Richmond education equity advocate is running against Pinole council member in Contra Costa College board race

This story was updated to correct an error regarding candidate Cameron Sasai’s status as mayor. His mayoral term ended in 2025.

Two candidates are competing to represent Richmond and San Pablo on the Contra Costa Community College board of trustees. 

Raquel Fanny Donoso, a Richmond resident who works as the Equity in Education program lead for the Skyline Foundation, is running against Cameron Sasai, who was Pinole’s youngest ever mayor.

Longtime Richmond politico John Marquez is not running for the Ward 1 seat after serving on the board for 14 years. Pinole Mayor Pro Tem Devin Murphy dropped out of the race in August. 

Whoever wins will join the five-member board for a four-year term. Ward 1 encompasses Contra Costa Community College in San Pablo, all of Richmond and parts of Pinole, Hercules and El Sobrante. 

The Contra Costa Community College (4CD) board of trustees is the official legislative and governing body responsible for the overall direction, policies and financial oversight of the district’s three colleges: Contra Costa College, Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College.

The race comes at a difficult time for community colleges statewide. Last year, the 4CD district laid off a number of staff, cut programs and warned that more difficult decisions will have to be made. In June, voters rejected Measure G, a $920 million bond that would have helped pay for facility upgrades and repairs. Last year, staff also protested and threatened to strike after administrators received significant raises while the union was at a stalemate in contract negotiations. 

At the end of this year, district Chancellor Mojdeh Mehdizadeh will leave her post after four years at the helm and 30 years in the district. While there is an interim chancellor lined up, the new board of trustees will hire a permanent successor. 

Both candidates told Richmondside they are ready for the job, saying their qualifications and priorities will allow them to improve accessibilty, build professional pathways to prepare students for upward mobility and success and provide more basic needs services such as student housing.  

Donoso points to her education advocacy as a parent and leader in the nonprofit sector. She said she’s been mentored by her colleagues and now it’s time to pay that guidance forward. 

“I have a commitment and passion and care for students and families at the college,” Donoso told Richmondside. “I also think that it’s important to have people on the board who represent, you know, a lot of different interests, and so I bring a depth of knowledge around policy.

With more than 25 years of work history on her resume, Donoso said she knows how to build meaningful relationships with public, private and nonprofit sectors to advance education goals. She’s been a board member for Planned Parenthood Northern California and the East Bay Regional Parks District, among other volunteer work. She also served as CEO of the Latino Community Foundation, Associate Director of the Latino Issues Forum and director of Mission Promise Neighborhood, which helped improve literacy in four San Francisco Unified schools. 

She holds a master’s degree in public health from UCLA and a doctorate in education from UC Davis. 

“I am also somebody who likes to think big and likes to dream big about what’s possible,” Donoso said. “And then figure out next steps to actually make it happen.” 

She said if elected she is willing to put in the years-long work to make some of those dreams come to fruition, like student housing. 

Sasai attended Contra Costa Community College fairly recently, from 2018 to 2020 he said, so he said he understands the current student experience and can bring that perspective to the board.

He also points to his understanding of policy making as a strength to help advocate for more resources for the college district as a trustee. He graduated from UC Davis in 2022 and was elected to the Pinole City Council that year — making history as the first Filipino American council member, the second of Asian American descent, and the youngest person on the governing body in its more than 120 year history. He was appointed to a one year mayoral term, from December 2024 to December 2025 and will finish his term this year. He decided against running for reelection.

“I see myself as this new generation of leadership and the government should represent everybody,” Sasai told Richmondside. “And a governing board needs governance experience. With public education and social safety services under attack by the administration right now, this is a dire situation. We need somebody who has governance experience and I believe I am the strongest candidate (in that regard).” 

He also has policy experience working as a policy coordinator for the California Immigration Policy Center, lobbying lawmakers around stronger protections for immigrants. He was also chair of the Filipino American Democratic Caucus for the California Democratic Party. 

“I’m the only person who can say I’ve been in those classrooms as we’re talking about this facility’s bond and aging infrastructure. I’ve talked about faculty and the way their policies have impacted them, the budget and their pay. I’ve been at office hours with these professors,” Sasai said. “And being a young person, I understand what housing affordability is because I know that I can’t buy a house.” 

When asked where he sees himself in five to 10 years, Sasai said it’s hard to tell because six years ago he didn’t even know he would be a council member. 

“I want to make as much positive impact on the world that I can, and just be there for my loved one, my family, friends, and this is a pathway to still serve,” he added.  

Donoso says community college set her family up for success

Donoso believes that community colleges are one of the strongest pathways for economic mobility. She saw it herself through her own family. 

While growing up in Los Angeles, Donoso watched her mother attend community college while raising three children, “launching a nursing career that changed her family’s future.” 

“She always told us how important it was to be educated, informed, you know, to do something in your community, and really instilled that in us,” Donoso told Richmondside. 

But she also saw the gaps between the services that a community college offers versus a university. When Donoso graduated, she went to study at UCLA. In her second year, she gave birth to her son. There, she got subsidized housing in a new university family housing unit and had free childcare until she graduated with an undergraduate degree in anthropology. 

“It was amazing, and I kept thinking, ‘Why is this only available at the UCs? Why is this not more available at the CSUs and the community colleges?,’ ” Donoso said. 

After graduating, Donoso and her son moved to Alameda County before heading to Richmond, where she has lived for the past 20 years. She described herself as a very active parent who’s involved in PTAs and school site councils and has attended several school board meetings.

