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Devon Conley
Current board member | devonconley.com
Top priorities
- Improving student outcomes and opportunities
- Supporting teachers with resources and stability
- Building strong community partnerships
Public service
- Mountain View Whisman School Board (2018-present)
- Santa Clara County Human Rights Commission (2024-present)
- Mountain View Parks and Recreation Commission (2017-2018)
Community involvement
- California School Boards Association Region 20 director (Santa Clara County)
- SUCCESS Committee supporting unhoused students, Santa Clara County School Boards Association, co-founder and deputy chair
- Shoreline West Association of Neighbors president (2019 and 2025)
- Mistral Elementary PTA (2018-2024)
Devon Conley, in her second term on the Mountain View Whisman School Board, is running for a third because she said she wants to continue building community – both in the classroom and across Mountain View – and support student success.
Conley is one of four candidates running for two at-large seats on the five-member board. Her seat, as well as Bill Lambert’s, term-out this year. Conley, Lambert, and newcomers Quintin Riis and Sundar Subbarayan are all vying for one of the two open slots.
Conley has served two terms on the board; she joined the district in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022. She’s a former teacher who spent six years in the classroom and five years working on education policy research.
While serving as a board observer with the League of Women Voters, she learned that there was no one running for a position on the board with an education background – so she pulled nomination papers.
Learn more about this race
Candidate Comparison Grids: Mountain View Whisman School District Board of Trustees
To help voters compare and differentiate between the people running for Mountain View Whisman School District Board of Trustees, the Voice sent a questionnaire to all the candidates, asking about their policy positions across a wide range of issues. Check out their side-by-side responses.
View the comparison grid ➔“I was working part time with different education organizations at that point, and I couldn’t not run, because I knew what was going on in the district,” she told the Voice in a recent interview.
Conley also unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Mountain View City Council in 2024.
During her tenure, the district was embroiled in a number of controversies. When she joined the district in 2018, it was under the leadership of Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph. During her second term – which included a stint as board president – community members and Santa Clara County educational leaders scrutinized the district for its spending, including contracts for executive leadership coaching and meditation for district administrators.
Voter Guide 2026
Get to know the candidates and measures on your ballot with the Mountain View Voice’s 2026 Voter Guide, including in-depth profiles, issue comparison grids and campaign finance coverage.
View the Voter Guide ➔“I’m running now because we’ve had a lot of change in the district in the last few years. I think it’s good change, but we’re in the middle of it,” Conley said. “We had some hard fiscal reforms that we made starting when I was board president in 2024, and we really tightened up the ship. And now I consider us turning the ship.”
Following what many said was misspending of district funds, a number of parents – including fellow candidate Quintin Riis – launched a recall effort against Conley. Riis announced the effort at a school board meeting in June 2025, but the recall did not appear on the ballot because organizers failed to accumulate sufficient signatures.
Since then, Conley said she and her fellow board members have been interested in strengthening how the board approaches spending and approving contracts, since she said that was where the district struggled. Since then, she said the vendor approval process has been tightened.
Currently, the Mountain View Whisman School board is in the process of making budget cuts, which should take effect in January 2027. Unlike $7.4 million the district trimmed from its budget this January, which included the elimination of a number of district office positions and nightly custodial services, the upcoming cuts will affect employees that directly work with students.
But Conley said she wants to know exactly what will be cut, and officials should come back in November with more information so that board members can make the right decisions.
“We need to know what programs are going to be affected, what the trade-offs are, to really be able to dig in, have an in-depth discussion about it, and then make some hard choices about how to move forward,” Conley said.
There is also merit in pursuing and strengthening partnerships, including with the city of Mountain View, Conley said. One of the things she would like to see is the city support the district’s state-funded preschool program.
“There’s a lot of opportunity there for how we can partner on programs and services that benefit our students and our families and our broader community,” she said.
Putting children first is one of Conley’s goals now and moving forward. While she doesn’t support a specific program for talented or excelling students, she said all students should be challenged in the classroom, together.
“My focus is on how we are differentiating for students in the classroom, so every child is being engaged and challenged and is developing a love of learning,” she said.
Check out the Voice’s 2026 Voter Guide, which includes in-depth coverage of this and other local races and ballot measures.
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Candidate Comparison Grids: Mountain View Whisman School District Board of TrusteesOctober 5, 2026 12:47 pm
What she doesn’t say.
Devon ignored public comment and outreach for years and waved through multi-million dollar frivolous expenses for her whole term.
She’s speaking as if she was the heroic savior saving the district, she isn’t.
She was one of the former superintendent’s prime enablers. It’s all on public record. Her ignoring public comment, condescendingly addressing the public, approving frivolous expenses, saying “I didn’t know”, now saying she fixed the problem.
She doesn’t deserve the public’s trust.
My issue is that we’ve had 8 years of this trustee and the schools are not seeing better scores. She isn’t able to brag about kids doing better….because they are not. Since we know what we are going to get, time to look elsewhere.
Devon has a history of rewriting the narrative frequently and pretending nothing happened.
The public cannot trust a person like this who has zero accountability.
If you have been tracking, she changes the narrative on what she enabled roughly every 3-6 months (All approximations off the top of my head).
