Meet the Candidate: Li Zhang

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Li Zhang is one of three candidates running for two seats on the Mountain View Los Altos High School District’s board. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney.

Li Zhang is running for a seat on the Mountain View Los Altos High School District board with the goal of broadening academic opportunities and preparing students for success beyond the classroom.

Zhang said that she wants to give back to the community and already has experience supporting local schools, including serving on the Los Altos School District’s Citizens Bond Oversight Committee and MVLA’s Family Partnership Council.

This isn’t Zhang’s first foray into campaigning for office. Zhang ran unsuccessfully for Mountain View City Council in 2022 on a platform that included objections to the pace and direction of housing growth in the city.

Zhang came to the U.S. for graduate school in 1991 and obtained a doctorate in chemistry before switching to a career in business and finance. She said the experience helped her realize there are many pathways to success – a perspective that also shaped her campaign priorities.

If elected, Zhang said that her top three priorities would be expanding academic opportunities, adding more outdoor learning and strengthening the partnership between families and schools, including through fiscal transparency.

It’s important for students to have plenty of academic opportunities but also realize there are many ways to be successful in life, Zhang said. She said she supports working in collaboration with teachers and community partners to help students explore different kinds of classes and programs that can equip them with life skills.

Zhang’s son recently graduated from Mountain View High, which also has helped shape some of her top priorities. Students face a lot of pressure to do well academically and also are part of a digital world that creates a lot of stress and anxiety, she said. For these reasons, Zhang is a big proponent of integrating outdoor nature-based learning into the school curriculum to promote mental health.

Zhang also would like to see the school district enhance its mental health services by providing more access to counseling and wellness programs.

Overall, Zhang said the school district has a lot of resources and programs to support students, but it could invest more in programs for students with diverse learning needs. More individualized and specialized counseling would be helpful for these students, she said.

To help close student achievement gaps, Zhang said it’s important to get English language learners into mainstream classes as soon as possible. Otherwise, they run the risk of not graduating, she said.

When it comes to the district’s ethnic studies class, Zhang has said she supports it, but also raised concerns. She said that students don’t appear to take it seriously and view it as an easy class. She added that some Jewish people had reached out to her in the past with concerns about the curriculum. She favors making it an optional class. State law requires that students take at least one semester of ethnic studies to graduate from high school starting with the 2029-30 graduating class. Given the mandate, Zhang said she would favor a one-semester course, rather than the current yearlong offering.

Zhang described herself as an analytical person who is open-minded and sees all sides of an issue.

“For me, to make a decision, I want to collect all the data, all the data points, all the different opinions. I think that this could be valuable for a person who wants to be on the school board,” she said.