“Education is the catalyst that allows somebody to seize the opportunities that make the American dream a reality,” says Juan Jaramillo, candidate for Revere School Committee.
Jaramillo, a graduate of Revere High School, is currently a sophomore majoring in education with a minor in public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Jaramillo, who immigrated to the United States from Colombia in 2000, praises the Revere Public School System for helping him to achieve his American dream: learning English.
“I had a lot of support,” he states, and he was inspired by his supporters to join the race for Revere School Committee. “It is a way to give back to the community, and to help strengthen the education system.”
Jaramillo represented Revere at a state level in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education during his senior year in high school. “My role was to advise the Board of Education on what the needs of the community were.”
Jaramillo explains that there is the need to create a real partnership between the city school system and its community resources. The majority of the population of his community, including young students, is made up of immigrants, non-English speakers.
According to Jaramillo, 38 percent of the school population is Latino, and 54 percent of the student body as a whole is non-white.
He believes that sometimes the reason some students do not excel is because they do not speak or understand English. And the reason young students might neither speak nor understand English is because there is a lack of social interaction between them and English speakers.
“Isolation is the barrier we have to break down to bring the community together and to facilitate social interactions that make learning English easier,” he says.
Jaramillo believes that creating an educational system that will facilitate social interaction among students of diverse ethnic backgrounds is key not just to English language education, but to a better and more peaceful community.
Not content to simply write policy, Jaramillo plans to work in the classroom as well. “I plan to teach for a little bit after I get my bachelor’s. It should be fun,” he says. 
At last, Jaramillo encourages inhabitants of Revere, especially the young people, to vote in the final election on Nov. 5. 
“It is always important to vote, whether it is a local election or not,” he says.