The candidates running for the three open seats on the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education are Rowena Chiu, Nicole Chiu-Wang, Chris Colohan, Alison Kamhi and Josh Salcman.
Over the past few months, The Paly Voice has conducted interviews with each candidate and published features with the results.
All five candidates represent different views and are strong in their own rights. For the three open spots, the staff came to a consensus on two candidates which we believe support the views of our staff and our community.
The Paly Voice encourages voters to choose Rowena Chiu and Alison Kamhi for the school board due to their commitments to transparency with the PAUSD community and experience in the district. We believe these two candidates will be able to best support the interests of PAUSD constituents.
Here are our thoughts on each candidate, with each section ordered alphabetically by last name, not ranked by preference.
Rowena Chiu
As an Ohlone Elementary School PTA president, former JLS PTA president, career economist for the World Bank, a leader of the #MeToo movement and a mother of four PAUSD students, Rowena Chiu has a number of qualifications for being a school board member. As a parent of a child with a 504 plan in Ohlone’s Room 19 — a classroom designated for students with special needs accommodations — she believed that the last year’s decision to move the class should have had more transparency with the families involved. If elected, Chiu has pledged herself to ensure more transparency between the district and its constituents.
On mental health, Chiu is dedicated to “honest and open conversations” around the topic, hearing student and parent perspectives to determine courses of action. We believe that Chiu’s support for sustaining conversations around mental health will bring positive change to the way we address mental health problems in our district.
Chiu, who is endorsed by the Palo Alto Educators Association, also looks to expand benefits for PAUSD teachers, and has said that finding affordable housing solutions and competitive pay will be priorities for her as she aims to boost teacher morale. The Voice identifies commitment to teachers to be a necessary part of considering a board candidate and considers this support from the PAEA critical.
Chiu is known as the “change” candidate in this election — we believe that the positive change that Chiu is devoted to, as well as her persistent record of advocacy, qualify her to be a strong school board candidate.
Alison Kamhi
“If people don’t feel safe and don’t feel like they belong, then it’s hard to learn and it’s hard to thrive,” Kamhi said. “We need to make sure our policies are designed with the well-being of students in mind.”
PAUSD parent of six years and on the board of Palo Alto Community Child Care, Alison Kamhi runs on a platform which emphasizes student safety across the district. Kamhi believes that safety is inclusive to both mental and physical wellness, committing to provision of sufficient mental health resourcing and staffing similar to the positions advocated by the other candidates.
Kamhi also has experience as a lawyer, and began her career by representing immigrant youth. From her experience in child advocacy, Kamhi aims now to be an advocate for all children in the community.
Another candidate endorsed by the PAEA, Kamhi has also demonstrated commitment to teacher retention and satisfaction. However, we believe that distinctive to Kamhi’s case for school board is her emphasis on safety — stressing the prevention of hate speech, bullying and gun violence in her campaign. Coming into this election as the committee co-chair of Gun Violence Prevention for the Palo Alto Council of PTAs, Kamhi holds notable past experience in this category at a district level.
While student outcomes and wellness are top priorities for all of the candidates in this race, The Voice believes that Kamhi’s wider perspective on student safety can bring a unique, valuable perspective to the board.
Nicole Chiu-Wang
“Our students need to see leaders that have had non-traditional backgrounds or have gotten up from failure,” Chiu-Wang said. “For me, I’ve career transitioned many times, and I think that is probably more likely to be what your generation [students] experiences.”
PAUSD parent, nonprofit leader, attorney, and businesswoman Nicole Chiu-Wang is running for the second time to be a school board member.
Chiu-Wang highlighted her achievements since her loss in the previous election, including becoming the executive director of Dreamcatchers, a tutoring nonprofit which provides support to struggling students, and a board member of the Silicon Valley Asian Pacific American Democratic Club. The priority for Chiu-Wang’s campaign is achieving inclusivity and support of early childhood education. Chiu-Wang claims it as the solution for many of our district’s issues, and the primary level to intervene in should we want to address our academic achievement gap.
However, the Paly Voice is concerned by the loss of certain endorsements that Chiu-Wang had in the previous election, most notably the PAEA. We believe that the loss of her PAEA endorsement indicates that Chiu-Wang’s priorities this year do not align with those of PAUSD teachers – which our staff believes are imperative to support. Chiu-Wang has also lost endorsements from the South Bay Labor Council, BAYMEC, and The Campanile.
Additionally, the Paly Voice is concerned about Chiu-Wang’s lack of support for academic acceleration. In a Palo Alto Online article surveying school board candidates, Chiu-Wang opposed allowing out-of-school community college classes to count toward student GPAs and opposed math “laned” math placement systems, which allow students to choose their classes based on skill level, rather than just by grade.
Overall, although Chiu-Wang is proving to be present and supportive of the community, the Paly Voice hesitates to provide an endorsement seeing the loss of certain notable endorsements since her past campaign and her lack of support for academic acceleration options.
Chris Colohan
“I’m spending all my time serving the schools, and here’s a place where I can really help, where I can really make a difference.”
A PTA member and substitute teacher for every school in PAUSD, Chris Colohan has emphasized the importance of connecting with students directly. As the only candidate in the race with direct teaching experience in the district, Colohan is the most closely connected to the classroom experience. Ensuring that students receive high-quality, accessible education has been his campaign’s key priority, citing the “Every Student Reads” initiative as an exemplar program that the district should replicate.
According to Colohan, many current students who are entering middle school are not properly prepared for math courses at that level — something he looks to improve as a board candidate. On other issues, including mental health and equity, Colohan strongly believes in trusting the experts, and has demonstrated openness and willingness to defer to parents, teachers, students, and administrators — who he feels know the most about their own needs.
Overall, we believe that Colohan is a strong candidate for this year’s election with his transparent outlook and receptiveness to community positions. However, we feel that his lack of experience and confident expertise in many of the major issues that the board faces make us hesitant to release a full endorsement of his candidacy. The Paly Voice shares Colohan’s view that trusting the experts and hearing out voices in the community is important but overall would like to see a more defined position on district-level issues.
Josh Salcman
“I’m spending all my time serving the schools, and here’s a place where I can really help, where I can really make a difference.”
PAUSD parent, PTA member and entrepreneur in educational technology, Josh Salcman has emphasized personalized student experiences as his top priority. Salcman strongly believes in looking at the individual when providing educational resources — encouraging regular testing and data-driven decision making to accurately determine a student’s academic pathing. As the parent of a child with special education needs, Salcman is also in touch with the needs of neurodiverse learners at PAUSD — and has demonstrated strong commitment to students beyond the neurotypical community as a member of Nixon Elementary School’s PTA board. He holds an endorsement from the PAEA and supports construction of housing for teachers.
The Voice believes Salcman’s experience with the district and commitment to student experiences qualify him as a strong candidate for the board. However, Salcman has placed a lower emphasis on mental health resourcing relative to the other candidates in the race, prioritizing fiscal stability and district leadership oversight at higher levels according to Salcman’s responses to a candidate survey. It’s clear that Salcman does value mental health, as all the candidates this year do — but its lower emphasis is a point of unease for our staff. He has also demonstrated a level of passivity on the ethnic studies issue, indicating a lower level of openness compared to the others on the implementation of the course.
Salcman is a well-qualified candidate, and presents a compelling option in this election. However, with a staff with many who value a school board that places mental health as a first priority and is immediately receptive to change, we were hesitant to offer a full endorsement.