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Quintin Riis
Father, systems administrator| riisformountainview.com
Top priorities
- Careful fiscal decision-making
- Transparency with the district community
- Success for all learners, including advanced students
Community involvement
- Bubb Elementary room parent
- Mountain View Whisman School District volunteer
Local parent Quintin Riis is running for the Mountain View Whisman School Board to challenge the district’s status quo – and prevent a walk-on for two candidates who he said contributed to district corruption.
Riis is one of four candidates running for two at-large seats on the five-member board. He’s challenging fellow newcomer Sundar Subbarayan and incumbents Bill Lambert and Devon Conley for one of the two open slots.
Riis has lived in Mountain View for roughly five years, and during that time, his son started school at Bubb Elementary. That’s when he really tuned into what was going on across the district.
One of the major catalysts for Riis’s candidacy were controversies when the district was under the leadership of Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph. Community members and county-wide educational leaders scrutinized district contracts, from spending on executive leadership coaching to meditation for administrators. Rudolph eventually left the district, and was replaced by Superintendent Jeffrey Baier.
“It’s really frustrating as a parent. A lot of what I feel is just flagrant spending with little direct benefit to students,” Riis told the Voice in a recent interview. “There have been too many projects that it’s just the board or the superintendent patting themselves on the back. It’s not really for the benefit of the children, and now we have this $11 million deficit.”
He pulled and returned nomination papers just before the deadline for doing so ended. He said while the position sounded time-consuming, he ran to specifically challenge Lambert and Conley, who were on the board when the district’s crisis of confidence unfolded. Riis said he didn’t want them to go unchallenged.
Riis was also one of the leading voices in the unsuccessful recall effort against Conley. Riis announced the recall effort at a school board meeting in June of last year, but the recall did not appear on the ballot because organizers failed to accumulate sufficient signatures.
Riis noted that the race is interesting, especially because if he’s elected, there’s a chance he’d be serving alongside Conley. He said he would treat her as any other board member.
“If she is elected again, then she has the mandate of the people,” Riis said.
During a recent Mountain View Whisman candidate forum put on by the Cuesta Park neighborhood, Riis was asked about Reddit posts and responses he shared that referred to Rudolph and other Redditors in profane and derogatory ways.
Riis didn’t deny the posts were from him, nor did he apologize. He said he’s not a “silver-tongued politician,” and that the Reddit posts reflected his frustrations with the district – and to an extent, some voters, who he said weren’t thinking for themselves.
“Groupthink is bad; critical thinking is essential,” he stated in a followup email. “People are feeling good about themselves for solving ‘teacher housing’ when the housing is not teacher housing at all, it’s low-income housing. Calling it teacher housing is a deceptive misnomer used to sell it.”
Currently, the Mountain View Whisman School board is in the process of making budget cuts, which should go into effect in January 2027. Unlike the $7.4 million the district trimmed from its budget earlier this year, 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.
Riis described the district as top-heavy, with a number of administrative salaries that were unsustainable. He said that number of highly compensated employees should be cut.
Student screen time is another problem, Riis said. He would like to see limits on how much time students spend in the classroom on computers or tablets, or with other screens. During his time on the campaign trail, he said he’s heard other parents echo the same sentiments.
“It seems like anytime they’re in the classroom, the television is always on,” Riis said. “I don’t think we need to give kids in kindergarten Chromebooks.”
Because the state of California no longer provides funding for the Gifted and Talented Education program, the district doesn’t test for, nor have, a program for students who aren’t challenged by their grade level’s curriculum. Riis would like to see an alternative to the GATE program offered in the district, in addition to shop classes for middle schoolers.
“As a former gifted kid and father of the same, that program was really important for me as a child,” Riis said. “There are a lot of these kids that are very advanced, and they’re not properly challenged when they’re working at grade level. So I would like to see that.”
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