Long before Measure S, Veva was already sounding the alarm about student safety on the streets surrounding our schools. In a 2022 ABC30 report, Fresno Unified’s Safety Office confirmed a troubling trend: student pedestrian accidents had nearly tripled that year compared to the year before, with most crashes concentrated near McLane High School in Central Fresno.

At the time, Veva — then serving as Trustee and also Executive Director of Cultiva La Salud, an organization focused on Safe Routes to School planning — was clear about where the gap was. The district could build internal safety plans, but couldn’t act on its own. She noted the district couldn’t paint sidewalks or install crosswalks, stop signs, or signals — infrastructure many schools desperately needed, and pressed the city and county to invest directly in the areas surrounding campuses.

That advocacy didn’t stop with one interview. Veva helped push for a city-school liaison committee to keep the pressure on local leaders, and her work laid important groundwork for what’s since become a much larger effort: the Better Roads, Safe Streets initiative, also known as Measure S, which, if passed by voters this November, will help build protected bike and pedestrian paths and fund 150 Safe Routes to School projects countywide.

The lesson from 2022 is still true today: schools can build all the internal safety plans in the world, but real student safety requires real investment in the infrastructure around campus — sidewalks, crosswalks, signals, and protected paths. It’s a fight Veva has been in for years, and one she isn’t done with.