Outgoing, incoming and continuing Modesto school board student reps recognized

The Modesto City Schools Board of Education on Monday night congratulated outgoing student representative Sabrina Toor and announced that representative Julianna Garcia was reappointed for a second term, a first in district history.

The trustees also welcomed new student representative Rudra Patel, an incoming senior at Modesto High School.

“Reapplying for this position meant being able to give students opportunities, a voice, and a reason to be involved in our community,” Garcia said in an interview with The Modesto Bee. “So being chosen again feels empowering because students have granted me their trust for a second year, which means I must’ve done something right the first year.”

Patel has a 4.7 GPA. He is an editor at Modesto High’s newspaper, the Panther Press, a member of the Modesto Youth Commission, an attorney for his school’s Mock Trial team, a national qualifier for the speech and debate team, and host of a podcast, “Youth in the Loop,” on which he interviews community leaders.

“I’d like to extend my gratitude to the Board of Education for providing an outlet for student voices to be heard in the discussions that directly influence our learning,” Patel said at the meeting.

Toor and Garcia dedicated this past school year to promoting the “Be The Change” campaign, including hosting art and writing competitions districtwide. The campaign aims to offer students agency and creativity to solve issues or promote ideas they want to see in their communities.

“The art and writing competition was the students’ creative outlet in a variety of different themes, mental health, civic service, student voice and inclusivity,” Toor said. “Receiving over 100 submissions was a great accomplishment.”

In addition, Toor and Garcia created and ran a social media account to amplify student voices and make information from the Board of Education more accessible to students. They also regularly met with ASB presidents to ensure each school was equally represented.

At Board of Education meetings, the teen representatives voiced student opinions on a variety of topics, including the recent Modesto City Schools phone ban.

When the board discussed the policy, Toor and Garcia advocated for a partial ban instead, saying that the full-day ban would just put off phone access and use until later in the day. Against student opinion, the board continued with a full-day phone ban.

Toor, who plans to attend the University of California, Berkeley in the fall, talked about speaking up at board meetings on controversial issues like the phone ban.

“It can be easy to think that the role of a student rep is futile if policies that students were largely against ultimately pass,” Toor said. “But my arguments as student rep during board meetings inform the board and the public of possible implications of the policy based on firsthand experience and pose alternatives for potential future policy revisions.”

Toor also is a semifinalist for the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program, one of 627 students across the nation chosen out of 6,500 candidates.

The Board of Trustees thanked Toor and Garcia for their performance as student representatives during the 2025-26 school year.

Superintendent Vanessa Buitrago said that Toor and Garcia always will be her first two student representatives during her time in the district and that she appreciated them for “being so thoughtful and critical in your thinking, purposeful in what you say, and careful about the kind of stuff you contribute.”

Garcia and Patel said a priority in the upcoming school year will be to reduce educational apathy among students at Modesto City Schools sites.

They plan to do so by tracking student engagement to connect more with students not directly involved in student leadership and improve the amount of student perspectives that are represented. They’re also hoping to do another art and writing competition.

Anna Herbst is an incoming senior at Enochs High School who is job shadowing at The Modesto Bee. She is an advocate with the Voice in Sport Foundation, an intern with Climate Action Pathways for Schools, the ASB president for the 2026-27 school year, and she competes nationally through her club soccer team.