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A group of community members announced last night that they are attempting to recall Devon Conley, a member of Mountain View Whisman’s school board.
The recall is still in the early stages, with the proponents serving Conley with their formal “notice of intention” to recall her. There are multiple steps required to get a recall on the ballot, including ultimately getting at least 20% of the registered voters within the school district’s jurisdiction to sign a recall petition. There were 36,956 registered voters within Mountain View Whisman’s boundaries, as of the official report of registration sent to the California Secretary of State in February, according to a representative from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.
Quintin Riis spoke during the public comment period at a Thursday, June 12, school board meeting, announcing that he represented a group of concerned residents who were calling on Conley to resign or face removal from office. Riis accused Conley of overseeing “deceit, fraud and grift” as board president last year.
“This action is the result of serious and sustained concerns about your leadership, accountability and the decisions you’d made that we believe have harmed the trust and wellbeing of families and students in this district,” Riis said. “You were elected to serve the public and now the public is exercising its right to hold you accountable.”
Riis told the Voice that he is a Mountain View Whisman parent. Fellow Mountain View Whisman parents Mohan Gurunathan and Shawn Dormishian attended Thursday’s meeting and yielded their time during public comment to Riis for his announcement about the recall effort. Dormishian ran unsuccessfully for the school board last fall. Gurunathan has been outspoken at school board meetings in his criticism of various district decisions.
Conley declined to comment on the recall effort.
The school district faced controversies on multiple fronts last year, including particular public outcry over six-figure contracts for an external PR firm, executive leadership coaching and meditation sessions for top administrators. The district also got into heated disputes with the city of Mountain View over sharing tax revenue, which were only recently resolved.
Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph ultimately resigned last November, as the state prepared to launch a formal audit into the district, which is meant to investigate potential fraud, misappropriation of funds or other illegal fiscal activity.
Conley served as board president during 2024, a role in which she was in charge of leading meetings and working with the superintendent to create meeting agendas. The president has an equal vote to other members of the board and does not have the ability to unilaterally enact policies.
Conley was first elected to the school board in 2018 and won re-election in an uncontested race in 2022. She is a former Mountain View Whisman teacher and current district parent. Conley ran unsuccessfully for Mountain View City Council in November’s election. Her current term on the school board expires after the 2026 elections.
The notice of intention to recall Conley lists various actions that she supported during her time on the school board, including approving the guided meditation sessions, district office renovations, installing locks, fences and security cameras on school campuses, and agreeing to a $98,000 resignation agreement with Rudolph.
“Devon Conley failed in her duty to safeguard public funds and act in the best interests of students and families,” the petition states. “Conley repeatedly enabled and approved excessive, wasteful spending by Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph.”
Three new members were elected to the five person school board in November’s election. The only other trustee who remains from the prior board is Bill Lambert, who is currently serving as president. No recall effort has been announced against Lambert.
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The clowns have arrived. One of these guys is most famous for throwing tantrums in various online forums. But I guess that would apply to all of them.
Yup, asking the district to stop throwing student dollars in a fireplace is a stretch for people like you.
90% of the money goes to special ed, salaries and buildings. Not sure what money is being thrown in the fireplace.
You want to see waste, go over to the city and cry over there. They buy land for open space and then plan on paving it over with pickleball courts.
Waste is waste.
Her track record of failure and dismay for the people she supposedly represents is well documented on public record.
Very easy decision for the voters.
I’m all for accountability, but claiming that any wasteful spending is automatically grounds for recall is a stretch. The board voted on these expenditures at the time. No one member acted alone. If there was a problem with oversight, it was shared.
Recalls are meant for serious misconduct, not for revisiting every past decision that later looks bad. Otherwise, we risk turning every policy disagreement into a political weapon.
The focus here seems less about actual wrongdoing and more about punishing a board member for supporting a former superintendent who later fell out of public favor. That’s not the standard we should use to remove elected officials.
If we want better outcomes, let’s improve our processes going forward, not rewrite history to fit a recall narrative.
Pretty funny to listen to the speaker’s moral campus and then see his Reddit posts. Hopefully he will learn his echo chamber of “friends” doesn’t represent the people.
Ramirez, you’ve long since discredited yourself by defending every wasteful and corrupt action that happens in this school district. Not to mention your pathetic, tired strategy of making personal attacks against parents who speak up. Time to take a break. Go enjoy some cheese pizza instead.
lol. I’ve lived in this district for twenty years and my kids graduated long ago, so the only parents I’m talking to are my neighbors! And am a vegan so the cheese pizza is a first! Keep going happy trails.
Being vegan explains a lot of your disillusionment.
Conley is too arrogant to understand resigning is the best path for her to run for city council again.
She’s going to allow parents to freely advertise her terrible track record (and more) to get the signatures required for an recall and run a counter campaign before her next attempt at city council.
Either way, the city wins.
lol lol lol sure….
lol lol lol sure, Ramirez…
As far as I understand, Conley was at the forefront of covering up for Rudolph’s nonsense. But trying to recall her now, with Rudolph out and her term expiring soon anyway, seems unnecessary.
Hey MV Voice, you should call this what it is: a politically motivated Revenge Recall. The recall process exists to address things like elected officials involved in criminal behavior, corruption, malfeasance, gross negligence, and significant misconduct. Not so that they get a free marketing opportunity to broadcast their campaign messaging against a political opponent before the next election cycle at taxpayer expense.
When I heard about this, I went and read the Santa Clara County Recall guide. It’s clear these guys don’t care at all about our students. Rather than timing a campaign for another candidate or a recall attempt so that it could appear on the next regular election ballot, they’ve timed this petition perfectly to try to force a special election instead. Who pays the full cost for a special election? The MVW School District. I want my tax dollars going to MVWSD kids’ education, not this, thanks.
Instead of trying to politically tear down Conley, maybe they should try volunteering their own time to give back to students and the community like she does. If you don’t like how your elected officials are representing you, then the answer in our democracy is don’t vote for them at the next election.
From one of the 42 “proponents” of Recall
Hum, it is a very interesting calculation that you seem to have made, we came up with something different. Actually in line with what the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters office came up with for the official estimate of ballot charges. About $3M if the Board (majority) votes for the most expensive Special Election.
About $1 million if the Board majority (3) votes for the least expensive Special Election.
$0 if Conley Resigns, like she was planning to do in January (if she won Council seat).
Or ROV estimated $163,787 if left to the ROV to put on consolidated election, like Primary or Assessor Special Election (later highly unlikely because of quick interval). Do you think three Trustees will vote to give Trustee Conley a Special Election?
Have you’ll read the E- 180 rule for the new Recall law? Of computed the exact Date that the Primary Election occurs before the ‘too late for Recall’ that is built into the Recall law?
We have.
Peace & Love and The Rule of Law.
There’s a website now about the recall effort. https://recalldevonconley.org Check out the Why Recall? and FAQ pages, which answered a lot of questions for me.