About Jean

Jean Quan is one of the first two Asian Americans elected to the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education and is a past president of the Board.  She was unopposed in her reelection to a third term in 1998.  She is recognized nationally as a  spokesperson for immigrant and urban children as Chair-Emeritus of the Council of Urban Boards of Education of the National School Board Association, Council of Great City Schools Executive Committee Member, and as past president of the Association of California Urban School Districts and the Asian Pacific Islander School Board Members Association. She chaired the 1995 California School Boards Association (CSBA) Annual Conference, introducing educational technology as a major theme, and also chaired the first CSBA Symposium on Asian Pacific Islander issues. She completed a 3-year Kellogg Foundation Fellowship.

Jean is Vice Chair of the new Chabot Space and Science Center, a joint agency of the Oakland School District, the City of Oakland, and the East Bay Regional Park District.  

Jean chairs the District's Arts Task Force and the Regional Occupation Program (ROP) Board. She is a member of the Board of Education's Business and Finance, Personnel and Labor Relations, Rules and Ethics, Intergovernmental Relations and Curriculum and Technology Committees. She participates in the District's Emergency Planning, Homeless Student Services, Nutrition, and Site Empowerment Task Forces.

Jean helped re-establish the City-Schools Partnership Committee and has been a member for most of the last ten years, improving collaboration on preschool, library, after school, public safety, traffic and pedestrian, recreation, and job training programs. She represented the district as part of the City’s Public Ethics Commission process to develop new campaign reform measures and on the Emergency Planning Board to develop a citywide response to possible earthquake, fire, and other disasters. As part of the Homeless Commission's education committee, she helped develop a master plan for homeless youth.

She is currently Councilman Spees' appointee to the City’s Budget Advisory Committee. Quan is a member of the East Bay American Red Cross, and the National Marcus Foster Educational Institute Boards.

She has been a member of the California School Board Association Delegate Assembly, having served on the Legislative Committee, Coordinated Services, Task Forces and Urban Council. She represented school boards on the federal Rules Making Commission for the last Title 1 Authorization and sits on the California Title 1 Committee. 

Jean was elected to the board after many years of grassroots parent activism including serving as a Commissioner for Positive Change in Oakland Schools and as co-chairperson of the Save Our Schools Coalition. She was also a founding member of the Friends of Hibakusha, a nonprofit organization helping Japanese American atomic bomb survivors, the Asian Pacific Labor Association, and Asian Americans for Justice. She is affiliated with many civil rights organizations and served on the Alameda County Medical Center Foundation and on the Oakland.

Her professional affiliations as a labor leader have included serving as division director for the northern California hospital and health workers union and as a representative for social worker and service unions in the Bay Area. In health education, she worked as a New York City Hospital patient advocate and as a drug abuse prevention specialist in Los Angeles.

Jean also helped found Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and studied Chinese at Yale University in China. She is a native of Livermore, California. She is the mother of two Skyline High School graduates: William Huen, (Princeton University '99), currently a medical student in the University of California, Berkeley, Public Health/University of California, San Francisco Joint Medical Program, and Lailan Huen, a Columbia University junior. She has been married to Dr. Floyd Huen for over 30 years.

>>Read more about Jean's Record...

 Jean thanks Tom Hanks at the Rededication Gala for the Skyline Auditorium. 

 Jean and her family -- husband Dr. Floyd Huen, son William, a UCB-UCSF medical student, and daughter Lailan, a Columbia University junior (Skyline High '95 & '99).

Jean with Superintendent Dennis Chaconas (left) and Councilmember Dick Spees (right) at the opening of the new Chabot Space & Science Center.

Jean lobbying in Washington on education.  Past Superintendent Carolyn Getridge (center) and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (right).  

Michael Pigford, 9, left, a Prescott Elementary School "clown," and Jean sign the word "believe" during a performance prior to the school board's meeting

Jean thanking Dr. Kingsley Whightman (affectionately known as "Dr. Science") for his years of service and commitment at the Chabot Science Center.

Jean at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of the new Chabot Space & Science Center