His ideas and endorsements for District C.
Cody Petterson is on the ballot for San Diego School Board. A native of La Jolla with a PhD in Anthropology, Petterson manages Intergovernmental Affairs for San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, and is a Lecturer in the UCSD Anthropology Department where he teaches on the politics of environmental change.
A progressive, environmental activist, Petterson once wept in his car at the realization that a forest of conifers he once enjoyed as a child could not be replanted after a fire, despite his best efforts. The land was too hot and plagued by pests and hungry rabbits, gophers and rodents. He wrote about it on his Facebook page saying, “The whole millennia-old forest was dying, as far as the eye could see. The sadness, the fear, the despair comes over me in waves when I think about it.”
Petterson believes one of the best ways to face the environmental and societal challenges of the future is through schools. This is one reason why he’d like to be elected to the board.
Petterson is endorsed by San Diego County Supervisors Nathan Fletcher, Terra Lawson-Remer and Nora Vargas.
Petterson has also secured endorsements from eighteen democratic alliances, clubs and unions from San Diego. They include: San Diego County Democratic Party, San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council, San Diego Democratic Education Alliance, San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action, and San Diego Democrats for Equality among others.
Petterson supports climate action, progressive education and district transparency and collaboration.
As a SDUSD board member, Petterson would like to see the district invest in GATE and STEAM programs, and support community schools which provide universal meals, mental health counseling and medical support. He’d like to close the achievement gap, and offer universal preschool and transitional kindergarten so all children can have an early childhood education.
Petterson advocates for a comprehensive climate curriculum so students can be tooled to confront climate change. He supports ethnic studies so that students can receive a culturally responsive education, and would seek pandemic support to help with pandemic recovery.
He is the father of two small children Sequoia and Bardot.
“I am going to take an opportunity to help guide this generation that is going to have to pick up the pieces and build a new world, and not to indoctrinate them, but to give them those first principles that allow them to figure out what that new world’s going to look like.”
