If you review the long list of volunteer endeavors pursued by Charlotte Lerchenmuller, there’s one common thread: Education.

The retired LAUSD educator believes in the power of schools to advance equity in our communities. Through her many charitable efforts, Lerchenmuller has opened doors for thousands of students to achieve their educational goals.

As the president of the Sal Castro Foundation, she is continuing the legacy of her late husband, the civil rights icon Sal Castro, who famously organized the East LA Walkouts in 1968 to protest the lack of opportunities for Chicano students in LAUSD schools.

For her extensive contributions to education in California during retirement, Lerchenmuller is receiving ACSA’s 2026 Robert E. Kelly Award for Outstanding Community Service.

Born in 1945, higher education wasn’t a common pathway for girls when Lerchenmuller was growing up. But her mother insisted she go to college and Lerchenmuller was determined to become just like her fifth grade teacher Mrs. Lewis and teach U.S. history.

She graduated from Cal State Los Angeles in 1967 and became a teacher. Lerchenmuller was student teaching at LAUSD’s Lincoln High School in 1968 when she met teacher Sal Castro in the faculty lounge.

“I smoked, he smoked. I drank coffee, he drank coffee,” she said, matter-of-factly. “He asked me out, we went out.”

Just a few weeks prior on March 6-8, Castro and others had supported students in staging walkouts across five Eastside LAUSD campuses. Students had a list of demands — among them, bilingual education, new textbooks that better represented Mexican culture, lower class sizes, and revitalized school facilities.

On May 31, 1968, Castro and Lerchenmuller were planning to attend Lincoln High School’s prom to supervise students, but Castro never showed.

“He stood me up,” she said. “He was arrested.”

Castro was charged with conspiracy to disturb the peace for his role in the walkouts. Although he temporarily lost his job, all charges were eventually dropped against Castro and other walkout organizers, known as the Eastside 13.

As a sidenote, Lerchenmuller points out that Robert E. Kelly was the interim superintendent of LAUSD in 1970. Castro and Kelly didn’t see eye to eye, Lerchenmuller said, so she finds it amusing that she is winning an award named for him.

Castro inspired a generation of students to dream bigger. That work continues through the Sal Castro Foundation, which Lerchenmuller leads as president. Until recently, the foundation organized the annual Chicano Youth Leadership Conference. Founded in 1963 by the LA County Human Relations Commission and then known as the Mexican-American Education Conference, Castro was one of the founding facilitators. The conference brought 11th-grade students from across LA County to a weekend camp where they immersed themselves in Chicano culture and learned why and how to pursue a college education from people who “look like them,” Lerchenmuller said.

It became the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference in 1972 and Castro was the director. Although it has been on hiatus since a 2018 fire burned down Camp Hess Kramer where it was held, the conference has achieved a staggering 84 percent success rate of students who not only go to college but complete a four-year degree, Lerchenmuller said.

“This helps them learn how to use the system to their advantage,” she said. “The theme is ‘No Sean Mensos (Don’t Be Stupid): Go to College & Graduate.’”

After retiring from LAUSD in 2007, she worked as an educational consultant, a mentor principal and for the for Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, ensuring her professional expertise translates into meaningful community action.

Her 11-year tenure with the East LA Stitchers demonstrates another of her beliefs — that actions, even small ones, can create good in others’ lives. Along with a cohort of 65 other women, Lerchenmuller helps make handmade quilts for community service projects. For one project, she and her fellow quilters made blankets for 140 Cal State University Northridge students in the Resilient Students Program, former foster students who are pursuing higher education despite significant financial hurdles.

“These are kids who’ve been carrying their life in a brown paper bag,” she said, reflecting on what the quilts meant to the students.

An ACSA member since 1980, Lerchenmuller remains an active leader with ACSA Region 16 and its retired charter, and has also served on the state middle schools committee along with the Council of Retired Leaders. In 2025, she was nominated by ACSA-R and selected by the LAUSD Board of Education to serve on the 15-member Bond Oversight Committee that is responsible for overseeing prudent expenditure of funds for the construction, repair, and modernization of schools in the nation’s second-largest district.

A frequent organizer of fundraisers and events, Lerchenmuller helps award more than 50 scholarships each year as a board member of Friends of Associated Administrators Los Angeles. She has helped grow the scholarship to more than $2,000 to help students attend schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and UCLA. She also raises scholarship funds for Friends of the College of Education at Cal State Los Angeles, to help current college students receive the financial assistance they need to complete their degrees.

She also advocates for the needs of women and girls. As chair of Soroptimist International’s “Los Angeles Live Your Dream Award,” she has worked to provide women and girls access to the education and training needed to achieve economic empowerment. She also volunteers for Comision Femenil, which puts on an annual Leadership Day for 11th grade girls, providing a roadmap for post-secondary education and diverse career paths along with scholarships to high school girls.

Lerchenmuller is practical about the volunteer work she does. It’s simply a continuation of her lifelong dedication to systemic justice and direct community empowerment through education.

From what she sees on the news or hears from colleagues still employed at school sites, Lerchenmuller said she believes the fire for educational equity that was sparked in the 1960s is very much alive.

“From what I’m seeing, what I’m seeing with the advocacy of students, it’s still there,” she said. “It’s burning.”