Voters across America sometimes wonder whether their individual votes have an impact in national, statewide or local elections.
Or is their vote just one tree in a forest?
Actually, local elections often have lower turnout, and that means each vote carries more weight, and therefore more influence.
This year, Kern County voters in four different areas of the county, along with voters in parts of Tulare, Inyo, Mono and San Bernardino counties, will decide the winners of four of seven seats on the Kern Community College District Board of Trustees — in Areas 1, 2, 3 and 5. The elected positions cover broad geographic areas of the approximately 24,800-square-mile district, and voters cast their ballot for a candidate in their area.
This governing body sets policies and guidelines, manages budgets and oversees the operations of all the community colleges in the district. This year, eight candidates are vying for four seats on the board.
This governing body sets policies and guidelines, manages budgets and oversees the operations of all the community colleges in the district. This year, eight candidates are vying for four seats on the board. A ninth candidate, Paula Dahl, is listed on the Kern County Elections Division website, but she confirmed she has dropped out of the race for Area 3.
Area 2, Christina Scrivner
Incumbent Christina Scrivner was elected to her first term on the board four years ago in 2022. A longtime Tehachapi resident, Scrivner works as the director of philanthropy at Adventist Health, and currently leads donor engagement and fundraising initiatives throughout Kern County. She wears several other hats as well, including as chair of the Kern Economic Development Foundation.
In a wide-ranging conversation with The Californian, Scrivner said joining the board four years ago gave her a chance to see how things work up close.
“I’ve just really enjoyed getting to interact with the students and to see the process of enrollment to graduation,” she said.
Watching students earn certificates and step onto paths toward upward mobility has been exciting, she said.
Asked about Measure J and the many resulting construction projects that have changed the face of Bakersfield College and brought new growth to other campuses as well, Scrivner noted that “these investments were needed and are going to serve us now and into the future.”
But Area 2 includes much of eastern Kern County and beyond, and Scrivner said she’s “keenly focused on growth for Cerro Coso Community College and the service area it supports, including our new campus coming into Tehachapi.”
She noted increasing enrollment numbers in the district’s dual enrollment program, which allows many students to get ahead, especially considering the remote nature of those campuses.
“For those reasons, I’m just really excited about wanting to serve another four years to see some of these things continue, to create access to higher education for our area.”
Scrivner said the district is very well positioned financially and in other ways.
Porterville College, Bakersfield College and Cerro Coso Community College each have their own strengths, she said, and there’s a “shared expertise,” allowing leaders at each campus to discover valuable information from leaders at their sister campuses.
“We’re really learning from each other,” she said.
As the estranged wife of former Kern County Supervisor Zack Scrivner, the Area 3 trustee spoke about whether the traumatic circumstance she and her children found themselves in last year is negatively affecting her ability to continue serving.
“I think to me, when life gets difficult,” she said, “the answer is not always to just stop pursuing what you think is important. I think the answer to me was, as I’m emerging from … this difficult season for my children, I think I’m seeing the space to continue to serve in a greater capacity with a deeper knowledge and compassion for the human experience.”
Area 2, Paula E. Bray
KCCD Area 2 challenger Paula E. Bray was weary of seeing local ballot races that have only one choice, one candidate. So this year, rather than complaining, she decided to do something about it.
“The main reason I’m running is to give the public a choice,” she said of her decision to vie for the Area 2 seat. “I didn’t want to have my opponent running unopposed.”
But Bray also happens to have 25 years of experience working in higher education, especially in facilities management.
“I’ve worked at a number of community colleges, specifically at Bakersfield College. And the person responsible for facilities at Bakersfield College right now worked for me when I worked at CSUB.”
However, student success is No. 1 on her priority list.
“From my perspective, that’s what the trustees’ role should be about,” Bray said, “doing whatever they can to help the campuses increase student success.”
Increasing access, she said, is also important, especially for those who live far from Bakersfield.
“The area that I’m going to be responsible for includes the eastern part of Kern County,” said Bray, who lives in Walker Basin. “It also includes Inyo County, and so is a wide area.
“We’ve got Cerro Coso College over here. But again, unless we’re able to reach out to these students and bring the education to them, rather than forcing them to drive three hours for one class. There has to be a way of helping students succeed and get a degree without requiring them perhaps to move to Bakersfield in order to attend BC.”
Bray currently works at Kern County Superintendent of Schools, after leaving CSUB last year, where her role was to manage facilities management, operational and capital improvement taxpayer funds.
Bray said the work she did at CSUB gave her experience in areas that could be invaluable to a KCCD trustee, providing her with “a specific skill that perhaps my opponent does not have, and being able to understand the construction program that’s happening and being able to ask the questions about why we’re spending so much at BC and why we haven’t spent as much at the other two campuses.
“That’s the kind of things I’m focusing on.”
Does she believe she has a good chance at winning this race?
“Absolutely,” Bray said.
