If you are lucky, there is often that one adult you remember from your grade school days that either gave the best hugs or always had candy on their desk. Perhaps they could always make you laugh, or their classroom was a haven at lunch when things got tough.
At Richmond’s Verde K-8 School in North Richmond, that safe person for a lot of people is Marta Nieto.
Nieto, the school community outreach coordinator, bridges the gap between families and the school and is known for going above and beyond. She gives prizes to students who improve their attendance, organizes potluck lunches for families on Fridays and has even found jobs for parents.
She organizes flea markets so families can showcase their talents and raise money for students, she fights for extra resources and is said to have single handedly increased Verde’s attendance rates.
“I really like the families to feel like this is their home. This is their school,” Nieto said. “We need to support the school, and we need to work together to make it better.”
Meet Your Neighbor: Verde school’s Marta Nieto
Who: Marta Nieto, Verde K-8 School community outreach coordinator
Neighborhood: Former San Pablo resident who has worked in North Richmond for 15 years
She said: “If you have passion, you don’t see (the problems). You choose to work and (fix) it, and that’s what I do here at Verde.”
Richmond is home to 40+ distinct neighborhoods, a fact that some residents have told us makes them feel disconnected to the city as a whole. This story is part of an occasional series to help Richmonders get to know their neighborhoods. Know someone we should feature? Email hello@richmondside.org.
Her approach is to uplift parents first. Verde has had a serious absenteeism problem, with about 40% of students considered truant at one point, meaning they had unexcused absences for three days or more. This not only affects the funding that the West Contra Costa Unified School District receives but also the children’s educational success.
Usually schools send out letters and call parents to explain the laws around school attendance, but Nieto uses a different approach. She likes to call parents and ask how she can help get their children attend school.
“When I see a child missing at school, I always wonder, ‘Maybe something happened to him. Maybe something happened with the family,’ ” Nieto told Richmondside, speaking in a mix of English and Spanish. “So we have to have that connection and that relationship with the families to help.”
She said the most common reason for a child to be absent is because their parents don’t have transportation, so Nieto helped create carpools and introduce neighbors to each other. Another big reason for high absenteeism is because some parents don’t realize how easily a child can fall behind if they are regularly absent.
Nieto said it’s a difference in cultures. In Mexico, where most of the students’ families are from, it’s not guaranteed that a student will advance to the next grade, so parents pay more attention to their children’s academic progress. However, in the United States, students almost always are advanced, regardless of attendance or even grades, Nieto said.
So Nieto invites parents to campus to learn about the impacts of absenteeism. Before the school year ended, Nieto had five parents attend one of her attendance classes.
Nieto also works directly with students to help them understand why school attendance is important so they can explain to their parents why they want to go to school.
For about six months, Nieto had students who were frequently absent watch weekly videos on the importance of education while enjoying snacks such as nachos or ice cream. She also gave these students a monthly calendar to mark off the days they attended. If they got perfect attendance, they could enter a raffle for a prize.
Verde secretary Victoria Michelle Faras said Nieto’s methods are working. Within three months, the school’s absenteeism decreased from 40.8% in March to 36.3% by the end of May.
Faras hypothesized that parents are not sending kids to school because they are afraid there could be an immigration raid, but Richmondside couldn’t verify a relationship, because the district’s June data, when, for example there were raids in Los Angeles and some Bay Area cities, isn’t yet available. ICE raids have not been reported in this part of Contra Costa County, though they have happened at an immigration court in Concord.
Nieto launches ‘parent university’ program, because parents need help, too
Nieto said her absenteeism work is only a small part of what she’s done after 15 years at Verde. About seven years ago, she started a parent leadership program she calls “Parent University.”
Caregivers, usually women, can opt into a year-long program that focuses on self development, parenting techniques and how to advocate for students within and outside the school district.
The program is split into three sections. The first section focuses on self-esteem, mental health and developing positive habits.
The second section teaches parents about how the school system works. Parents are required to join at least one committee such as the PTA or an English Learner Advisory Committee. During the year, parents are asked to complete 100 hours of volunteer work on campus.
The last section asks parents to incorporate everything they’ve learned to work together and make tangible changes at the elementary school. For example, parents successfully advocated for fences and cameras to be installed around the school to protect students from leaving or to keep out animals or trespassers.
