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Jorge Sanchez Bautista, a student at McDaniel High School, announced he will run for a seat on the Portland Public Schools Board in May 2025.
Bautista, 18, will run for the board’s Zone 5 seat, which encompasses a part of Northeast Portland that includes Grant and McDaniel high schools. That seat is currently held by Gary Hollands, a trucking company owner who announced his reelection campaign Dec. 10.
Bautista says his campaign will center on his experiences in PPS. In a release, he wrote that students in the district face barriers such as limited mental health resources, poor building conditions, and a “lack of engagement” in schools.
In an email to WW, Bautista says his priorities include promoting equity, inclusion and academic excellence; fostering family and community engagement; and focusing on financial stewardship and board accountability.
“This education system has made me who I am today and, if elected, would make me the most recent voting member on the board with classroom experience,” Bautista wrote in a release. “I believe we need a School Board who knows our students, will fight for them and our educators, and will be where our community is to listen to their concerns.”
Bautista’s not the first student to run for a School Board position. In May 2021, Brooklyn Sherman, a Jefferson High School graduate and student at Portland State University, ran for a seat in Zone 4. Sherman received about 11% of the vote in a race current board member Herman Greene won easily, amassing 73% of the vote.
Bautista has laid out several other priorities in the early days of his candidacy. He wrote that, since his involvement in the Portland Association of Teachers’ strike in November 2023, he has fought alongside education leaders to fund the education system.
On his Instagram, Bautista recently posted a statement against the PPS cellphone plan policy of “off and away all day.”
Bautista grew up in the Cully neighborhood as a son of immigrants with Hispanic and Indigenous roots, and is also queer. He says his community was a driving motivation to get involved in local politics. He lobbied for passage of Oregon Senate Bill 1503 in May 2024, which establishes the Task Force on Community Safety and Firearm Suicide Prevention.
“I have fought against gentrification and rent spikes in 2017, led community cleanups, have passed pieces of legislation, have leadership roles in many organizations, and am now known as one of the most prominent youth leaders in the city,” he wrote.