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David Poll
Engineering Director | davidpollforlasd.com
Top priorities
- Keeping an open door for all stakeholders, including the teachers’ union and Bullis Charter School
- Modernizing curriculum and educational best practices, especially with regards to AI
- Improving outreach to parents of young children
Community involvement
- Cub Scout den leader
David Poll is a newcomer to running for elected office, but with three young children attending or hoping to soon attend Oak Elementary School, his family will have “skin in the game” for years to come.
“If we’re always looking for folks who have a long experience at the district level or a long experience in the PTA, we’ll never get parents with younger kids to do this,” Poll said.
Poll is one of four candidates running for three seats on the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees, which governs seven elementary and two middle schools throughout Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View. By day, he is a senior director of engineering at Github, and his two eldest children are in third grade and kindergarten at Oak.
He originally applied for a spot on the board after Vladimir Ivanovic stepped down in March. The board instead appointed Brandon Stroy, after which Poll said he realized most trustees’ children were nearly in high school or already aged out of the district. Having more representation of parents with young kids is important, Poll said.
Many of his top priorities revolve around improving the district’s engagement with the community. He said he wants an “open door” for every stakeholder in the district — a platform that was inspired by talking with teachers in the district, including Allison White, who is both the president of the district’s teachers’ union and was his daughter’s transitional kindergarten teacher. Poll is the only candidate to receive the teachers’ union’s endorsement.
“You’re in the classrooms with our kids, I will always have an open door if you want to talk through something,” Poll said. “That is the only commitment I have made to them.”
Along with wanting to engage with people in the district, Poll also wants to increase engagement with families of young children who are considering where to send their children, which he saw years ago when talking with other parents at his son’s daycare.
“We need to make sure we’re actually reaching them and sharing what makes our district great and effective,” Poll said.
Another priority will be to look at the district’s curriculum, Poll said, particularly its reading curriculum, and build out best practices governing the use of new technologies. Poll acknowledged that artificial intelligence is advancing quickly and that some kids are already using AI tools, which makes it all the more important to him that the district strategize about how the technology should be handled.
Part of Poll’s “open door” plan includes engaging with Bullis Charter School, which has long had a contentious relationship with the school district. Poll said he believes it’s unproductive to be dismissive of the charter school, since they’re also part of the district’s community.
Since the charter school’s founding more than two decades ago, interactions between the two entities have been tumultuous, sometimes involving legal battles over campus space allocations.
Most recently, the district and charter school have been at odds over the district’s plans to move Bullis to a new campus that is under construction in the San Antonio area, which charter school officials have opposed. The charter school’s campus is currently split between Egan Junior High and Blach Intermediate schools. Poll said he needs to do more research and develop a better concrete understanding of the plan.
“There is just the ground truth of, we have Bullis in our community and we’ve got to figure out how to make it work and continue to operate in search of the best results for the kids,” Poll said.
The Voice has published an individual profile of each Los Altos School District Board of Trustees candidate. To view those articles, and the rest of our election coverage, head over to our 2026 Election Center.
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