Currently, the parents are advocating for shade coverings on the lunch tables outside. There is currently nowhere for students to sit to escape the heat. More than 300 parents have signed a petition and are planning to meet with Verde leadership this summer to make their case, Nieto said.
By the end of the school year, parents who missed three or fewer university classes, walk the stage with a cap and gown in front of their children and loved ones.
“To me, it is very important. The kids, they can see their parents (and) that they still have a lot of interest in education,” Nieto said. “When the parents start to walk over here, they hear (the cheers of the kids) and I really want that. I want the parents to feel proud about themselves, and I want the kids to look up to them.”
Some of the parents who have completed Nieto’s program have gone on to work for the school. One parent, Gloria Lopez, is now a fifth-grade teacher at Verde after completing the program in 2023-24. Another parent graduate is a student supervisor at the school. Nieto also created an opportunity for a mother with her own catering business to cater lunches for teachers.
“Anytime I see opportunities at school I think about the moms who graduate from my class,” Nieto said. “But I don’t really like to keep the moms for too long. I want the mothers to go other places and go to college, go to work, go do something different too.”
Nieto’s classroom, a portable building by the field, is almost always filled with parents. When Richmondside visited Nieto there recently, there was a parent organizing the room after the school year ended.
The parent university program is one of many resources. Nieto also offers classes for cooking or crochet. She also started a newcomers group, where recent immigrant families meet to ask questions, improve their English and meet new people.
She also started and grew the PTA to be a formidable force on campus. Together, Nieto and parents have raised money to provide $150 per class for pizza parties and other celebrations. They also pooled enough resources to buy a $1,500 projector to host family movie nights on campus.
Nieto joked that her husband often asks why she works so many hours, especially since she makes less than, say, a teacher. But for Nieto it’s her passion — one she said she can’t explain, much like she couldn’t explain her passion for a boyfriend when she was a teen.
“”
“I really like the families to feel like this is their home. This is their school.”
— Marta Nieto,
“I used to love a boyfriend who was very ugly. And everybody told me, ‘Marta, why are you with him?’ But I remember he was my passion and I didn’t see it like a handsome boy. No, I see it like passion,” Nieto said, giggling. “That’s how I feel here at Verde. I know we have a lot of challenges, but what can I do? If you have passion, you don’t see (the problems), you choose to work and (fix) it, and that’s what I do here at Verde.”
Nieto applied her own life experience as a mom of six
Nieto came to California from Mexico at age 17 and became a mother a year later.
She relates to many of the parents at Verde who struggle to navigate a new system in a totally different language, all while trying to make ends meet, because that was her.
Nieto said her first four children didn’t get the best version of her and it impacted their education.
However, while she was raising her children, she started working as a case manager for Catholic Charities on the Verde campus.
During that time, she was getting several calls from teachers about her youngest son, who they said was bullying or being bullied and would run away or misbehave. Then, when he was in the fourth-grade, he was diagnosed with autism.
“I didn’t have support, no knowledge, no empathy, no nothing,” Nieto said. “When I woke up was when my son told me one time, ‘I don’t want to go to school. Mom, everybody thinks that I’m stupid,’ so I said I need to do something about this.”
She learned how to navigate the school system and advocate for him to get help with his autism. Nieto also took early education courses at Contra Costa College — a feat that was incredibly difficult for her because of the language barrier. Eventually she was recruited into her current role.
“Now my son is going to start at UC Berkeley,” Nieto said beaming with pride. Her daughter, who is the second youngest, is a nurse.
“With my other kids, the older ones, I didn’t, I didn’t know anything about education (and advocacy), so I have a son who never graduated from high school,” Nieto said. “Pero ahora, (but now) I see the difference when you are involved, when you know things.”
That’s why she wants every parent to take advantage of the resources at Verde and build a community that outlives the school year or even their time at elementary school. After all, the families there are all neighbors, she said, and Verde should be a community hub.
Nieto noted that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done at Verde. It is an under-resourced school in a low-income community. While parents and educators have been making changes, such as adding murals and upgrading some facilities, students are still falling behind academically and don’t have everything they need to reach their full potential.
She said totally transforming the culture at Verde also requires district support, in the way that it funds the campus, hires principals and teachers, and makes more efforts to connect with the community.
Verde is currently hiring a new principal, and Nieto is hopeful it will be someone who shares her vision for change and community building.
Thank you for giving a shout out and voice to Nieto. I am so thankful that people like Nieto are becoming more aware, more active, more committed to helping make our world a better place.