LJISD’s Chief of Student, Family, and Community Services plans to increase student opportunities via community outreach

For the new Chief of Student, Family, and Community Services, Claudia Gomez-Perez, her position came by chance fueled by opportunities that led her to work with the La Joya Independent School District for 20 years.

 

Inside her office, shelves are filled with family photos and curriculum books. Behind her black, square-framed glasses, her eyes hold a glint like the sun rays on a sign at the top of her shelf that reads: What do you do with a chance?

A chance gave Gomez-Perez her career, one rooted in her alma mater at Hidalgo High School after an unforeseen occupation change.

Out of a four-child, low-income household, this Hidalgo native was the first in her family to attend and graduate college.

Gomez-Perez’s enthusiasm led her to earn a chemistry degree at the former University of Texas-Pan American, now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Her plans to be a forensic scientist with the Department of Public Safety were within reach until a relocation matter placed her career on hold.

In October 1997, her high school principal and former Superintendent of Schools of Hidalgo ISD, Dr. Daniel P. King, offered her a position to teach science at her alma mater.

“I got a phone call from him encouraging me to try teaching because he saw something, I guess, that somebody didn’t see,” Gomez-Perez said. “And here we are.”

With that same chance she had at 24, she now leads La Joya ISD as the Chief of Student, Family, and Community Services this school year.

La Joya ISD is Gomez-Perez’s home away from home; it is where she met her husband, Lionel Perez, and where her three children learn with excellence.

Although not a La Joya native, she is a resident with twenty years of educational service: she worked as the Science Coordinator from 2004 to 2013 before being promoted to the Bilingual ESL Department from 2013 to 2017, then served as a principal for Jimmy Carter Early College High School for six years.

“It’s been a really good twenty years,” she said.

Through her experience, Gomez-Perez uses her ‘why’ to lead her new role as Chief of Student, Family, and Community Services.

And her ‘why’? Providing the best for LJISD students.

 

“That’s what I want to bring to our cabinet, to our administration — making sure we don’t lose focus of what our why is,” she said. “We can’t lose focus on why we are here.”

Gomez-Perez especially seeks to amplify voices that mirror a narrative she is familiar with, like being a first-generation student.

Her parents always emphasized the importance of graduating high school and making a career, which speaks to first-generation graduates today.

“What I’ve gone through is a lot of the stuff that our students are going through right now, right?” said Gomez-Perez. “They’re going to be the first college goers, they’re going to be first ones to show their siblings, to show their cousins, to show their community, their neighborhood, that it can be done.”

In a moment of vulnerability, Gomez-Perez shared a conversation with her mother that solidified her confidence in her newfound role.

“She was like: I am so proud of you,” said Gomez-Perez, smiling while wiping tears from the edge of her eye. “One of the things she always says is… ‘The only thing that I want is for you guys to graduate from high school.'”

As Gomez-Perez soared and achieved beyond high school, she hopes to inspire and push students at La Joya ISD to do the same while bringing parents and stakeholders together to support the district’s efforts.

“It’s being out there and looking for: ‘What are the best opportunities for our kids?” she said. “Making sure that they’re doing their college application, [that] they’re doing their ACT, the scholarships, and pushing and pushing, and not giving up on them.”

Gomez-Perez looks forward to listening to community, parent, student, and stakeholder inputs to improve school programming while building trust and maintaining transparency.

“We’re going to be able to take those programs and [make] them bigger and better,” she said. “That’s what I’m going to bring, or I’m wanting to bring to the table: being able to be that bridge between our kids, our parents, our community [and] the school, so we can bring all those great things that are out there to our kids.”