Manhattan Beach School Board Elections 2022: A mathematician gets involved — Tina Shivpuri was inspired by her son to run for school board
by Mark McDermott
Tina Shivpuri remembers the first time she stepped onto a Manhattan Beach Unified School District campus, even though it was more than three decades ago.
She was a South Torrance High School student. She was on the cheer squad and rode a bus to Mira Costa High for a football game. When she walked onto the field, Shivpuri was awestruck.
“I was like, ‘Wow, why are the helmets a little bit shinier, the instruments a little bit louder, the kids a little bit taller?’” Shivpuri recalled. “I thought, ‘This is what I want for my family when I have one.’ I just felt something special about the place.”
Her vision came to fruition. This year, her son Armaan graduated from Mira Costa, and her two daughters graduated from Manhattan Beach Middle School and Pennekamp.
“I was just in tears,” Shivpuri said. “It was like my 30 year vision. It was beautiful.”
Shivpuri is a mathematician. Her gift was identified when she was in seventh grade, and she was sent to high school early for advanced mathematics. She obtained a degree in Applied Mathematics with an emphasis on computing from UCLA, and was recruited out of college to Cambridge Technology Partners, a firm founded in the basement of M.I.T.
“I surrounded myself in this organization with some of the best young brains in the country,” Shivpuri said. “I know that if you surround yourself with people smarter than you, and stronger than you, that you then rise to the occasion, and I’ve always done that.”
At Cambridge, she met her future husband, Vivek, also a mathematician. They moved to San Francisco, and then Arizona, for work. But when it came time to start a family, they came to Manhattan Beach.
“I wanted to raise my kids near family, and attending one of the top school districts in the state,” Shivpuri said.
Her childrens’ education at MBUSD has lived up to Shivpuri’s hopes. But two years ago, she discovered that everything was not as perfect on MBUSD campuses as she’d believed. Her son, Armaan, spoke at a local church and shared that in seventh grade, students approached him in the lunch line, asked him if his parents were in Isis, and told him he looked like a terrorist.
Shivpuri is Mexican-American, and her husband is from India. She had never experienced racism growing up in the South Bay.
“I’ve never felt brown in this town, or at UCLA,” she said. “I just felt like a contributing member of the community. I never felt discrimination…But my child, my son in seventh grade, did feel it. And so I was naive to all of it.”
Armaan was embraced by church members. One 78-year-old man hugged Armaan and told him, “You have a place here.” The experience gave him the confidence to organize a town hall at which other students shared similar experiences.
“That’s when people started coming to me and saying, ‘This happened to me…’” Shivpuri said. “A lot of these stories are surfacing now that Armaan was the first to put it out there. Most students are afraid to say anything… And I realized that because this was happening, we are losing families — they are moving to Vistamar, to DaVinci, to private schools.”
Shivpuri had already been involved with the PTA, but shifted her focus. She became chair of the Culture of Care committee at Pennekamp, and worked to bring in the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” program — an initiative that provides a framework to fight hate and build inclusive campuses through school-wide activities. The program is now in Manhattan’s elementary schools and Shivpuri is working to bring it to MBMS and MCHS. Shivpuri also began attending school board meetings, speaking to these issues — well before the recent wave of hate crime graffiti gripped the MBUSD community. When her son graduated, she decided to run for school board.
“When he left, I said, ‘Armaan, I’m going carry this torch,” Shivpuri said.
Shivpuri said this goes beyond race. It’s about feeling a sense of belonging. She said stories about students from the Young Republicans Club being taunted at MCHS are equally troubling.
“That’s definitely not okay,” she said. “If you have something to say, as long as it’s not hurtful, and not instituting hate or hurt, then you should have a voice, and it should be listened to and respected…We want to make sure everyone feels they belong. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black or brown, everyone should feel comfortable. And that way, we can reach even more academic excellence. Every student, once they feel that they are listened to, and they’re seen and are heard, that’s when participation rises. Everything falls into place.”
This is not Shivpuri’s only issue. She’s spent all her working life applying research and analysis to problem-solving, and utilizing data to help organizations make good decisions. Shivpuri believes these skills can help MBUSD better analyze the budget, and enrollment numbers, and to utilize survey feedback from parents and employees.
“I have mathematical skills and analytical skills,” Shivpuri said. “I’m starting to look more at the numbers, and the budgets, and I’m looking at it from different angles, that people haven’t looked at before. I have this heart for families, and students who felt unsafe, or uncomfortable. But I also have this numbers background, so I want to apply both of those skills.” ER