This November, three candidates have the opportunity to join the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education. With board President Jesse Ladomirak and board members Jennifer DiBrienza and Todd Collins’ terms expiring this year, candidates Alison Kamhi, Josh Salcman, Chris Colohan, Nicole Chiu-Wang and Rowena Chiu are competing for three seats.

In a survey conducted on the week of Sept. 23, 183 Palo Alto High School students of different grades were asked which candidates they preferred for Palo Alto Board of Education. Of the 183 students, 61% of students were unsure of who they would vote for, and of the remaining respondents, Rowena Chiu had the highest number of votes compared to any other candidate. With interviews of each candidate and citing of their websites, we have compiled short biographies of each candidate, including their background, priorities and endorsements.

Alison Kamhi

Alison Kamhi has been connected with Palo Alto since 1999, when she attended Stanford University, and has been heavily involved with the Palo Alto Unified School District since her two children have been attending PAUSD schools for the past six years. With her background as an immigrant rights attorney and lawyer, Kamhi believes that her skills and  policy background make her qualified to join the Board of Education. 

“I work at the country level, the state level, the national level, and through that work, I’ve learned that all changes start local,” Kamhi said. “I can think of nothing more impactful than working right here in our communities to serve our students and families.”

Starting her legal career after attending Harvard Law School, Kamhi has represented kids, and spent the last 15 years advocating for children. 

“I’m the only candidate that has ever represented kids or has done policy work to strengthen laws to protect youth and families, so I think I bring that skill set and see this campaign as an extension of that work I’m already doing,” Kamhi said.

During her time as an Escondido Elementary School parent, she joined the Palo Alto Parent Teacher Association, where she is currently the co-chair for gun violence prevention. 

According to Kamhi’s campaign website, one of her main priorities is children’s safety, including bike safety, mental health services and gun violence prevention.

Along with safety, one of her other priorities is building community trust between the board and the community so that families are able to understand the reasons for decisions.

“One of the things that I’m interested in doing is ‘Community Trust,’” Kamhi said. “[I’m] really trying to make sure that we’re having open communication between the board and parents and community members. [So] that any decisions that are made are communicated clearly and transparently, and that parents feel like they have input.”

So far, Kamhi has been endorsed by Palo Alto mayor Greer Stone, former Palo Alto mayors Greg Scharff and Nancy Shepherd. 

Josh Salcman

Josh Salcman started his career in technology. After getting his master’s degree for industrial design at Pratt Institute, he worked in product design strategy for several years. 

He then decided to combine youth education with his skills in technology, and co-founded an education technology company that helped students learn math and science. 

After working in technology for several years, his career took a turn, and he found himself becoming a full-time parent.

“My youngest of three children was diagnosed with hearing loss as a two-year-old, so that put me on a road that I was unfamiliar with,” Salcman said. “At that point, I became a full time parent so that I could figure out the best way to support him, and this made me very interested in how different children and different students are in terms of their needs.”

Because of his experience as a father, Salcman started to devote himself to volunteering for PAUSD, including being the fundraising leader and treasurer for Nixon Elementary School’s PTA board and the PTA board representative for special education and inclusion, according to Salcman’s campaign website.

One of Salcman’s priorities is to continue the academic excellence of PAUSD, while ensuring the district pays attention to academically struggling students. 

With these priorities, Salcman also recognizes the importance of mental health in the Palo Alto schools and how this connects to making a personalized experience for every student.

“When we talk about the balance between academics and mental health, there’s a lot of interconnectedness between these different topics,” Salcman said. “What we really need to try to do all together as a community is figure out, ideally, how to change the conversation from being one that sometimes feels like a ‘zero sum situation’ to trying to make space for meeting every student where they’re at and trying to help every student thrive in terms of what’s best for them and what they need.”

Salcman has been endorsed by Mayor Greer Stone, Vice Mayor Ed Lauing, and former Mayor Lydia Kou.

Rowena Chiu

Well-known for being Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant and an advocate for the “#MeToo” movement, Rowena Chiu is redirecting her career to local politics. Chiu has taken a non-linear career path, starting in the film industry, going to both business and law school, then going into the field of management consulting. This has all led her to Palo Alto with her four kids, who attend PAUSD schools. 

