Home / Policy & Advocacy
On February 2, 2026, the Orange County Board of Education passed Resolution 03-26 by unanimous 5–0 vote, formally urging expanded bilingual and dual-language instruction across Orange County schools, establishing Sailee Charlu among the youngest architects of county-level education policy in California. The resolution was co-authored with OC Board of Education Trustee Jorge Valdes, whose own two children were among the first students enrolled in Habla Arte. The resolution further carried the formal written endorsement of Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua, who reviewed its language personally.
The resolution followed two years of sustained advocacy every Tuesday before the Santa Ana Board of Education, supported early by Councilwoman Jessie Lopez, who publicly recognized The Lit League before the Santa Ana City Council. Reinforced by four years of peer-reviewed research conducted through UC Irvine, this evidentiary and political foundation carried the initiative from testimony to formal, binding county policy.
The signed text of Resolution 03-26, passed unanimously by the Orange County Board of Education on February 2, 2026.
On November 25, 2025 Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua provided a formal letter of support for Resolution 03-26, personally reviewed and endorsed on behalf of the City of Santa Ana ahead of the resolution’s passage.
Sailee worked closely with Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua beginning October 13, 2025 to help draft and revise the official resolution ahead of its introduction to the Orange County Department of Education. Their collaboration also touched on Curiosity & Me, Sailee’s bilingual children’s book, which has funded two of her community initiatives, Habla Arte and The Lit League. Bonded by a shared love of the Spanish language, Mayor Amezcua offered Sailee guidance and resources for expanding both programs’ (Habla Arte and Lit League) reach across Santa Ana.
Councilwoman Jessie Lopez was among the earliest public officials to champion the work of the Habla Futures Initiative, recognizing The Lit League on August 19, 2026 before the Santa Ana City Council years ahead of the resolution’s passage. That early support culminated in the City’s Certificate of Recognition, signed by Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the full Council, honoring her visionary leadership through The Lit League and its impact empowering youth and amplifying diverse voices across Orange County.
On April 7, 2026 Sailee received a letter of support from Jorge Valdes, Esq., Trustee of the Orange County Board of Education, recognizing Sailee’s work drafting Resolution 03-26, “Supporting Bilingual Education in Orange County,” passed February 2, 2026. Trustee Valdes commended her thorough research, commitment to educational equity for bilingual learners, and the maturity she brought to the county board process.
California Education Code §306 already recognizes proven bilingual models, dual-language and transitional bilingual programs, but leaves translanguaging entirely undefined: the routine, already-occurring practice of a credentialed teacher briefly using a student’s home language to clarify a concept while core instruction remains fully in English.
The consequence is a real and measurable policy gap. More than 90% of family requests for bilingual instructional support go unmet, not because teachers are unwilling or unable, but because no legal pathway exists to authorize what many are already doing informally, leaving them exposed to noncompliance.
Our proposed legislation closes that gap by formally recognizing translanguaging as an approved instructional method under §306(c). Without cost or new programs, it simply gives legal standing to teachers already in the classroom to use the full weight of their own bilingualism, converting an unused resource sitting inside nearly every district into a sanctioned, statewide response for hundreds of thousands of California families. The bill now sits on the desk of Assemblymember Avelino Valencia’s Chief of Staff for further review.
Rejected in its earliest form on February 13, 2026 by Assemblymember Valencia’s office as too costly, the bill was rebuilt over four months in direct partnership with Luiz Torres, head of Valencia’s policy team, into its current, targeted form.
On March 19, 2026 Sailee was recognized as the youngest 2026 Woman of Distinction by the California State Senate, presented by Senator Tom Umberg. Senator Tom Umberg’s office fully supported the bill, with the language formalized by Esq. Monica Wiley and his legislative team, a significant validation of the bill’s merit carried forward at the state level. With Senator Umberg’s 2026–2027 legislative package already full, the bill has been carried to allied offices to preserve its momentum as it awaits formal consideration for the 2027 legislative cycle.
This is the unbacked draft of the bill, “English Learners: Translanguaging-Based Instruction,” formalized by Esq. Monica Wiley of Senator Tom Umberg’s office. It authorizes school districts to incorporate translanguaging-based strategies within English-only instructional settings, without requiring bilingual authorization.
On June 12, 2026 Sailee met with Nirmla G. Flores of the California Association for Bilingual Teacher Education (CABTE), who is endorsing the bill and continuing conversations with her team this August, identifying next steps and building momentum toward the bill’s consideration.
On April 6, 2026 Sailee met with Assemblymember Avelino Valencia at the California State Capitol to discuss the bill’s continued path forward. After two years of sustained advocacy, the legislation now sits on the desk of his Chief of Staff, awaiting next steps toward formal consideration.
Beyond the legislative arena, our founder was directly engaged by the California Department of Education to help shape its forthcoming 2027 Multilingual Literacy Guidance , a rare invitation for a student advocate to help author guidance that will inform classroom practice statewide.
She submitted formal written recommendations to Lorrie Kelling, Education Programs Consultant for the Multilingual Support Division, proposing six classroom-ready implementation strategies to extend the guidance’s asset-based framing of translanguaging, including structured home-language processing time, protected bridging instruction, leadership roles for home-language-dominant students, language choice on low-stakes assessments, and a clear pathway for credentialed teachers to offer targeted native-language support where a bilingual teacher isn’t available.
