Five candidates are running to fill three seats on the Palo Alto Board of Education in the Nov. 5 election. Rowena Chiu, Nicole Chiu-Wang, Chris Colohan, Alison Kamhi and Josh Salcman are campaigning to occupy the seats currently held by board president Jesse Ladomirak and trustees Jennifer DiBrienza and Todd Collins.

The school board meets semimonthly, with each meeting following a preset agenda and typically holding an open forum for community members to speak about their concerns.

According to DiBrienza, the focus of the board trustees is to approve an annual budget, write and update district policies, establish the goals and priorities of the district and supervise the district superintendent.

Rowena Chiu

Chiu is a Palo Alto Unified School District parent and former Ohlone Elementary School Parent Teacher Association president who has lived in Palo Alto for 15 years.

Chiu said she is committed to addressing the concerns of parents with children in special education and mental health programs.

“I learned how to bring a lot of the skills that I’ve used in global advocacy to advocate about a very local issue,” Chiu said. “I got a bit bitten by the bug of looking holistically at the issues of the district and why parents and students and teachers are disenfranchised.”

As a sexual assault and suicide survivor, Chiu said she hopes to increase awareness of these issues in the district.

“I do a lot of work around suicide prevention among young people, understanding where that’s rooted and where the mental health issues start, and how can we genuinely provide young people with support so that it doesn’t get to that stage,” Chiu said.

If elected to the board, Chiu said she hopes to give students more opportunities to express their views and improve the board’s transparency.

“To be able to empower students and give them more voice and more advocacy and more opportunity to actually make real change makes such a huge difference,” Chiu said. “It’s not about me coming and speaking on their behalf — it’s about platforming them to speak on their own behalf.”

Nicole Chiu-Wang

Chiu-Wang, a PAUSD parent and tech entrepreneur, lost in the 2022 school board election.

However, knowing the impact she could have on the community, she said she immediately prepared to run again this year.

“My parents were career public servants and very much imbued an importance in serving our community,” Chiu-Wang said. “So when I moved here knowing that we were going to plant roots here, I thought, ‘How can I contribute?’ I think I have a unique background and perspective and commitment that would serve me well on the school board.”

Chiu-Wang said she plans to advance early childhood education, promote mental health and wellness, restructure the annual budget and improve the district’s relationship with the teachers’ union.

“I want us to move past the divisions because our students feel it, and they feel the effects of the divisions,” Chiu-Wang said. “Ultimately, our number one priority is to serve our students — to serve all students — and make sure they all can thrive during the time that they’re at PAUSD.”

If elected, Chiu-Wang said her long-term goal would be to serve two terms over the next eight years to advance PAUSD.

Chiu-Wang said, “Hopefully during that time, I’ll be able to influence decisions made along the way that implement early childhood education and even improve what we already currently offer.”

Chris Colohan

Almost a decade ago, Colohan left Google to become a stay-at-home dad. He then worked on the Duveneck PTA board for seven years.

“Being a (PTA) president during the pandemic … was remarkable because of how much I learned about other people’s families and their issues and anxieties,” Colohan said. “So I’ve been heavily involved in that aspect of community building and of our schools.”

Since then, Colohan has worked as a PAUSD substitute teacher for every grade, teaching at all 15 of Palo Alto’s schools.

Colohan said his primary goal, if elected, is to emphasize the idea of strong, effective management, which involves spreading awareness of others’ responsibilities and trusting they will perform their duties in the district well.

Colohan also said he plans to improve the district’s budget and attract and maintain good teachers.

“(I hope to) drive the school district to be in a better place where every single student flourishes … but not only as individuals,” Colohan said. “I actually care about the achievement of the community as a whole because I think it’s important for students to learn things, but I also think it’s really important for them to learn how to interact with other folks.”

Alison Kamhi

Since she moved to Palo Alto 25 years ago, Kamhi, a parent and legal program director for the Immigration Legal Resource Center, has engaged in policy work for unaccompanied immigrant minors.

“I do immigrants’ rights policy at the state and federal level,” Kamhi said. “Through that work, I know that all change starts local, so I’m really excited to bring those skills to our school board and to make our schools even better.”

As a prior member of the PAUSD Ad Hoc Child Care Committee, Kamhi’s campaign has three main principles.

The first concept is the idea of safety, starting with preventing gun violence, increasing bike safety, providing mental health resources, advocating for special needs and eliminating hate speech.

Her second campaign principle is providing opportunities for every student to excel and be successful. Kamhi’s last principle and highest priority is building mutual trust within our community.

Kamhi said, “There’s a lot of divisive rhetoric in the world, in our country, in our state, in our district and community, and so (I’m) really wanting to bring people together on shared values.”

Josh Salcman

Salcman, a father of three and 10-year PTA member, has spent almost a decade in Palo Alto. Salcman said his experience of raising children with special needs and disabilities enables him to better help and understand their challenges.

“That also gives me the ability to empathize with families that have kids who might be neurodivergent,” Salcman said.

Salcman also said he plans to work with the district to improve individual learning by taking students’ strengths, difficulties and personal motivations into consideration.

“I would be interested in exploring ways that we can potentially bring some flexibility back into the way that we work with individual students and try to really meet the student where they’re at so that we can try to help them become the wholest version of themselves that they can be,” Salcman said.

To further enable student input, Salcman said, if elected, he will prioritize improving trust and communication between the district and community.

“I’m very focused on increasing the level of trust that the different people involved in our educational ecosystem feel with regard to the other people that are in that ecosystem,” Salcman said. “That’s going to involve shifting the way that the district communicates its decision-making processes and also the way it invites people into those processes.”