During her time as a PAUSD parent, Chiu has been involved in the district, being PTA president of Ohlone Elementary School and the board president at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School’s Connections Program. With four kids in the district, one of Chiu’s biggest priorities is differentiated education and the access to choice programs.

“Success doesn’t necessarily look like high academic grades, a stellar career as a doctor, lawyer or in Silicon Valley, a software engineer, but there is a life kind of outside just one way to success,” Chiu said. “If you want to take an alternative path, I think that that should also be encouraged and I just believe that passion should be encouraged in many different fields, not just one field.”

As a prospective member of the school board, Chiu strives to build trust between the board and parents. As a parent at PAUSD, she understands the frustration between other parents and the board. 

“What is frustrating for many people in the district, parents, students, teachers, is whenever they have an issue with a way that something is decided, it is contingent upon the board to really provide an adequate answer to some of the decision making,” Chiu said.

Chiu believes that when communities are able to build trust, parents, teachers, students and the board are able to compromise to find a solution to different problems.

“If you come to a point where you’re suing the district, there’s been a radical breakdown in communication, trust and transparency,” Chiu said. “I really hope to create, [and] build back an environment where we’re working together and we’re not working against one another.”

Chiu is endorsed by Mayor Greer Stone, former Mayor Lydia Kou and Santa Clara Supervisor Susan Ellenberg.

Chris Colohan

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a PhD in computer science, Chris Colohan began his career at Google working as a software engineer and an engineering manager for 10 years. 

Colohan said he believes his work as an engineering manager makes him qualified to manage the school district.

“The job of the school board is to provide oversight to the district and to manage the superintendent,” Colohan said. “I’m going to try and create a stable, supportive environment where teachers can thrive to the benefit of all of the students in our district. 

Additionally, Colohan has worked on Greene Middle School’s and Duveneck Elementary School’s PTA boards and also served as a representative of Palo Alto Partners in Education. As mentioned by his website, he has a deep passion for education and teaching. He believes that having high quality staff is a recipe for success.

“Great teachers … have a huge impact on our kids. And so the way to attract, train and retain great teachers is by having high quality management that really needs to know how to support great teachers,” Colohan said.

Colohan has been a PTA treasurer for five years, and dealing with economics is an additional skill that he plans to bring to the school board.

“I really believe that anyone in the community who wants to understand what the district is doing should be able to without putting too much effort into it [and] actually understand why a decision was made and what it was based on,” Colohan said.

One of Colohan’s priorities is bolstering student literacy across PAUSD. 

“One place where I want to make a change is something that is actually already somewhat in motion, which is in the past few years, the school board has been pushing on an issue called the every students reads initiative,” Colohan said. “They [the school board] had data which showed that a large number of students were not getting sufficient reading skills coming out of elementary schools.”

Colohan’s endorsements include former congresswoman Anna Eshoo and California Assembly member Evan Low.

Nicole Chiu-Wang

Before Nicole Chiu-Wang became a tech entrepreneur, a business owner and a mother of two, she double majored in Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine. After graduating, she went to law school at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Chiu-Wang went on to practice law and later founded her own startup, Boon + Gable, which was bought out by Google where she went on to work for four and a half years.

Chiu-Wang ran for school board in 2022 and lost. Shortly thereafter, she joined DreamCatchers, a non-profit organization aiming to close the opportunity and achievement gap facing low income middle schoolers, and became an official board member. 

Six months later, she became the  executive director at DreamCatchers, left her job at Google and has been in this role for about a year. 

As a resident of Palo Alto and with children going to PAUSD schools ,she says she deeply cares about the future of the district

“I want to do the work to make our district empower all of our students,” Chiu-Wang said. “There are things that we do that are great and they’re site specific, and we should talk about how we can expand those things.”

Palo Alto is widely known for the pressure and stress that is put onto students. Chiu-Wang said change is needed to help address these problems.

“We need to be investing in early childhood education, because that … will help close the opportunity gap much earlier,” Chiu-Wang said. “There’s a lot we need to do to change our culture regarding pressure and stress.”

As the executive director of DreamCatchers, she said that she sees the district through the eyes of her 200 middle school students and 200 high school volunteers, not only through the eyes of her two children.

“I am in touch with all the different levels of our school district, which I think is so important for a school board that is in charge of making decisions for students,” Chiu-Wang said.

Chiu-Wang has been endorsed by former congresswoman Anna Eshoo, California State Assemblyman Marc Berman and Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg.