Feedback from Representative Sharon Tomikos Santos

Sharon Tomiko Santos has been serving in the Washington State House of Representatives since 1999, representing the 37th Legislative District. Due to her busy schedule, I was only able to meet with her for around 25 minutes. Before I could get to asking the prepared questions, she asked me for the purpose of the meeting, what I seek from meeting with her.

To this, I responded that her perspectives and work surrounding providing equitable access of resources in education as well as promotion DEI values in public education align with what I hope to be more involved in in the future. I later introduced the Digital Equity Project, which she held one piece of advice for. 

She told me to always be asking myself the question “Why?” Rather than simply moving onto next step to this project should be a multi-disciplinary study about international education implementation in the US, for example, I must first take the time to have researched the education native to that place and ask myself why is it that this place, out of all places in the world, need this study. 

For instance, she compares the US to other systems of government and education in the world. Most of the other countries are national governments, not a federal government like the US. Other countries can nationalize the teacher training and curricula, but not the US. In other higher-performing countries, the other systems of their national government are more socialized (no healthcare services, childcare services, etc..). In this way, she identified the US as perhaps not the most well-fit country to compare the research from Paraguay with.

This was found with the question of  “Why is this country best fit for comparison with my current study?” Therefore, from this meeting, I was able to takeaway important notes before moving onto the next step of the Digital Equity Project.