Teena Kalawa Ainslie

Teena Kalawa Ainslie, former board member of the MHCC district board of education, and former Foundation board member for 25 years is running for the district board again.

Ainslie said she’s a “frustrated career development person.” Her main concern is 3000 documented homeless students throughout the Reynolds, Parkrose, and David Douglas districts. “The wisdom these young people are getting are from their peers, and sometimes their peers don’t give them the best advice and they don’t have that many choices being homeless,” she said.

“I think the college, with the help of the business community could play a huge part in helping them find out who they are, what they want and how to get it honestly, and without going through the criminal system.”

Ainslie wants to build partnerships with the college and local businesses to provide students with connections to jobs within their areas of interest and study. “The only teachers that I worked with were the teachers that were interested in partnering with industry related to their curriculum,” she said.

“The others couldn’t see how that was necessary because students, in their opinion, needed to get an education first, and then to a career.”

Ainslie believes that Mt. Hood’s current president actively works to get partnerships, and wants to work to build even more. “Knowing Debbie Derr, I’m sure that she probably has done some partnering and encouraged partnering industry with the college,” she said.

Besides community partnerships, Ainslie is concerned about the state of disrepair of the college itself. “When I was on the board before, we had all kinds of issues with deferred maintenance because we had budgets that we couldn’t get passed.”

Ainslie was a secretary in 1972 when the last bond was passed. “That was the last bond issue for any kind of building or community involvement, as far as community participation was involved, we built a swimming pool.

I’m just glad that college is there for the mental health of our whole community, and we need to be serving the entire population and I know that’s what has been the goal.”