Not only does her career experience give her an edge, Bray said, she also has the ability to focus plenty of time and energy on the needs of the district and especially the particular needs of Area 2.
“But whether she wins or whether I win,” Bray said, “I’m just hoping that we have the students’ best interest at heart.”
• • •
Area 3, Nan Gomez-Heitzeberg
To suggest that Nan Gomez-Heitzeberg has enjoyed a wide-ranging career in education would be to risk understatement.
She’s taught pupils at the elementary school level and students at the university level. But she seemed to find a home with KCCD, where her work in faculty and key administrative roles saw her take on jobs too numerous to mention.
In 2018, Gomez-Heitzeberg was elected to Area 3 of the KCCD Board of Trustees, where she has served for eight years.
Now she’s running for a third term in the general election.
“I could not have navigated my 30-something years on a community college campus without finding out the facts first,” Gomez-Heitzeberg said. “You cannot enter any meeting as an administrator without having done your research and understanding what the situation is and making sure that the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed.”
Her three top priorities are increasing access to community college for students, maximizing student success and ensuring fiscal stability at the district.
But another issue appears to be rising to a new level of urgency.
“At this last board meeting, we had a report on something that is in the headlines. It isn’t new, but it is something that I know that we’re going to be grappling with over the next four years, at least, and that is AI in the classroom and outside of the classroom,” Gomez-Heitzeberg said.
“Certainly, over the last, I want to say, two or three years, I have been aware of how our district has been using AI in a very practical way to solve problems through our information technology offices to make things more efficient, to track things down — working in a very responsible way to ensure that our enrollments are on target and our students are real students who are enrolled in our classes.”
But ensuring that all students are using AI ethically is a huge hill to climb.
“Our faculty are faced with some real challenges, and one of the things that came up in our report that I was tuned into as a trustee is the ethical use of AI,” she said. “We are perceiving how we will teach students the ethical use of AI. And then how we will use AI as a teaching tool.
“Because the reality is from a teaching and learning perspective and from a trustee perspective and being responsible for our communities, our students need to have the skills,” she said.
In other words, you can’t just turn it off, you can’t prohibit it completely.
“Students need to know how to use it and how to use it responsibly,” she said, “because it’s being used in the workplace.
“So, you have this push-pull situation,” Gomez-Heitzeberg said. “You can’t not do it. It’s evolving very quickly. We have to make sure that we’re ethical about its use, and we have to keep pace with a rapidly changing technology.”
Area 3, Douglas Thompson
Douglas Thompson has never served on a governing board, but he believes his 13 years working in the private sector and 36 years in teaching provides him the background necessary to approach the position of KCCD board trustee with confidence.
“I’m a local guy,” Thompson said.
He attended Shafter High School and graduated in 1972, attended Bakersfield College, then studied business administration at Sacramento State.
He came back to Kern County and accepted a job offer with a trucking company and finished his degree at Cal State Bakersfield.
Then he started his own business.
But Thompson was looking for something more.
After working as a walk-on coach at a couple of local schools, he realized he loved working with students to help them learn and better themselves.
“So I made a career change,” he said. “And began 36 years of teaching.”
Thompson went on to earn his master’s in special education, and began teaching students with learning disabilities.
“What helped me is that I developed a professional philosophy,” he said. “I don’t teach subjects, I teach students. And I think I’ve seen over the years that we’ve lost that in education. We’ve lost the fact that we teach students. We work for our communities.”
The retired teacher said “the pockets are too deep.
“My concern, especially with the Kern Community College District, is its wasteful spending. No accountability. No transparency. And we need to, in my opinion, keep our personalized agendas off the table and out of our campuses. Our students have to be encouraged to develop their own set of personal core values.”
Learning how to think is important, he said.
“I know AI is here and that it’s going to be here, but we still can encourage our students to ask questions, to look at different possible solutions, become problem-solvers, become doers, and also understand that not everybody might have that — you don’t want to say ability — but maybe the best fit isn’t going to be sitting in a corporate tower making seven figures a year, and that’s OK.”
If he’s elected, Thompson said, it will be clear to him why he’s there.
“As a board, we’re a public trust,” he said. “And we work for the community, we work for our students. Not the other way around.”
He pointed to apparent delays in the completion of the new student residence on the south side of the Bakersfield College campus as a sign that not all is fine at the KCCD Board of Trustees.
“We all understand that construction projects take time. But if you have a $53 million project, I don’t know about anybody else, but I sure as heck want to find out what’s going on.”
• • •
Area 5, John Corkins
John Corkins has represented KCCD’s Area 5 since he was first elected in 2006, and he enjoys working with other members of the board toward the betterment of students.
“I really like what we do fiscally, and for student success and trying to make things better for the students,” he said. “I’m a product of Porterville Community College before I went out to Fresno State.”
Student demographics have changed dramatically since he attended college, Corkins said, and all the colleges in the district should be welcoming to anyone who wants to learn.