When her son was a fifth-grader, she ran for one of the three WCCUSD at-large trustee seats. In a field of 10, she placed fifth.

“My son is Latino and Black and I was a low-income single mother, so I had to be active because I knew what we were up against,” Donoso said, explaining why she ran. “Kind of cyclically, we (California public schools) go through really hard times with budgets and with funding, and it’s the board and leadership who make decisions about funding cuts … so I wanted to make sure our students are getting the resources they need to really prosper.”

She said it was hard as a parent to watch her children’s teachers be laid off, programs cut and resources dwindle. 

“The younger teachers of color who have a lot of new ideas and energy are also the ones that often get cut first,” Donoso said. 

Although she didn’t win the WCCUSD seat in 2014, Donoso continued with her activism in education. 

As the Equity in Education program lead for the Skyline Foundation, she advocates for more public school funding, creates grants to invest in teacher retention and recruitment and invests in postsecondary opportunities specifically tailored for low-income students and students of color. She has also published a children’s book and is working on a novel for young adults. 

Now she said she’s running for office with a better understanding of the at-large Richmond community and its needs. Her endorsements include one from Marquez, along with the West County Democratic club and local elected officials like county supervisor John Gioia. 

She said her work in the nonprofit sector and education world has prepared her for the trustee role. Her priorities are building pathways to opportunities, cultivating workforce and community partnerships and removing barriers to academic and career success. 

That means making sure students’ basic needs are met: housing, food, childcare and legal services. 

She also wants to make sure that the local community colleges are preparing students to enter an ever-evolving workforce, especially in the heart of the AI boom. 

“I don’t think there’s a silver bullet here. I think this is going to be a really transitional period,” Donoso said. “I’ve been in a lot of meetings with economists and researchers who are thinking about this, and they’re even saying, ‘We actually don’t really know what the jobs are going to be like in 10 years.’ ” 

Still, she said the community college needs to invest more in beefing up pathways so they are more aligned with what students want and what employers need.

That could also mean investing more in trade jobs, because those are secure. To do so, she suggested building stronger relationships with local unions and connecting students to job opportunities. 

Donoso also has a soft spot for students who are parents, because she knows how difficult it is to balance both. She wants to expand resources so that anyone can continue their education and have more opportunities. 

She also wants to build stronger trust between the board and students and staff through early communication, transparency and several check-ins. Donoso said oftentimes cuts or layoffs are announced too late for community members to meaningfully shape discussions and she believes that not only erodes trust but can lead to cuts being made without understanding the full impact. 

Sasai says he is proof that community college works

Sasai shares some of  Donoso’s concerns. He told Richmondside that community college is the single most important lever for upward mobility. 

To him, it’s not just a tool for academic achievement, but is also a space for students to access more resources that close equity gaps. 

He said people are going through so many different struggles, and the college can often be a soft landing space, where professors are dedicated, understanding and genuinely invested in student achievement. It’s a place for students to get access to food, medical care and get help signing up for other state or federal support. 

“Community college is like one of those places that is like an affordable doorway to higher education and like breaking generational poverty right cycles,” Sasai said. “I just want to work with the board to expand early college and free college opportunities like the university transfer pathways that I took advantage of.” 

That means making sure there are enough counselors to support students as they navigate transfers to universities, and investing in and developing more apprenticeship programs for different trades. 

“And not only trades, but like nurses and medical staff and the firefighters,” Sasai said. “College isn’t for everybody, right? We all have our different strengths. I want to make sure that we are able to provide those opportunities and those pathways, like high ROI outcomes for students.” 

He said affordability is the main driver of his platform, especially as the federal government prepares to take away social services from thousands of people next year.

He said his mind is constantly thinking of different policies the board could pass to support students “who are just trying to survive.” That could look like creating safe parking sites, where students who live in their cars can use college parking lots to rest, finding grants to bring in more mental health supports and protecting curriculum like ethnic studies. 

He also wants to put district-owned property on the board’s agenda for review and explore building housing for students and district employees. 

“There’s a lot more stressors now than there was honestly six years ago when I was a student,” Sasai said. “And the fact that (many resources have) stayed the same and (even therapy) being migrated to virtual is like a clear thing that needs to step up.” 

He said he knows it’s possible. Even with cuts, the Contra Costa Community College was able to open a new Compass Center to serve more students with basic needs support. 

He wants to build on that growth and believes he can through his governmental experience and policy work. He received the sole endorsement of the California Democratic Party and AFSCME Local One, a union representing college district classified professionals, along with more than 60 elected officials. 

And he points to his track record on the Pinole city council as proof. As mayor he helped pass the Bay Area’s first ordinance barring ICE from using city property. Sasai described helping pass a resolution that earned Pinole the state’s pro-housing designation for providing more affordable housing developments for seniors and veterans and townhomes for young families. He also introduced and successful measures related to air quality, immigrant protections, and requiring hate-crime resources at facilities. 

What he chooses to prioritize is largely based on his lived experiences. He comes from a mixed-immigration status family and is the son of immigrant parents from East Asia. 

Although he thought he would go into the sciences, he was catapulted into civic service after seeing the George Floyd protests, the Asian hate crimes during the pandemic and learning that there are so many different paths and jobs that he could do. 

Sasai said community college was transformational for him and the care he felt from professors there was unmatched. He wants all students to have the same experience and even more opportunities so they can find their calling too. 

This story was updated to correct a mention of Sasai’s ethnicity in a photo caption.