Jose Lalas is currently an elected school board member of the Corona-Norco Unified School District and has served this district as member of the Board of Education for about 29 years (from 1990 to 2003, 13 years; from 2008 to present, 16 years). He initiated the institutionalization of collaboration between the District Administration and the two employee associations --- CNTA and CSEA --- in the 90’s in handling negotiations and finding solutions to immediate problems and challenges. He also introduced the creation of the district’s “think-tank” to study the issue of achievement gap, equity, and to find ways how to address the disparity in achievement among the diverse groups of students including learners with special needs. He initiated the implementation of dual language immersion program to meet the needs of the English learners, foster the use of two languages for non-Spanish speaking students, and provide the opportunity for native-English speaking children to be fluent in Spanish. He continues to focus his attention on improving the District’s curriculum and instruction including professional development. In addition, he supported the establishment of CNUSD Parent Center. The collaborative mode of bargaining, “think-tank’s” focus on equity and closing the achievement gap, dual language immersion programs, and parent center are still operational and contribute to the quality of education in CNUSD. He strongly supports the empowerment of ALL parents including those students with special needs, Hispanic students, African-American students, Indigenous students, Asian-Pacific American students, and all students with different cultural and social identities.

Jose Lalas has been involved in teacher education for 35 years as a faculty in both public and private universities (14 years at CSU Dominguez Hills; currently, 21 years at University of Redlands). Prior to his teacher education experience, Jose has been a junior high school classroom teacher. He has served as an associate dean, director of teacher education, and coordinator of credential program. He was the founding director of the University of Redlands’ Center for Educational Justice and directed it for 17 years. Currently, he is Professor of Literacy and Teacher Education and past director of the University of Redlands’ Center for Educational Justice. He co-authored several published books that include A Teaching and Learning Framework for Social Justice (2006), Instructional Adaptation as an Equity Solution for English Learners and Special Needs Students (2007), Who We Are and How We Learn: Educational Engagement and Justice for Diverse Learners (2016), Challenges Associated with Cross-cultural and At-risk Student Engagement (2017), and Minding the Marginalized Students Through Inclusion, Justice, and Hope: Daring to Transform Educational Inequities (2021). His research agenda includes student engagement, social and educational justice, critical theory, pedagogy, and literacy, adaptation pedagogy, achievement gap, second language acquisition, and mentoring of diverse faculty. His most current research work focuses on learning loss and learning acceleration, leadership disposition, and the influence of social and cultural capital, social class, funds of knowledge, race, and language on student engagement. His latest peer-reviewed articles have all appeared in Journal of Leadership Equity and Research (JLER), Journal of California Association of Professors of Education Administration (CAPEA), and Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice, all published in 2021.

During the pandemic, Jose facilitated some 30 webinars on safety, learning loss, policy concerns, STEM, and student voices through the University of Redlands’ Center for Educational Justice. He continues to plan and coordinate the School of Education’s annual Superintendents Forum. This 2024, the theme was “Rounding Up the Current in Critical Challenges in K-12 Education.”

This year 2024, Jose was recognized by the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) and gave him the “Courage to Act and Social Justice Award.”

Jose co-chaired the University of Redlands’ task force that created the EdD in Leadership for Educational Justice. He has been and continues to be involved in many doctoral dissertation projects and has chaired to completion twenty-nine (29) dissertations.

Jose earned his Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) in Education with emphasis in Reading/Language Arts and specialization in bilingual or dual language education from the University of Washington. He obtained his master’s degree (M.Ed.)) and Education Specialist degree (Ed.S.) in Reading/Language Arts from Seattle Pacific University. Born and raised in the Philippines, Jose earned his Bachelor of Science from the University of the Philippines.  As a young student attending the University of the Philippines, he was a member of the prestigious Beta Sigma Fraternity, a strong brotherhood of scholars and honor society that develops its members to embrace a culture of academic excellence, social nobility, ethical fortitude, and human decency, courage, and care. He continues to be an active member of this alumni  fraternity that has chapters at all major cities in the United States. 

Jose has been married for 46 years to his wife Linda. They have 4 grown-up children: Jonah, a UCLA undergraduate and Berkeley Law School graduate, was a union organizer and is now a labor lawyer; Jeremy, a UCLA undergraduate and Harvard master of education graduate, is an elementary and middle school teacher in New York and Mississippi; Joanna, a University of Redlands undergraduate and with New York University’s master of arts in education degree, is an experienced U.S. History, World History, and Government high school teacher in New York and now, director of curriculum and instruction at a Charter School in New York; Jolene, a UC Berkeley undergraduate with Columbia University master degree in public health and doctor of education degree (Ed.D.) in health sciences, works as a research coordinator in New York.