The Lansing Board of Education has filled a vacancy on its panel. Deyanira Nevárez Martínez was appointed by the rest of the Lansing school board’s members from a field of a dozen applicants.
Nevárez Martínez, an urban planner who teaches in the MSU Department of Urban and Regional Planning, believes her experience will make her an asset to Lansing schools.
“I study housing insecurity and I study the criminalization of poverty,” Nevárez Martínez explained. “Things that are really important in urban school districts.”
On her website, Nevárez Martínez states she is "passionate about equity and social justice in public policy," and pledged to focus on student opportunity in Lansing schools.
“Every single child comes to school with assets,” said Nevárez Martínez. “I think that our job is to recognize what these assets are and prepare them for the future.”
Earning her doctorate from the School of Social Ecology at the University of California-Irvine in 2021, Nevárez Martínez served as a state coordinator for the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, a non-profit that promotes citizenship workshops and voter registration within Latino and immigrant communities.
She takes the school board seat formerly held by Kurt Richardson, who left for another job earlier this month. Nevárez Martínez will be sworn in at the board’s meeting on Thursday.
