Dharap defends his education philosophy amid talk of recall

Facing a potential recall, Palo Alto school board member Shounak Dharap is defending his approach to governing, which was informed by his own experience as a stressed-out student at Gunn High School.

Proponents of the recall have accused Dharap of weakening academics in the Palo Alto Unified School District. 

For example, they point to Dharap’s vote to eliminate Honors Biology for freshmen and his suggestion that students who aren’t being challenged should go to private school.

Dharap, 34, said on Friday (Feb. 21) that he prioritizes struggling students over advanced students when he is faced with limited funding, resources or bandwidth.

“My philosophy has always been, ‘Let’s try to do it all.’ But if it comes down to having to choose, we’ve got to put the fire out first,” Dharap said.

The “fire,” as Dharap put it, is students from lower-income families who aren’t prepared for college or a career after high school.

Dharap graduated in 2008 when Gunn had a cluster of student and alumni suicides, including one of his water polo teammates. Another cluster happened around the time his sister graduated in 2015.

“It was seared into our everyday existence,” Dharap said in an interview.

When the national media attributed suicides to academic stress, Dharap said that resonated with him and his peers.

“It was crushing,” he said.

Dharap’s parents immigrated from India to get doctorates in computer science, and he spent the first three years of his life in the halls at Penn State. He went to the private Challenger School in Palo Alto and then JLS Middle School.

Felt pressure in high school

Dharap said he was a C-student at Gunn High School but felt pressure to take more AP classes and apply to the best colleges.

The pressure comes from being in Silicon Valley, in a place “where innovation and genius grows” and where families move because of the quality schools, Dharap said.

Dharap said he started getting A’s in law school.

“I was able to access this other part of my brain when I was really passionate about what I was doing,” he said.

Dharap ran for school board in 2018. He said he wanted students to have a chance to find their passions earlier than he did, which means allowing them to make mistakes and fail.

Dharap said he initially wanted to get rid of weighted GPAs (when more GPA points are given for grades in  accelerated courses) and to “de-lane” classes by grouping all students together.

Since then, Dharap said he’s learned these decisions are more nuanced. Now he said he defers to teachers on decisions around de-laning.

For example, Dharap sided with teachers on a 3-2 vote on Jan. 21 to eliminate Honors Biology for freshmen starting in the fall.

Supporters of the recall say that Dharap has focused on superficial remedies and not root causes for those who are struggling. They say his equity efforts have been unsuccessful for all students, especially Asian students who are 40% of the enrollment.

Question of racial equity

“In taking away advanced classes, the anti-academic efforts that Shounak has led is quite explicitly racist against Asians,” parent Avery Wang said in an email. “Somehow all this is supposed to bring racial equity. Previously, the Asian community has hesitated to attribute this contemptuous treatment as racism, but are now starting to call it out explicitly.”

In response, Dharap said there are parents in the community, many Asian, who don’t feel like their values are reflected in board decisions around academic acceleration.

“Those are values that people have, values to respect — but not Asian values,” Dharap said. “Saying that their Asian values devalues the values of other Asians who don’t believe those things. So it creates this divide in the community — a racial divide that’s unnecessary.”

Rowena Chiu

Supporters of the recall have pointed to Dharap’s treatment of board member Rowena Chiu, who was elected in November alongside Josh Salcman and Alison Kamhi on platforms of change. 

Dharap introduced a resolution on Feb. 11 that condemned Chiu for reposting an account, Asians Against Wokeness, that called out a district administrator by name following a 3-2 vote on Ethnic Studies.

Chiu, Salcman and Kamhi were against the resolution. Chiu agreed to step down from committees working directly with district employees. 

Chiu isn’t involved with the recall, but many of her supporters signed the initial petition. 

Dharap said he enjoys a professional relationship with everyone on the board, including Chiu.

Salcman and Kamhi are against the recall, and Chiu has declined to comment.

Dharap called the recall a distraction and a waste of taxpayer money. He said he would meet with the recall campaign, and anyone who disagrees with him should run for his seat when he reaches his two-term limit next year.

“There’s a lot of anger right now among community members, and I think everyone has had a role to play in turning up the heat. And I’m included in that,” Dharap said. “And my goal is really to try to turn the heat back down, because this is not helpful for anybody. I’m on the board because this is my community. It always has been.”

Private school comment

Dharap’s opponents have seized on a comment Dharap made at a meeting on Feb. 28, 2023, when discussing equity.

“If folks want higher ceilings at the expense of the floors, then maybe there are private schools out there that could do that. That’s not us. We’re a public school district,” Dharap said at the meeting.

Dharap said he shouldn’t have made the comment, but he does believe that private schools can sometimes provide a level of tailored education that public schools cannot.

The recall effort suffered a setback on Friday when the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters said the campaign didn’t provide verifiable addresses on its recall notice that needs 30 signatures.

The campaign will need to re-file its paperwork and restart the process, Registrar of Voters spokesman Steve Goltiao said in an email. 

Wang said on Friday that the campaign will continue its efforts, and recall campaigns often face setbacks like this one. He called it “a little technicality.”

If a notice is accepted, then the campaign would have 160 days to get 7,635 signatures to put a recall on the ballot.