Garvey School District trustee Andrew Yam may only be 25 years old, but his experience in policy and advocacy is extensive. Prior to his appointment to the school board, Yam was the youngest city commissioner appointed to the Monterey Park Library Board of Trustees in the city’s history. He serves on the Public Social Services Commission, advising the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, as well as on the board for the Asian Pacific Islander School Board Members Association. Previously, Yam worked in other community-facing roles through various political campaigns and as a staffer to an elected official in Orange County.
CSBA spoke to Yam about the value of advocacy and what local educational agencies can do to promote leadership opportunities among California’s students — particularly its Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How has your experience personally and professionally shaped your view of advocacy and public education?
I think that this sort of exposure and experience to government really made me think about the importance of policy and the importance of understanding how different policy legislation impacts us, which is why I participate in Legislative Action Week every single year. Even as a first-term school board member, [it was helpful] having someone explain to me what [the Local Control Funding Formula] is and all the Proposition 98 funding. But my professional role as a policy analyst — external affairs and public policy — and also now working at the county doing healthcare policy, I realized that a lot of laws govern the way that we’re able to do things, whether it ties in with funding or different mandates that are required by the state.
My story is heavily influenced by my background as someone who is Chinese American. My family immigrated from Hong Kong to be here, to attend college, to attend local public schools. My mom is actually a product of [Los Angeles Unified School District] public schools. My family is here because of education and the promise of a better life through the power of education. I hope to continue to carry that story whether I’m still on the school board or whether I serve in other positions. I think that it’s very important that we carry our cultural experiences, we carry our cultural heritage with us. I’d hope that other people who are in these positions of power carry the stories of their ancestors and experiences with them, especially in how we work with other communities and how we think about our impact because we don’t represent just ourselves, we also represent others, and how can we intermingle those two concepts?
I’ve committed myself to being as well versed and as knowledgeable as I can be in education. I should always make sure that I myself am educated, so I can also lead as an educated leader for my school district. I love getting in the details because the devil is in the detail. Sometimes we need to make sure that we’re keeping attention to everything that’s coming up. Even the finest little details matter and are important to policy.
What can LEAs to help identify and prepare the next generation of AAPI student leaders to advocate for their needs?
I think that local county offices of education or local school districts can help find those opportunities and also leverage any sort of relationships or resources we might have. I view the responsibility of the school [board] member, I mean from the administrative lens of course, to make sure that we’re being good stewards for budget, we’re hitting our positive certification where we’re doing all these things, but to also leverage and utilize our own personal connections. We’ve gotten elected and we likely had to talk to some people. We likely had to network, we had to secure fundraising opportunities. Can we tap into those same people and help bring those people to the table to make sure that there are opportunities for our students? That’s the question. I think that beyond doing our job to make sure that the district is fiscally in a great place, we have more to do in terms of being active participants and creating opportunities for our students to find ways to express and practice their leadership. It’s building that confidence.
Finding that comfortability to feel like you’re a part of the American fabric of diversity is the first step before you’re able to get to a point where you can lead others. And you also need mentors and those folks to push you. Because for me, I had a lot of role models, but I didn’t know if being in a very highly visible position is what I wanted. But if you’re not going to represent your background and your story and your experiences at the table, then other people will make those decisions for you.
Can you share more about the value of mentorship for young people looking to enter leadership or advocacy roles? Particularly mentorship from someone who looks like you and/or shares common experiences?
I’ve been very blessed with amazing mentors. Some of my earliest mentors are basically all AAPI leaders in their community. Former Garvey school board member, Henry Lo, who is now on the Monterey Park City Council, was a very inspirational mentor for me. His years of service on the school board are what showed me not just how important it is to be a good school board member, but how a good school board member is supposed to act. Another person, probably the biggest inspiration on my life and the reason why I even pursued a career interest in policy and governance policy, and also in elected governance is a former assemblymember, Mike Eng. He served in the Legislature many, many years ago, but he is sort of this hometown figure here in the city of Monterey Park. I believe it’s the first city in California to have an Asian American majority population. But I have a ton of amazing AAPI leaders around me who inspired me to run, inspired me to pursue policy and make sure that I’m at the table when decisions are being made.
Growing up in the community … there’s a large population of AAPI immigrants who immigrated over here and moved into the surrounding San Gabriel Valley areas, and of course brought a lot of their culture. With that demographic change, I think a lot of teachers in the local high school and local public schools definitely did change as well. At least for me, growing up in my local public schools, I saw a lot of teachers who looked like me. When there’s teachers, or when there’s other school board members who are serving these positions who are folks who look like me, that makes me feel like, I can also do that too. I’m not limited to the stereotypes or I’m not limited to the perceptions that society has placed upon people who are AAPI or any other minority group for that matter. We’re not just limited to that because we can see ourselves as lawyers, educators, elected leaders.
Again, take for example, my congresswoman who originally got her start on the Garvey school board is Judy Chu, now the first Chinese American woman in Congress. And so, just having folks like that — seeing yourself in your leadership — I think was incredibly transformational for me. And I’m sure undoubtedly that with more research, we’ll see that has a transformational impact on students as well.
