Lange Luntao (CCV ’14) was recently named a Stockton Visionary by Comstock Magazine, and for good reason. Every indication is that Luntao will improve the Capital Region for years to come.

Luntao is the youngest person ever elected to the Stockton Unified School District board of trustees and the first out gay man elected to public office in the San Joaquin Valley. A third-generation teacher who was born and raised in Stockton, Luntao is a graduate of Harvard University and a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Malaysia.

Luntao returned to Stockton in 2012 to work in public service and education—first as the field director for the Michael Tubbs for City Council campaign, and now as an early college sociology educator at Aspire Langston Hughes Academy, a college preparatory school for grades 6th through 12th, where he currently teaches ethnic studies and sociology.

A founding member of the South Stockton Schools Initiative, Luntao works to bridge the gap between communities and schools and has been a strong supporter of the work to engage families in the process of developing an equitable district budget and to increase college and career-readiness district-wide.

In addition, Luntao is a board member of the Little Manila Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to protect, preserve, and promote Filipina/o history in Stockton. Mirroring emerging research, Luntao believes that students do best when they understand the history of their community, and see their experiences deeply represented in their learning.

Accordingly, Luntao was a co-founder of the "us" History Ethnic Studies after-school program, which brought together 10 community educators to teach weekly workshops to high school students in Black Feminist Theory, Chicana/o Organizing History, and APIA history. This work led to the passage in 2017 of Stockton Unified's first Ethnic Studies policy, and formal classes will be taught in the fall of 2017.

As one of seven members on the Stockton Unified School District Board of Trustees, Luntao helps set district-wide policy and a vision for the 40,023 students who attend school every day. He still works as a teacher, and hopes to see more passionate and equity-minded educators run for local office.

Read more about Luntao at Comstock Magazine’s Today’s Visionaries, Tomorrow’s Visions.