Roberto Rodriguez

Veteran educator Roberto Rodriguez, who teaches government and economics at Otay Ranch High School in the Sweetwater Union High School District, is serving his first term on the Board, which expires June 25, 2019.

His CTA Board District P serves educators in most of San Diego County and all of Imperial County.

His union activism in San Diego County has made a difference. An educator since 1987, he is past president of the Sweetwater Education Association (SEA), and also served as vice president, treasurer and secretary. His work on building local labor alliances resulted in his CTA chapter becoming a member of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council. The council honored SEA for its work in transforming the local school board. In 2014 he began to serve on the Executive Board of the Labor Council as well as the Central Committee of the San Diego County Democratic Party.

Roberto was a longtime delegate to the CTA State Council of Education, the union’s top governing body, and was vice chair of the Council’s Political Involvement Committee.

“I became a teacher in large part due to the influence of my grandfather,” he says. “He was my first teacher. He instilled in me the love of learning and the importance of teaching.”

"Few careers are more rewarding than education. However, today public education faces major challenges. So called reformers, privatizers and profiteers from all sides of the political spectrum approach public schools as profit making opportunities and not as the education institutions that our students and communities depend on."
"As a teacher, I must be a role model for my students and advocate for public education and educators in the community and the public arena. It’s the only way to ensure that the promise of public education for future generations is fulfilled."

 

At the University of San Diego, he earned a bachelor’s in international relations/Spanish, and a master’s in international relations.

He lives in Vista in San Diego County.