at the next board meeting. 

“No. 1, people need to remember that I was one of the ones who motioned to support [renewing] it initially, and it got shut down. So that should be number one,” he said. “Secondly, there’s a huge misconception that CRE is not happening at all, and it is.” 

Soto said the board, and the district, need to wait until legislation regarding ethnic studies curriculum is finalized. 

“There’s current legislation as well that came down that school districts need to revisit, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said. “And the fact that we were transitioning in leadership as well is something that we needed to take into consideration as a board as well. So I’m sorry those people feel that way.” 

Assembly Bill 2918, authored by Assemblymembers Dawn Addis (whose 30th District includes part of PVUSD) and Rick Zbur, aimed to improve ethnic studies curriculum in schools and “respond to incidents where antisemitic and anti-Israel content appeared in ethnic studies courses and teacher training,” according to a statement. 

Sebastian Aguilar, a representative from Assemblymember Rick Zbur’s office, said the bill shouldn’t affect the district’s decisions currently.

“AB 2918 did not move forward this legislative session, so it shouldn’t have any impacts since it didn’t pass,” he wrote via email.

Soto didn’t immediately respond for requests for comment about the bill’s status.

He said he’s moving forward on his goals to help the district work through its biggest challenges, including declining enrollment and the budget, improving facilities and staff retention and salaries. 

He supports Measure M, the $315 million bond measure he and other governing board members voted to place on the ballot this November. He agrees that some of the funding should go toward workforce housing, but he wonders how it will be maintained. 

“That is something that you know needs to happen,” he said. “But there’s other aspects that are going to come along with that, and it’s going to come to a level of how much responsibility is the district going to bear in the maintenance and other issues with that? Is it going to have an effect on the existing maintenance program?”

This year, Soto has earned endorsements from Santa Cruz County Supervisor Felipe Hernandez and Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church. 

Medina: Creative Las Lomas

Medina remembers the moment he decided he was going to run for school board. It was the April 24 board meeting, and the trustees had approved a resolution celebrating Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month for the month of May. 

People told the board they felt the trustees weren’t listening to the public advocating for the renewal of the CRE contract, which has helped bring marginalized stories into the curriculum. But at the same time, board members passed the resolution saying that they acknowledge the stories and contributions of the Asian American community. 

“We had our Asian community there, and they were going up and saying, ‘How are you going to approve this proclamation this month when you are actively telling us that our stories don’t matter?’” Medina recalled. “Just the hypocrisy of that, because it was unanimous that they voted to move forward with acknowledging that month and yet, our Asian community was saying, ‘No, this is wrong. If you really did respect us, you would renew that contract.”

While Medina had for years considered running for the board, it was at that moment, he decided he was running.

If elected, Medina wants to work with students and the board to write and adopt a student bill of rights; continue ethnic studies education; explore and adopt a four-day school week; and improve transportation and arts education. 

Born and raised in Las Lomas, Medina attended Hall and Ohlone elementary schools, Pajaro Middle School and graduated from Watsonville High School in 2010. He did his undergraduate studies at UCLA and later obtained a master’s degree from the film producing program at the University of Southern California in 2023.

He then returned to Watsonville and has been running his film company, Calavera Media. 

Medina also teaches Intro to Digital Media and Creative Careers at Cabrillo College and does freelance and consulting work for short films. This past year, he started a film lab at Pajaro Valley High School in the afterschool program. He plans to run the lab again this year. 

In his role as a producer, Medina has experience managing budgets up to $2 million and navigating a range of demands from different groups. He said he wants to advocate for more transparency around the school budget.

“I tell people, it’s very similar. I have to go and talk to unions. I have to make sure that we’re implementing the best practices that we can,” he said. “So I’m aware of how unions work, how I need to support them, being in the producer role, and how to navigate through people’s different asks from the budget.” 

The teachers union, the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, endorsed Medina in part for his emphasis on budget transparency: “Supported for his strong advocacy for students, his platform to improve transportation infrastructure, and his commitment to maintaining a transparent budget with meaningful community involvement.” 

Through his upbringing in the Las Lomas area, and his family also growing up and going to local schools, he’s heard multiple generations say they experienced a lack of investment. 

“We’re not really in Watsonville. We’re across the bridge. We’re north Monterey County. We’re kind of this forgotten area,” he said. “And I grew up there, and I see these people, and I think they deserve so much better representation than what they’re getting.” 

He said many students in Las Lomas walk daily in areas without sidewalks to bus stops – as did his grandmother. Medina recalled a time when she said she fell down at a bus stop. 

“I’m like, ‘You had these same roads?’ And she said, ‘Mijo, we tried. We told them, what about us? But they said, you guys speak Spanish. We don’t understand you,’” he recalled. “These students see that they don’t have sidewalks and it’s so sad that we’ve become so numb to it.”

He said it’s issues like this that have long sparked his interest in the district’s politics and the school board. While he was studying at USC, he tuned in to the board meetings, and he was disappointed in the removal of former superintendent Rodriguez. 

“The whole Michelle Rodriguez thing – all these things that were happening,” he said. “It felt like we were just taking away from the students.” 

Medina said he hopes a student bill of rights can help put students’ interests forward. 

“This gives them a voice, because what we’ve seen from this current board is, anytime a student shows up, we all get reduced to one minute to speak,” he said. “That isn’t fair to those students who have something to say. So they should have a bill of rights so they could say, ‘Hey, you are infringing on my ability to speak and let you know what is going on, so that could bring administrators to the table to listen.’” 

FOR THE RECORD: This story has been updated to reflect the status of Assembly Bill 2918 and add comment from Assemblymember Rick Zbur’s office.

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