Reina Tello
A product of SFUSD. Single mother. Union member. Someone who has actually lived what working families in San Francisco navigate every day.
What Reina will fight for
Culturally connected education
Reina didn't connect with school until she took an Ethnic Studies class at City College. She knows what it means to sit in a classroom that doesn't see you. She'll fight for a curriculum that every SFUSD student can see themselves in.
Real access for working families
Her mother was a monolingual Spanish speaker navigating schools, clinics, and courts. Language access and family-facing policy aren't niceties — they're necessities. Reina will make sure SFUSD treats them that way.
Investment in students, not bureaucracy
An investment in SFUSD youth is an investment in San Francisco's future. Reina believes in funding prevention: community schools, mental health supports, and resources that actually reach students.
Multiple pathways to success
Vocational programs, bilingual education, ethnic studies, community partnerships — Reina refuses the one-size-fits-all approach that has failed working-class students for generations.
"Those closest to the problem are also closest to the solution."
Raised in the Mission.
Shaped by its schools.
Reina's parents both served as parent leaders in SFUSD through the '80s and '90s — her father with a fifth-grade education, her mother as a monolingual Spanish speaker who arrived from abroad at 15. Community advocacy isn't a platform for Reina. It's where she came from.
Read her full story