September 19, 2022 by Ciara Meyer
When Natalya Lakhtakia was a little girl, she spent most of her summers with her somewhat magical grandfather. She would sit in the garden and watch the hummingbirds bathe, relax in the cool shade under the lemon tree, and listen to the ocean breeze gently blow through the leaves. The garden embodied the spirit of her grandpa, an Argentinian who liked to live in “perpetual summer,” traveling between hemispheres to follow the sun. Lakhtakia feels his influence in every part of her life, especially in her work as a speech pathologist and recently re-elected Board of Education Trustee.
“He looked at the world with such a beautiful eye that it made it really easy to learn how to see beautiful things and learn how to see beauty in ordinary things,” Lakhtakia said. That creative, optimistic lens with which she views the world is pervasive in everything Lakhtakia does, as is the passion for life-long learning she inherited from her grandpa and parents.
“He was really independent and really capable but he also didn’t speak English,” Lakhtakia said, “he only went to school until he was fifteen, so he really taught his kids how important education was. I think he had such an impact on me because my parents passed that on to me.” Until she was college-aged, school was never really a challenge for Lakhtakia, who struggled to understand the heavy emphasis her parents placed on education.
It was when she entered college at Penn State University that she began to understand her parents’ worldview. “I started to better understand where my parents were coming from and that made me realize that it wasn’t enough to love my own experiences with learning, but that I wanted to help other people, too,” Lakhtakia said.
Her inherited love of learning coupled with the collectivist view her immigrant parents brought to a mostly individualist America created a perfect storm for Lakhtakia to discover her passion for special education and meeting the needs of diverse learners. She has worked in speech pathology, with a focus on students with special learning needs, since completing her graduate school work at the University of Utah, and the nature of this job is deeply impactful on the mindset she brings to the BOE. “Working in special ed allows you to view things from a needs-based perspective,” she said.
“I have a student who has to sit close to the teacher,” she said, “and that’s part of having an auditory processing disorder. Do I think it would benefit my son who has normal hearing to be closer to the learning at all times? Yeah, but also he doesn’t need it.” It’s truly her passion for meeting every student’s basic needs that keeps her going despite the constant criticism and harassment she faces as a Trustee.
“There is a definite personal toll for me doing this work,” Lakhtakia said. “I got a video doorbell because I felt concerned. When you get a message from someone saying, ‘I’m gonna bring out the big guns against you,’ I don’t know what that means.’” Being the only person of color on the BOE also subjects Lakhtakia to a unique breed of malicious attacks. During her first run for the BOE, the conservative-learning group Moving Saratoga Forward claimed she had started an “autonomous zone”—a type of temporary anarchist protest camp—in downtown Saratoga and was holding hostages.
Since then, she has been accused of being “secretly white,” referred to as an “anchor baby,” and been told her parents were terrorists. The attacks on Lakhtakia are rooted in unsubstantiated and untrue claims made by anonymous accounts, not by those who truly know her.
“I’ve never met anyone who has anything negative to say about her who has actually ever interacted with her,” said Lily Rosan, a Saratoga Springs High School graduate who campaigned for Lakhtakia in the 2019 and 2022 elections, “She handles it like a champ, but I can’t imagine being in her position.”
Her perseverance is deeply appreciated by student BOE Representative for the 2022-23 school year Kate Thompson, who describes Lakhtakia as “committed to the student connection piece of the school board.” Thompson said, “Natalya really understands the way our minds are working. She’s capable of understanding the way our minds are processing everything.”
From the lessons of creativity she learned in her grandpa’s garden to the spirit of lifelong learning she embodies throughout her work, Lakhtakia is constantly seeking to aid those around her through empathy and by pushing for equity. Though her dedication to the BOE is just one chapter in her story of seeking a better future for all, to her, it is a crucial part of fulfilling her purpose. She puts it simply, saying, “This is kind of what I’ve told myself my life is about.”