BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Christopher Chiang, often the only “no” vote on the board of the Mountain View Whisman School District, has announced that he is resigning because he is getting married and moving to Redwood City.
Chiang has been on the board for two stints totaling over six years. His term ends in November. There was no discussion during the board’s Thursday night meeting whether the remaining four board members will appoint someone to Chiang’s seat before the election.
He was first elected in 2012 and resigned in June 2015 because Chiang said he wanted to speak freely about board member Steven Nelson, who was criticized for being unprofessional and difficult.
“I am ashamed each board meeting that I must be party to (a situation) where members of the board insult and bully fellow board members, staff, teachers and families,” Chiang wrote in his resignation letter.
Chiang was elected to a second term in 2020.
Chiang said on Thursday that he plans to move to Redwood City at the end of June, when he will have to resign because he lives outside the district boundaries.
Chiang said he has played a role in the board room for 20 years, because he was the campaign manager for former board member RoseMary Sias Roquero when he was a graduate student.
Chiang said he is proud to have approved performing arts centers at the district’s two middle schools and to have broadcasted board meetings live, back when he and board member Bill Lambert had to set up the live stream with their personal cameras.
Chiang, 43, is a middle school social studies teacher at Keys School, a private school in Palo Alto.
The rest of the board thanked Chiang and congratulated him on getting married.
Chiang oversaw two superintendents: Craig Goldman and Ayinde Rudolph, who has held the post since 2015.
“A lot of highlights,” Chiang said on Thursday. “I hope that the future board continues to seek diverse voices because it’s definitely not a highlight to frequently be the lone dissenting voice on some things, and I just ask the board to really lean in to those voices that are really different from everybody.”
Chiang voted against a $1.7 million renovation of the District Office that came four years after the district spent $8.5 million on building the District Office
Rudolph told the board in April 2023 that the district needed more room for tech support and reading specialists, but Chiang said that he wanted to look at other options.
“While we cannot anticipate our needs, sometimes we have to live with the mistakes — or at least see what tradeoffs we can live with,” Chiang said.
Chiang said at a board meeting in January 2023 that the district should consider desegregating Castro Elementary School, where just 20% of students are reading at grade level, data shows.
Castro has a higher proportion of students who are poor and learning English, and 59 of its 249 students are homeless, according to the school’s achievement plan.
Desegregating would involve moving students from Castro to other schools, and moving students from other schools to Castro.
“What’s holding Castro back – it’s not the instructional strategies. It’s the concentration of poverty,” Chiang said. “We can either desegregate that school or we really need to think about putting money there that corresponds to what they really need. If they are performing three or four times lower than other schools, then they need three or four times more of everything.”
Chiang in March 2023 rejected a consultant’s recommendation to limit visitor access to schools by hiring security guards, fencing off playgrounds and screening visitors before they enter the lobby.
Chiang said he didn’t want to create a “police state” on campus.
“If we’re worried about our kids, it’s cars on the streets that they are dodging, not bullets or intruders,” he said.
Thank God for squeaky wheels!