This work stands alongside Dr. Bonnie Garcia, Statewide Literacy Co-Director at CDE, and Alesha Moreno-Ramirez, Director of the Multilingual Support Division.
On April 16, 202, Sailee met with Lorrie Kelling, Nancy Brynelson, Dr. Bonnie Garcia, and Alesha Moreno-Ramirez of the California Department of Education to discuss shaping its forthcoming 2027 Multilingual Literacy Guidance, a rare invitation for a student advocate. In this meeting, she introduced the concept of translanguaging, providing further support for its formal inclusion in the guidance.
On April 6, 2026 Sailee met with California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in the Sacramento State Capitol chambers, where he voiced his support for her bilingual book Curiosity & Me, which has helped fund her work, and more broadly for the entire Habla Futures Initiative.
On July 11, 2026 Dr. Bonnie Garcia and Alesha Moreno-Ramirez of the California Department of Education joined as expert speakers at the Habla Futures Conference, presenting statewide data on dual language programs across California. Their participation reflects CDE’s ongoing support for both the Multilingual Literacy Guidance track and the Habla Futures Initiative as a whole.
On August 3, 2026 our founder traveled to the California State Capitol in Sacramento to deliver public testimony in support of AB 2325, a statewide bill building California’s bilingual teacher pipeline through coordinated pathways between districts, community colleges, and universities. Testifying before the California Senate Appropriations Committee, she was supported by Dr. Clara Amador-Lankster, Former President of CABTE and Program Director of the Master of Bilingual Education at National University; Adam Sawyer, Director of the Bilingual Authorization Program at CSU Bakersfield; and the Californians Together team she has long partnered with — Natalie Shin, Manuel Buenrostro, and Mario Snow. Just as these organizations have backed her own translanguaging legislation, she continues to lend her voice in return, advocating for the broader coalition closing California’s bilingual teacher shortage.
Recording of Senate Appropriations Meeting
Our founder serves as an intern with the Orange County Department of Education’s Multilingual Academic Services and Project GLAD, placing her directly inside the county infrastructure that shapes bilingual instruction, teacher training, and multilingual program delivery across all of Orange County’s districts. Working across multiple divisions and initiatives, her contributions span data infrastructure, curriculum development, communications, and program strategy:
Under Cecilia Gonzalez-Limas, Coordinator of Project GLAD and Multilingual Academic Services, she led a countywide update of OCDE’s Dual Language Immersion (DLI) school contact database, managed direct communications on the division’s behalf, and designed original flyers for two professional learning initiatives: a professional learning series supporting educators and leaders who work with newcomer students, and a Multilingual Academic Services workshop on special education and multilingual learners — collaborating closely with Stephanie Ohanesian on both materials.
Alongside Dr. Nicole Chavez, Senior Administrator of the National Training Center for Project GLAD, she verified and updated the countywide database of Multilingual Leads across every Orange County school district.
With Catalina Sanchez, she developed a brochure and flyer series and contributed to the planning and buildout of a new website expanding OCDE’s bilingual teacher professional development program, providing direct input on program strategy and activity planning.
Working with Jen Salas, she contributed substantively to the Project GLAD curriculum itself — identifying areas for improvement and rewriting portions of Modules 3 and 4 alongside Salas’s curriculum team.
Her work has also extended Habla Futures’ own programs into the county’s institutional framework: with Scott Fitzpatrick, she is building a version of The Lit League’s curriculum formally aligned to OCDE’s Arts Standards, and planning new events to expand the program’s reach — including a potential slam poetry event hosted in collaboration with OCDE.
She further attended a translanguaging workshop led by Dr. Fernando Rodríguez-Valls and Paola Rosenberg, engaging directly with Dr. Rodríguez-Valls’ translanguaging curriculum and movement and establishing an ongoing collaboration on future translanguaging work.
Separately, with Wes Kriesel, she has been exploring the use of AI as a platform to support English Learners, laying the early groundwork for a new application that would extend Habla Arte’s reach — building on the model established by the Speak Art platform.
On June 8, 2026 Sailee met for the first time with the OCDE Project GLAD team, including Dr. Nicole Chavez, Senior Administrator of the National Training Center for Project GLAD, and Terri Byrd, marking the start of her internship with OCDE’s Multilingual Academic Services and Project GLAD
On June 15, 2026 Sailee attended the State of the Student meeting with the support of OCDE Superintendent Dr. Stefan Bean, contributing insight on bilingual practices at the intersection of the arts and proposing ways to use language and the arts to engage English learners and reduce chronic absenteeism. She also spoke with Dr. Bean, who offered guidance on her upcoming conference in partnership with OCDE.
On July 10, 2026 Sailee received her Certificate of Completion from OCDE’s Aspire to Inspire Youth Internship Program, marking the close of her internship with Multilingual Academic Services.
National Youth in Policy Director (2024 – current)
Host a national series of workshops training the next generation of student advocates on how to research, draft, and pass legislation across the country, while fostering lasting partnerships with advocacy organizations such as the Gault Center, All4Ed, and the Institute for Policy Studies — circulating YIP’s policy briefs to these organizations to build a stronger legislative bond between youth policy work and the broader advocacy community. Also authored the policy brief “The Bilingual Educational Programming in Core Classes Act.” under YIP.
