School board member Dan Flores has made the big jump: from Pepper Bough columnist in 1997 to newly elected member of the school board.
The Pepper Bough class began like any other, except this time we noted a visitor standing quietly in the back of the room: a blue-suited, distinguished looking gentleman in his mid-30s. Newspaper advisor David Rainey introduced the guest as Colton school district board member Dan Flores, and in order to give him a background on how proud he is of the paper he told us all a story about his second year as advisor of the newspaper. The story took place in 1997, and was a noble little tale about how the Pepperbough staff, specifically a senior of the class of ’97 named Danny, defended Rainey in front of the school board. After he finished, the staff was puzzled as to why he didn’t talk much about the current students. Then he revealed that the star of his story grew up to be the nicely suited man in the back of our classroom. Flores then introduced himself, and told us about how he got to where he’s at.
After being a star orator at Colton High School, and an award winning columnist on the Pepper Bough, (with a regular column called “Spam-o-Rama”) Flores graduated with honors and attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (on a scholarship) where he got his bachelor’s degree. He then joined AmeriCorps and taught in Alaska for a year. After that, he was accepted to Harvard where he earned his Master’s degree in theological studies. He came back to the Inland Empire and realized that he wanted to give back to the community that made him the man that he is, so he went back to school and got a Master of Public Administration from the University of Southern California. He’s been working for the District Board of Education since then, and is currently the Chief of Staff for County Supervisor Josie Gonzales.
The Pepperbough staff was captivated and excited by his success story alone, but then Flores went on to ask them about their own positions in the newspaper and told a few more stories about his time here as a student at Colton High, which were just as inspiring as his stories of college and traveling. He talked about how proud he was to have come from Colton, and how it shaped him to be who he is and that his time in the Pepperbough was so important to him that he still has his club t-shirt to this day. Just when the class thought he couldn’t get any better, Flores asked why they didn’t have t-shirts and when they explained to him that it was an issue of finance, he offered to get the class some t-shirts himself!
All in all, the Pepperbough is absolutely delighted to have had Dan Flores as a guest, and even prouder to have him as an alumnus of Colton High and the PepperBough. Thank you, Sir!