“If we really want to make change, there’s only so long you can stand on the sidelines and shout about something you feel unhappy about,” said Rowena Chiu, a first-time PAUSD school board candidate. “Sooner or later, you want to make change from the inside.”
Chiu is no stranger to leadership. Ohlone Elementary School Parent Teacher Association president, former Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School PTA president, and a career economist for the World Bank are a few titles she’s picked up over her career. A leader of the #MeToo movement and a survivor of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein, Chiu has experience with advocacy on both the local and national levels.
Chiu said her reason for running to be a school board member is greatly influenced by the board’s handling of last year’s relocation of Ohlone’s Room 19, a classroom focused on providing educational services to students with classified “moderate-to-severe” learning disabilities. According to Chiu, board communication was limited when an explanation for the move was requested.
“As a parent, I understand there are things that the board is privy to that parents can’t be privy to,” Chiu said. “But the bottom line is, you want to be able to give the parents, students and teachers in this district an adequate explanation for why a decision has been made, that doesn’t make them feel disenfranchised or not included in decision-making.”
According to Chiu, she highlights special education as a priority close to her heart.
“I myself have a child with a 504 and I’m pretty close to the special ed community here,” Chiu said. “I think the special ed community is feeling disenfranchised, frankly, and I don’t think that they consider that their needs are equal to that of the mainstream, neurotypical population.”
According to Chiu, increasing stability for learners with additional needs has to be better addressed.
“One of the greatest needs of special ed kids is stability,” Chiu said. “It takes a neurodiverse learner a longer time to feel comfortable in an environment that he or she is learning in, but they seem to be moved around at the drop of a hat.”
Special education isn’t the only priority — as one of three candidates endorsed by the PAEA, Chiu is also a staunch advocate of expanding benefits for PAUSD teachers.
“Finding solutions around affordable housing and offering competitive pay are really the basics that we can do to respect our teaching staff and to improve teacher morale,” Chiu said.
Mental health has also been a longstanding issue in the district — which according to Chiu, hasn’t been properly addressed. Chiu said her own experiences with mental health have encouraged her to lead conversations about topics traditionally considered uncomfortable, which are reflected in her advocacy for community education on mental health solutions.
“I’m a global advocate for youth mental health because I myself am a sexual assault survivor and a suicide survivor,” Chiu said. “Can we have some very honest discussions about academic acceleration and its impact on mental health without making broad brush assumptions? And then, can we sustain that over a period of time, rather than paying lip service to the idea of having an open dialogue about mental health? If we don’t sustain these conversations as a community over time, they become ineffectual.”
According to Chiu, implementing practical solutions should be the district’s next priority for addressing mental health — by fostering open conversations and direct community input as points of emphasis.
“It [a mental health solution] is about constantly taking the temperature of the room, and that may be done through surveys and roundtable dialogues,” Chiu said. “We need to look to communities that are badly impacted by mental health issues. We need to ask them what we think would help put money and effort towards making us provide those sorts of things for the community, and then go back to the community afterwards to say, ‘How did that work out this academic year?’”
According to Chiu, students in the district should have the right to pursue academic acceleration, including the math lanes they want.
“There are clearly students in this district who, it’s true that they’re being academically accelerated beyond what they’re comfortable with, and that might cause mental health issues,” Chiu said. “But I think it is equally true there are children in the district that are driven to accelerate under their own merit, not because they are pushed by their parents — they also experience mental health issues and are actively suppressed from the math that they want to do.”
Pushing students into courses that they are not comfortable with is not the focus, according to Chiu — she said her experiences as a parent have taught her the importance of student mental health. However, Chiu said her same experiences as a parent have also led her to believe that providing students with opportunities is equally important to ensuring proper placement.
“As a parent, I don’t push academic acceleration,” Chiu said. “I see the risks of that, and I see the unhappiness that stems from that. That’s not something I would ever push — but politically, I have found myself in a position where I am perhaps, of the other candidates, the greatest advocate [for math].”
According to Chiu, being a persistent advocate for change is the central part of her campaign.
“I come from a platform of global advocacy, and I have a bit of a reputation as a fighter,” Chiu said. “I have a reputation for having taken on difficult, hot topics and having a platform that I fight pretty hard for, whether it’s special education, mental health, or math — I’m not afraid to take these topics and take a strong position on them.”
Despite being a first-time candidate, Chiu has accumulated a number of notable endorsements, including major organizations such as the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, the Palo Alto Educators Association and the Democratic Activists for Women Now, who have all stated support for her as a board candidate. In addition, Chiu has the support of Palo Alto Mayor Greer Stone and previous Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou, as well as an endorsement from current PAUSD board member Shana Segal.
