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Cherina Betters, chief of Equity and Access with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, has been chosen as ACSA’s 2024 Exemplary Woman in Education.
Betters is ACSA’s 2024 Exemplary Woman in Education
September 2, 2024
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Cherina Betters, chief of Equity and Access with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, has been chosen as ACSA’s 2024 Exemplary Woman in Education.
Betters will receive the award during the Women in School Leadership Forum, Sept. 18-20 in Carlsbad.
As the first chief of Equity and Access for the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, and as a proud Black woman, Betters has led efforts to close achievement, equity and opportunity disparities among student groups in all districts.
Her tremendous passion for education comes from personal experience. As a child, Betters experienced severe economic challenges and was raised primarily in a single-parent home. She went on to become the first person in her family to graduate from college, earning not just one but three degrees — a bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree in educational technology and her doctorate in the field of Educational Leadership with an emphasis on Social Justice from California State University, San Bernardino. She has experienced firsthand the transformative power of education and strives to give all children the same opportunity she had.
One way she does this is through service on numerous boards, including First 5 of San Bernardino, CSU San Bernardino’s Project Impact, and Santa Claus, Inc. She was also recently appointed a trustee of the San Bernardino Community College District. As a member of the sorority Sigma Gamma Rho, Betters led a Youth Symposium in 2022 that provided support to young women in making positive choices for their health, life and their futures.
Betters is known for delivering inspirational keynotes at graduations and other community and school events, motivating listeners to find their voice and rise up from any situation. She is also preparing the next generation of courageous educators as a professor in the Watson College of Education at California State University, San Bernardino.
Guided by her life motto “Count it all Joy,” which keeps her focused on the hope of tomorrow even during times of uncertainty, Betters’ leadership has inspired many young women, especially women of color, that they too can become leaders and achieve their higher education goals.
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“Dr. Betters has been a personal mentor and inspiration in the time I have worked with her as her assistant,” said Ana Garcia, an office specialist with the Office of Equity and Access. “She always takes the time to offer teachable moments and makes sure to share her knowledge with me so that I too can be a servant leader to students and stakeholders. Her passion for equity and education is contagious and I am in awe of the joy she radiates in all the work she does for others on a daily basis.”
EdCal asked Betters to share her thoughts on leadership below.
How have your life experiences impacted how you lead schools and how you serve students? My life is shaped by all the things I experienced, and those experiences serve as a driving force to how I see myself in leadership and how I want others to experience me as a leader. When I speak to resiliency, it comes from practice and not theory. I truly believe in meeting people where they are, and the diversity of my life experiences and conditions have afforded me a lens to see people, circumstances and environments through a multifaceted lens which has afforded me the opportunity to lead with knowledge, but also with understanding. I believe leaders know what to do to serve students, understanding how to serve them is much different, and understanding comes through experience.
What are some of the accomplishments you’ve been most proud of in your current role? I have received numerous accolades from organizations, elected officials, educational institutions, community organizers and organizations, newspapers, etc. and I truly value each and every recognition and will hold each of those as uniquely special and encouraging. The accomplishments I have been most proud of as the first Chief of Equity and Access for SBCSS have really been the things that do not come with special attention or a spotlight. The opportunities to engage with all those that have a touch point in the lives of children and youth and especially young people as they interact in the educational process has been the thing I am most proud of in this role. I once had a scholar tell me I was a Disney princess after speaking to her class about my role, and she followed up by saying I was magical.
While on a visit to Pacific High School, a student that was Latino and male folded up a gum wrapper into a heart, wrote his initials on it, and came up to me after I addressed the class and right as the team was leaving, told me he felt like I loved them and he had never felt like that from someone he knew for a few minutes. I still have that gum wrapper to this day; I keep it in a pouch along with my work badge on a lanyard I wear daily.
In speaking to another elementary class of students and sharing about the loss of my grandmother and sharing it was the anniversary of her death that day, and her being my role model, the entire class, unprompted, began singing happy birthday to my grandmother. When it was done, several came and hugged me and shared stories of their grandparents’ impact on them and other role models. Those are the precious moments that cannot be quantified that I count as some of the greatest accomplishments.
“I firmly believe that everything you get in life, you get from a person, and therefore, people are our greatest resource.”
Cherina Betters, ACSA’s 2024 Exemplary Woman in Education
Why is giving back a cornerstone of your leadership? Basketball coaching legend John Wooden once said that you cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. Who I am today is an amalgamation of all the things that people did for me that I will never be able to repay. I firmly believe that everything you get in life, you get from a person, and therefore, people are our greatest resource. Giving back is the only way I know how to lead, and I hope it will be the defining quality that both guides and defines my leadership aesthetic.
What advice do you have for other women who are just starting out in school leadership? I was impressed by a long-term, currently active superintendent who is still in the role and involved in ACSA, and who I interviewed at length over a long period of time while I was a doctoral student. She often can be seen visibly crying or sharing a form of emotion that is typically attributed as a negative for women leaders for no other reason than their gender. She said to me that she spent a lot of time trying to live up to the gender expectations of being a leader, which were all male focused, and she decided that she would lead as the female she was. I have carried that throughout my positional leadership, and before she gave me language for it, it was already how I understood who I was as a woman, and especially as a Black woman in leadership roles. Women only need to be their authentic self.
What impact do you hope your leadership has on students? Our school communities need the uniqueness of who the leader is to rise to the level of leadership that schools and the school community deserve today. It is election season and the first Black candidate to run for a major political party nomination for President of the United States was Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm was also the first Black woman elected to Congress.
She announced her candidacy by saying, “I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the woman’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolizes a new era in American political history.”
In that same vein, as the first Black person and woman to hold the leadership role as the Chief of Equity and Access for the largest geographical county in the country, I hope my presence, work and legacy stands as an example of the hope, faith, and unapologetic joy that symbolizes our school community’s commitment to create learning environments where each and every student feels seen, heard and valued — where our scholars do not need to hustle for their worth based on the gender, racial or any other frame of identity and instead know they belong!
FYI
Women in School Leadership Forum
Space is still available to join ACSA’s signature event for empowering female education leaders.
When: Sept. 18-20
Cost: $679 ACSA members; $879 non-members; $453 retired ACSA members Register: bit.ly/WISL2024
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