Rendon’s rise defies his poor start in school

Your kid’s doing cruddy in school? Don’t fret. He could rise to the top of his field and land one of the state’s most powerful jobs.

Like Assemblyman Anthony Rendon of Lakewood, who has been chosen by fellow Democrats to be the next house speaker.

But you could have fooled his teachers.

“I was a terrible high school student,” Rendon, 47, told me. “My grade-point at one time was 0.83.”

How, I asked, could it be so low — essentially failing?

“I don’t know that I had tremendous intellectual curiosity back then,” he answers. “I didn’t know a lot of people who went to college. I never thought about it. I wasn’t sure what it was all about.”

Rendon attended California High School in Whittier. His dad labored for a mobile home outfit while also holding part-time jobs. His mom was a teacher’s aide at a Catholic school.

After high school, Rendon worked the graveyard shift loading trucks at a warehouse “for lousy pay,” he says. “People didn’t get treated real well.”

Every morning, he’d ride a bus home that stopped at Cerritos Community College. “Kids were getting off excited while I was tired and falling asleep,” he says.

Why not get off himself, he decided. And the rest is history. After Cerritos, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Cal State Fullerton, then a doctorate in political science at UC Riverside. I love that story. First, here’s a politician who’s not afraid to admit he got crappy grades.

Second, there’s a lesson here: It’s possible to point your life in a better direction with self-motivation and effort.

Third, legislators are supposed to be representa-