First it was “A couple outspoken parents”
Next it was “The public doesn’t understand the nuances”
Next it was “I made the best decisions to the best of my ability for the benefit of the students”
Then “I didn’t know”
Now “We are strengthening how the board approaches spending”
We were all low information members of the public when we were asking about the merits of $300,000 / year consultants and what the necessity of $1200/session energy healing was. By the way, she approved more consulting contracts after being exposed for breaching public trust to the extent that she did.
The website link appears to point to Thida Cornes, who’s running in a different election.
Sloppy writing
Conley is one of four candidates running for two at-large seats on the five-member board. Her seat, as well as Bill Lambert’s, term-out this year.
If she termed out, she wouldn’t be able to run again.
Conley:
“We made hard fiscal reforms starting when I was board president in 2024 to tighten up the ship … focus on student outcomes.”
However, quick fact checks say otherwise:
* Zero oversight on luxury travel, particularly by former Superintendent Rudolph, funded at taxpayer expense with no direct student benefit.
* Approved a 5% raise for Ayindé Rudolph ($366,915 base) and extended his contract through 2028—a full year before its scheduled expiration.
* Approved $800K+ external consulting contracts with no direct classroom benefits: Blue Violet Energy & ALULA (Sound healing, singing bowls, and administrator coaching) as well as Woodberry Associates (Public relations, national messaging, and lobbying)
* Staff housing oversight failures with $1.9M/year ground lease pushing total housing costs to $141.5M
* Championed an $11M Outdoor Learning project using Measure T bond funds, diverting money away from promised STEAM labs and classroom modernizations.
When you approve hundreds of thousands for sound healing, luxury hotels, and PR consultants—and divert taxpayer-approved bond funds to push a personal agenda over promised STEAM labs—you aren’t prioritizing students, you’re abandoning them. Devon Conley’s decisions show where her true priorities lie.
The fiscal changes starting in laten 2024 / early 2025 weren’t her leadership at work—they were forced by intense community outrage and relentless public pressure.
Eight years of rubber-stamping waste is enough. It’s time for real accountability at MVWSD—it’s time to replace Devon Conley.
Ramirez, unfortunately There Is No “Termed-Out” for the school Board. Ellen Wheeler served multiple terms (5?) and was on the board for I think 20 years.
I noticed in the MV Cuesta Neighborhood Zoom / candidate forum, Trustee Conley expertly avoided answering an ‘individual’ question to her (there were pre moderated). She avoided talking about her responsibility on Finance and Academic Decrease (relative and post pandemic). Her talk was “we” and “in the future” … if you didn’t particularly like her Leadership as twice Dr. Rudolph’s Board President … just try her ‘service’ again. {oh – or will she again run for Council mid-term?]
I am looking hard at “Sundar’s” fact-filled site and the League of Woman Voters forum (stored on YouTube).
If you care at all about the students or the future of MVWSD or how your tax money is spent, do not elect Devon Conley. She’s a great politician. She is polished and well spoken. She spins the facts into her narrative expertly. But she does not want to build community. She wants to build her own influence. She has consistently refused to work with the community, and she’s done irrevocable damage to the district. She proudly took credit for negotiating an extension of Superintendent Rudolph’s contract, and was his biggest supporter, accusing parents of all sorts of truly terrible things, when they were just trying to get clarity on truly insane spending and policies, and looking out for their kids. Why wasn’t Rudolph held accountable for any of his ‘questionable’ spending? Because Devon Conley gave him an agreement to shield him from all liabilities on his way out the door. Did she help uncover the financial problems that she’s trying to take credit for in this article, where her board “really tightened up the ship”? No, parents had to use freedom of information act requests to painstakingy uncover all of the financial missteps the district was making while she was the chair of the board. All she had to do was work with the community. Instead she actively fought the community. She hides behind the “Brown Act” as a way of avoiding any sort of conversation or any kind of answers or disclosure to the public, unless of course it suits her needs, in which case it’s somehow fine to directly dispute or rewrite the narrative of public questions. She clearly has political ambition and interest in power, as her failed attempts to run for city council points out. She was a huge supporter of the 100+ million dollar housing project “for teachers”. How could she know teachers wouldn’t be able to or even want to live in the complex, or be able to afford it?! Perhaps by reading the study that the tax payers paid to have done that warned of this and other short comings. Who travelled with Rudolph to New York to promote their fantastic work in this innovative housing project at the tax payers expense? Who benefited from the professional PR company’s work at the tax payers expense? She’s spent millions of dollars of other people’s money… the tax payers money, and it really is about a political climb for power. There’s just so much to be said about so many failed projects. So many countless hours of video you could watch of MVWSD meetings where Devon Conley is blocking all attempts by the public to interact, get feedback, or question her pet projects. Or that she insisted on being the chair person 2 terms in a row because she didn’t feel she got a fair turn because COVID interrupted her term. The list just goes on. Do your research. Watch the archives of MVWSD meetings. I know the videos are long, and tedious. There’s a reason that the school board positions went uncontested in previous years. It’s not a fun job. But Devon Conley is not the person we want managing the district or our tax dollars.