BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto school board candidate Nicole Chiu-Wang says the district should look at why students want to load up on Advanced Placement classes, take algebra as early as possible and get accepted to a top 10 school in the nation.
Pressure from friends, family members and a culture at the Palo Alto Unified School District is making students learn about things that they aren’t interested in, she said.
“Every high school student I talk to, I ask what math they’re in and I ask why they picked it,” she said. “I’ve heard some that said they wanted to take AP Statistics — ‘But I didn’t, I took (AP) Calculus because my friends all told me I needed to do that, or because if I took any other math class then my friends would think I’m stupid.’”
Universities are also to blame, Chiu-Wang said. She wants colleges to focus less on grades and test scores, and more on diversity.
“Quite frankly, I think they’re poisoning the water,” she said.
Chiu-Wang is a former attorney who launched a startup dealing with tech and fashion. The startup was bought by Google, where she now works on local advertising.
Chiu-Wang had her second kid in 2020, and she did a candidate bootcamp for progressive Democratic women after her maternity leave.
Her family decided to plant her roots in Palo Alto earlier this year, partly for the schools here, and they sold their home in San Francisco.
Chiu-Wang said being new to the school district would be an asset because she would “come in with a fresh set of eyes.”
Chiu-Wang’s oldest child started in transitional kindergarten at Palo Verde Elementary School this year, so she joined the parent-teacher association, or PTA.
Chiu-Wang is endorsed by the Palo Alto Educators Association. She said she wants teachers to feel “valued and heard,” and she said she understands why they were hesitant to come back during the pandemic.
Like students, Chiu-Wang said teachers are in a mental health crisis.
Chiu-Wang said she would’ve sided with teachers who didn’t want the board to approve an English and language arts curriculum for elementary schools last year. A committee of 35 teachers scored the curriculum a 3.1 out of 5, and 24 out of 35 teachers abstained from voting for it.
Still, the board voted 4-1 at the advice of El Carmelo Principal Danae Reynolds to approve the curriculum because the district had never approved an English and language arts curriculum before.
Chiu-Wang said the board should’ve given teachers another year to find something better. Many parents also feel that administrators make unilateral decisions, and public participation is just a formality, she said.
On a different subject, Chiu-Wang said she wants to give sex education a different name. The term is alarming to some people, and the lessons are about more than sex. “Sex education” also teaches about healthy relationships and consent — something she is teaching her 2-year-old, she said.
Chiu-Wang is one of four candidates running for two seats, along with incumbent Shounak Dharap, businesswoman Ingrid Campos and teacher Shana Segal. If she gets elected, she would be the third lawyer on the five-member board, along with Dharap and Jesse Ladomirak.