“We want to make sure we’re appealing to anyone who wants to go to college,” he said. “Anyone who wants to go to community college should be able to, and that’s my challenge. That’s my mantra. If you want to come to community college, there’s a way to get there.”
Corkins believes if he had gone straight to a four-year university, he likely would have failed.
“Going to community college was my best first step.
“Unfortunately, I think we still have a COVID hangover in this country,” Corkins said.
“We had a generation of kids that didn’t get the benefit of going to school through that period, and that’s become very challenging for them,” he said. “I sit on an advisory board for the unified school district in Porterville, and we see it in their scores and so forth. They missed something … It isn’t going to last forever.”
Corkins is another board member with the challenges of AI on his mind.
“We just had a discussion at our last board meeting at Cerro Coso,” he said. “AI was on the docket … We know that AI is coming. We know that there’s a lot of benefit to AI. It’s how the person that has AI in front of them on their computer uses it that will determine, I think, how we use it in the future. We’re concerned about kids. Trying to skirt the system using AI. But we have backstops in place for that.
“But AI is moving fast, so we are concerned about it, but … we think it’s something that we need to be teaching the kids, it’s the future, and it looks like it’s going to be a key to future success of individuals.”
Corkins has been involved on the board’s finance committee since he joined the KCCD board 20 years ago.
“So many of our sister community colleges up in Northern California are fiscally in trouble,” he said. “But we have one of the largest reserves of any community college system in California. And we have worked very hard to make sure we maintain a reserve for emergencies.
“When the recession hit in 2010, we did not lay off one faculty member,” he said. “We did not borrow money. We worked off our reserves and kept all departments running and open through that recession.
“Many colleges around us had to go borrow money because the state delayed payment for six months, and many colleges had to close down sections of classes. We didn’t do that.”
There was real pride in his voice that the district remained not only fiscally sound, but fiscally strong, even through difficult financial years.
“We promote student success,” Corkins said. “I want to see all students be successful.
“It’s nice that I understand Porterville College because I went there, but I’ve learned Bakersfield and the other campuses and I’ve been on the campuses and have seen what we’re doing.
“We need to make sure that all students are treated equally and are all successful at whatever level they want — whether that be going on to another college or getting a career technical education or a certification that allows them to go directly to the job market.
“So we’re looking out for all our students. And I think as a trustee, I have to.”
Corkins said trustees need to represent the entire district, not just their service area.
“I’ve been president of this board three times, for two years each time, and it’s a districtwide job, and being a trustee is a districtwide job.
“You have to learn to represent the entire district.”
Area 5, Juan Figueroa Jr.
Juan Figueroa was under the weather when The Californian was searching for him to conduct an interview. The candidate for Area 5 was only able to share information by text.
“I am a lifelong Terra Bella resident,” he said of the tiny farm town south of Porterville.
He’s a first-generation college graduate, and a TRIO alumnus, he added, referring to the federal education program designed to support first-generation, low-income and disabled students.
“I earned my bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and a master’s of public administration with an emphasis on organizational leadership from National University,” Figueroa said.
“I bring 12 years of elected school board experience,” he added, “serving on the Terra Bella Union Elementary School District board from 2012 to 2018, including as president, and the Porterville Unified School District board from 2018 to 2024, including as clerk.”
Most recently, he directed Fresno State’s Educational Talent Search program in the Porterville area, helping first-generation and low-income students prepare for college.
“My responsibilities included managing federal grant funds, supervising staff, building school and community partnerships and helping students navigate college applications and financial aid,” he said in text.
“I also co-authored a successful five-year grant proposal that secured approximately $1.2 million to continue that work.”
If elected, Figueroa said he wants to strengthen the connection between Porterville College and the communities it serves by:
• Expanding partnerships with local schools so students understand their college options early, including dual enrollment, certificates, degrees and transfer.
• Strengthening workforce pathways with local employers so students can prepare for careers that support them and their families.
• Improving access to advising, financial aid and support services that help students stay enrolled and complete their goals.
• Ensuring Porterville College’s needs receive consistent attention in district decisions, with transparent budgeting and responsible use of public funds.
“I spent 18 summers working in the grape harvest,” Figueroa said, “including while attending UC Berkeley. I understand how work, finances and family responsibilities can shape a student’s opportunities.
“I want students throughout our rural communities to see Porterville College as an accessible starting point for their future, and to have the support to follow through.”
• • •
Area 1, Kyle Carter and Wesley Crawford Sr.
Area 1 incumbent Kyle Carter has been elected three times to the Kern Community College District Board of Trustees, and has served from 2014 to the present. The Bakersfield native made a career as a developer and especially as a homebuilder. With his wife, Kim McAbee, he co-founded the Bakersfield Music Hall of Fame.
Carter told The Californian he was too busy to pause for an interview.
Challenger Wesley Crawford Sr., also known as the Rev. Wesley Crawford Sr., has served as a funeral director and minister.
He has also served many years as chairman of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Committee and president of the Kern County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Crawford did not return multiple messages left on his phone.