BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Three immigrant parents with backgrounds in tech are running for two spots on the board of the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District.
Li Zhang, Vadim Katz and Alexandra Levich are the candidates hoping to oversee two high schools with 4,509 students, a new superintendent and some of the highest-paid teachers in the state.
Zhang, 55, is a senior finance manager at Tesla. She has a doctorate in chemistry from UC-San Diego and a master’s in financial engineering from UC-Berkeley.
Zhang’s husband is a teacher and a tutor, and her son graduated from Mountain View High School.
Zhang has lived in Mountain View since 2001. She’s been president of her neighborhood association, a member of the district’s family partnership council and a committee member for her son’s Boy Scout troop.
Zhang has volunteered for BookWave at Almond Elementary School, where students get to make their own bounded books, and she helps organize a monthly forum for Chinese parents at Mountain View High School called Tea Time.
Zhang is vice chair of the Los Altos School District Bond Oversight Committee. She ran for Mountain View City Council two years ago and finished in fourth out of five candidates, behind three incumbents. Zhang is endorsed by three Mountain View council members.
Zhang said she wants to reduce class sizes and integrate outdoor and nature-based learning into the curriculum.
Katz, 51, has lived in Mountain View for 16 years after leaving the Soviet Union as a Jewish refugee. He has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, and he worked as an engineering lead at Adobe and LinkedIn.
Katz has a freshman at Mountain View High School and an eighth grader at Blach Intermediate School.
Katz wants to provide targeted support to low-income and minority groups and give all students access to advanced classes.
Katz is endorsed by outgoing board members Phil Faillace and Sanjay Dave, Los Altos Councilwoman Lynette Lee Eng and Vice Mayor Pete Dailey.
Katz got involved with the district during a controversy over ethnic studies in February 2023, after the district hired Acosta Educational Partners as a consultant to train teachers.
Parents said Acosta Educational Partners was biased against Israel and told teachers how to push controversial content without getting caught.
Katz said at a meeting on Feb. 13, 2023, that the company leaves out historic details, and its founder made comments about “surviving attacks from Zionists.”
Katz said he wants ethnic studies to demonstrate achievements and contributions from traditionally marginalized communities.
“My focus on ethnic studies would be: Can we emphasize abilities of people to persevere and be successful and grow as a society?” Katz said at a candidate forum earlier this month.
At the same forum, Zhang said she wants students to learn more about world history before ethnic studies so they can better absorb the curriculum.
Levich said the goal of ethnic studies should be to teach people empathy.
“That’s super important for us as a society, as a community,” she said.
Levich, 44, has sons at Blach and Oak Elementary School. She has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a master of business administration from UC-Berkeley. She has worked in the tech industry for 20 years, currently at YouTube, and speaks three languages.
Levich is a board member for Bowman School, a private school in Palo Alto.
She said she wants to promote dual enrollment and vocational training that will attract more students to the district and prepare them for diverse careers.
Levich is endorsed by Faillace, Dave, four members of Los Altos City Council and the Santa Clara County Democratic Party.
Levich and Katz have both spoken at council meetings in favor of Israel and against antisemitism they’ve seen locally since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
Levich urged Mountain View City Council on March 19 to not pass a ceasefire resolution.
“We need you to focus on the local community’s wellbeing, protect local constituents from persecution, and not take sides in a complex international conflict that has a lot of misinformation, strong opinions and emotions,” Levich said.
Katz read a letter from his daughter at a Los Altos City Council meeting on Nov. 14, 2023.
“I expected to feel safe and protected walking through the streets of Los Altos. I don’t. I hear and see antisemitic protests all around me supporting Palestine in both my city and the ones surrounding it, and I feel targeted,” Katz said.
Whoever wins will join Catherine Vonnegut, Thida Cornes and Esmeralda Ortiz on the board. They hired Superintendent Eric Volta to replace retiring Superintendent Nellie Meyer over the summer.
The district has a $141.9 million budget this school year.
This will be the last time voters can pick all of the board members for the district. Starting in 2026, the district will be divided into five areas, with a board member elected from each one.
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