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Two Mountain View Los Altos High School District board members are clashing over committee appointments, with Catherine Vonnegut arguing that Thida Cornes’ membership on a city advisory body constitutes a conflict of interest.
At a June 8 board meeting, Vonnegut asked to discuss the trustees’ outside committee assignments at a future board meeting, raising specific concerns about Cornes’ service on Mountain View’s Active Transportation Plan committee. The item now appears on the June 15 meeting agenda.
“There’s a conflict of interest, in my mind, that you’re on a committee with another elected entity,” Vonnegut told Cornes during the meeting.
Cornes originally joined the committee when it was created in 2023, Superintendent Eric Volta said. However, the appointment wasn’t included on the list of trustees’ committee assignments that the board voted on in 2024 or 2025. Vonnegut took issue with that, arguing that it should have been included on the yearly list.
Cornes responded that the committee had stopped meeting for a long period of time, and that she notified the board when meetings resumed and she began attending again.
“I’ve brought it up in several board reports, so I’m a bit surprised you’re bringing it up now,” Cornes said.
In an interview, Vonnegut told the Voice that she raised the issue after seeing a letter that Cornes sent to Mountain View City Council members Alison Hicks, Ellen Kamei and John McAlister about the city’s Active Transportation Plan. The three council members serve on the city’s Council Transportation Committee.
In her correspondence, Cornes advocated for various improvements to the city’s draft Active Transportation Plan, including creating clearer metrics for measuring success and strengthening implementation plans.
Cornes signed the letter as both a member of the city’s active transportation public advisory committee and as a MVLA trustee. Vonnegut told the Voice that she believes the letter should have been brought to the board for approval before Cornes sent it. “I do not think it was proper protocol,” Vonnegut said.
Cornes and Volta both declined to comment ahead of Monday’s meeting, at which the trustees are expected to vote on an updated list of committee assignments, including Cornes’ role on the active transportation plan committee.
“The new board members, they didn’t even know this committee existed,” Vonnegut told the Voice. “I had not voted for her to be on any committee such as this for the last two years.”
The exchange between Vonnegut and Cornes at last week’s meeting became tense at times. When Cornes disagreed with Vonnegut’s characterization of how she had informed board members about her work on the committee, Vonnegut responded “It doesn’t matter, Thida. We’re going to discuss it next time.”
“It does matter because I think it’s about transparency,” Cornes responded. “And I feel I have been very transparent with this board about what happened.”
The open session of the board’s June 15 meeting is slated to start at 7 p.m. in the district office board room, 1299 Bryant Ave., Mountain View. The agenda is available online.
My goodness. The transportation committee has no real power. They are an advisory committee. Anything they do takes 10 years to accomplish (see Sleeper street per crossing).
Cry me a river.
Note that Vonnegut and Cornes are running against each other for the same school board seat this November because they now both live in the same area. This clash might be related to that.