|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Initial returns show Ana Kristina Reed, Lisa Henry and Charles DiFazio leading in the race for three open seats on the Mountain View Whisman School District’s board of trustees, with Christine Case-Lo and Erin Davis-Hung close behind.
With eight candidates on the ballot, Reed was in the lead with 17.17% (6,348 votes), as of the results released at 4:48 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 7. Henry was in second with 16.6% (6,138 votes) and DiFazio followed with 15.58% (5,761 votes).
Three out of five seats on the board are up for a vote in this November’s election and no incumbents are running for reelection. The three winners will each be elected to serve a four-year term.
The preliminary results showed Case-Lo in fourth with 14.57% (5,388 votes) and Davis-Hung in fifth with 14.33% (5,300 votes). In a distant sixth place was Raymond White with 10.35% (3,825 votes), followed by Nancy Mize with 8.28% (3,063 votes) and Shawn Dormishian with 3.11% (1,151 votes).
Reed told the Voice on election night that she was pleased to hear she was in the lead, but that she felt that there were a number of strong candidates with similar priorities for the district. Prior to the results being released, Reed said she had met up with Henry, DiFazio, Case-Lo and Davis-Hung to talk about the race.
“There’s so many of us on the same page, that no matter which of us gets elected, it’s going to be a good team,” Reed said. “Things are already shifting in a different direction and it’s just going to be a rebuilding era.”
Reed is a Mountain View Whisman parent and teacher in the Cupertino Union School District who has focused her campaign on restoring trust in the district and increasing accountability, as well as providing increased support so that students of all backgrounds can succeed.
Henry said on election night that she was “cautiously optimistic” about the results thus far, but stressed that things could still change. She added that she met lots of great people campaigning, and that she hopes the new board can move the district in a good direction.
Henry is a parent volunteer and lawyer by training who has said she wants to help guide the district at a time that she believes is an inflection point. She’s interested in supporting the district to successfully implement initiatives like its literacy team and in-house elementary school counselors.
DiFazio similarly said he was cautiously optimistic and echoed Reed’s sentiments about the strength of all the candidates in the top group of finishers.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” DiFazio said. “I’m glad that the district, regardless of the outcome, will be in good hands.”
DiFazio is the parent of two students in the district and has said he wants to find ways to navigate the district’s challenges in a positive way. He’s interested in focusing on trying to close substantial achievement gaps that the district has long faced.
No matter who wins, a majority of the board will be made up of new members, who will be tasked with leading the district during a time of substantial controversy. The district is facing a potential state audit and Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph announced last week that he was resigning after being on leave for several weeks.
The district has drawn significant public attention for spending on various contracts, including six-figure deals to offer meditation sessions for district officials, provide executive leadership coaching and retain the services of an external public relations firm.
The school district and city of Mountain View were also ensnared in an extended dispute over sharing tax revenue, with millions of dollars in potential school funding in limbo. The standoff was only resolved in recent weeks, when the school board reversed course and agreed to sign the city’s deal.
The top three voter-getters will join existing trustees Bill Lambert and Devon Conley on the school board, unless Conley is elected to the Mountain View City Council. Lambert and Conley have two more years left on their terms, but Conley has said she would resign from the board if elected to the council. Preliminary returns showed her in sixth place with 9.66% in the nine-way race for four City Council seats.
Ballots will continue to be counted in the coming days. The county certifies the results no later than one month after the election on Dec. 5, followed by state certification on Dec. 13.
What’s to say? It will be very useful that the new Trustees will have revenue from a Special Tax (Measure AA) that will be more than twice the old “flat fee” regressive tax 🙂 This goes just a little further than ‘inflation adjustment.’ From just a few commenters – it seems like some last-day voters were impressed that Rudolph’s (almost done) resignation / settlement helped that vote.
Which new trustees will “drop the old ways” of the soon-to-be departing trustees? Not by words – but by Votes (action of the Board needs 3/5)?
BTW I have a REED sign out front. I hope she can grow into this (big) community job (Oversight).