BY ALLISON LEVITSKY
Daily Post Staff Writer
The race for two seats on the Palo Alto school board is raking in sizable contributions, with three candidates raising more than $10,000 each.
Palo Alto High School parent Kathy Jordan has raised $14,949.47 since Aug. 13, more than any other candidate.
She’s received donations from Palo Alto homemaker Carol Chan ($1,500), Google software engineer Danny Epstein ($1,449.47), Shazam chief scientist Avery Wang ($1,000), Palo Alto homemaker Melissa Anderson ($1,000), LA Museum government affairs official Wendy Greuel ($1,000), Encino literary agent Dean Schramm ($1,000), Palo Alto homemaker Huibing Luo ($1,000), Vicky Huang of Palo Alto ($1,000), Suhua Xiong of Palo Alto ($1,000), Palo Alto retiree Bjorn Liencres ($1,000), Palo Alto homemaker ($1,000), Palo Alto homemaker Keith Ferrell ($1,000), NetApp senior finance manager Haiyan Wang ($1,000) and Palo Alto homemaker Rebecca Fox ($1,000).
Four other candidates
Special education advocate Stacey Ashlund has pulled in $14,212 since July 1.
She’s received donations from the California Teachers Association union ($1,250), Mayor Liz Kniss ($250) and board member Terry Godfrey ($100).
Gunn High School graduate and 28-year-old litigator Shounak Dharap has raised $10,274.26 this year, including from the California Teachers Association ($1,250), the Arns Law Firm, where he works ($1,000), Adobe product management director Chanda Dharap ($1,000), Palo Alto High School event coordinator Mary Bena ($250) and former school board member Dana Tom ($100).
School board President Ken Dauber raised $4,652.96 between Jan. 1 and June 30, but hasn’t filed paperwork reporting contributions since July 1.
Palo Alto High School graduate Alex Scharf, 21, has raised $774 since July 1, including $500 from Publishing Power senior manager Cindy Goral and $100 from Palo Alto retiree Ruth Gordon.
A sixth candidate, Christopher Boyd, has not reported any contributions.
Isn’t Kathy Jordan the person who prevented Paly from having their 10:00am starting time this year? She was the one who wrote to the state of CA claiming we didn’t have enough instructional minutes so our start time is 8:20. Our students work so hard and other schools nearby don’t have enough instructional minutes but the state doesn’t audit unless someone complains. Shame on her for denying our students their sleep!
That’s a fairly ignorant comment Jenny. Jordan didn’t “prevent” anything. The school’s schedule with 10am start did not meet the standards set by the state of California. I believe there was an article in the other PA paper which stated that Karen Hendricks discovered the error and brought it up to the state and they were told they could not count zero period.
Feel free to keep your student home in the morning or sign them up for a 1st or 2nd period prep.
So Jordan has only raised money since August 13 from big money people? All of her contributions are at least $1,000 each? I thought we were trying to get money out of politics. What happened to the days when voters and community members each contributed $50 or $100 here or there? A minimum contribution of $1,000 is completely unheard of, even for state and national elections, much less a local school board race.
Eric D. No, all of the contributions listed for Jordan are of 1,000+ If you add them up, you’ll see it doesn’t add to the total so there must be a number of donations less than 1,000. Let’s work on our math.
Jenny A., are you suggesting that not following the law is okay so long as nobody complains? If California law requires schools to have a certain number of instructional minutes, are we serving the students well by having fewer? How much less is okay? 10%? 20%? 50%? Finally, if a school sets a bell schedule that doesn’t work for some population of students, and the school isn’t meeting the minimum minutes, can you see how that could create a problem? In my opinion, following the law in this case is something our schools should be doing by default.