BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Los Altos board member Jessica Speiser had a lead last night in her quest to unseat Grace Mah from the Santa Clara County Board of Education, but the race is close.
Speiser, 49, put up a website last week attacking Mah and comparing her to former President Donald Trump and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green.
Mah called the move “dirty politics.”
Speiser had just over 51% of the vote last night, with Mah sitting just under 49%.
The tension between the two candidates was built in before the race ever began. Mah, 63, of Palo Alto, has been a consistent supporter of Bullis Charter School, while Speiser comes from the Los Altos School District that Bullis pulls students from.
Speiser’s board has accused Bullis of disenrolling special needs students and asked the Board of Education to impose more conditions on Bullis to diversify its enrollment.
Mah voted on Aug. 22 to renew Bullis Charter School without any conditions.
“LASD, for good or bad, their game plan is that all students get the same thing at all schools,” Mah said in an interview.
About Mah
Mah is known for bringing about the Mandarin immersion program at Ohlone Elementary School in Palo Alto.
Mah was appointed to the county board in 2007 and has been elected four times since.
The Charter Public Schools PAC donated $200,000 to Mah’s campaign after similarly backing her campaign in 2020 against Palo Alto board member Melissa Baten Caswell.
Speiser grew up in Massachusetts and had a tough childhood. Her mother was an alcoholic, her dad died when she was six, and her mother married an abusive man, Speiser said in an interview.
Speiser spent time in foster care, and then realized that doing well in school could help her rise out of her low-income situation. She went on to become a lawyer.
“Quite literally, my one positive constant was at school. I know how transformative a public education can be,” she said in an interview during the campaign.
Speiser was elected to her board in 2016, and nobody ran against her in 2020.
Speiser was endorsed by 16 of 18 school board members in Los Altos, Palo Alto and Mountain View.
Changes at the board
Whoever gets elected will manage a fluid situation after Mah and the Board of Education voted to fire Superintendent of Schools Mary Ann Dewan on Oct. 2.
Dewan’s firing was the culmination of years of tension between board members and employees at the county office, which is now being audited.
Before Dewan was fired, she hired investigators to look into Mah. Attorney Mary Hernandez summarized the investigation in a memo sent to the county office on Oct. 11.
Mah allegedly said, “If I’m not going to jail for violating the Brown Act, I don’t care if I break the law,” Hernandez said.
The Brown Act is a state law that requires government agencies to make decisions in public, with properly noticed agendas and time for the public to weigh in.
Mah denied making the comment in an interview last week.
“It’s very uncharacteristic for these claims to come out now, timing-wise, that are unverified because we haven’t seen the report,” Mah said. “Besmirching my reputation and sullying my reputation before the election just to discredit me — it’s dirty politics.”
So happy for this outcome.