BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Two advocates for advanced math are planning to run for Palo Alto school board in November.
There will be two open seats on the board this year as Shounak Dharap is termed out and Shana Segal is not seeking re-election.
Both candidates so far – Leor Cecile Melamedov and Avery Lichen Wang – are supporters of board member Rowena Chiu.
Wang, 60, sued the district in June 2020 for allegedly holding his son back in high school math and violating the 2015 Math Placement Act that requires districts to have fair and transparent placement policies.
“PAUSD must stop trying to act as parents and stick to their job as educators,” Wang said in his lawsuit.
The district agreed to move Wang’s son into a more advanced class and pay him $5,000 to drop his case.
Four math advocates sued the district with similar occurredclaims and the same attorney in July 2021. Judge Carrie Zepeda ordered the district to update its policies, publish more data and pay $38,311 in attorney fees.
Wang is co-founder of Shazam, an app that identifies songs from a snippet of sound. Apple reportedly paid about $400 million to buy Shazam in 2018.
Wang now works at Apple as a research scientist, according to his social media. He received a PhD from Stanford in 1994 and lives in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood.
Wang said yesterday he will talk about his campaign after it’s organized.
The other contender
Melamedov, 35, is a pro-Israel activist and frequent public commenter at board meetings. She is against Ethnic Studies and wants the district to reinstate Multivariable Calculus, an advanced math class that she said many Asian and immigrant families want students to take.
“A lot of these so-called attempts at reducing pressure are actually judgments in disguise made about different parenting styles, different cultural frameworks,” Melamedov said at a Jan. 20 board meeting.
Melamedov is on the JLS Middle School Site Council and works as a product marketing manager at Frontegg, a startup company based in Mountain View. She received a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 2012 and lives near Greer Park.
Melamedov hasn’t returned a request for comment but filed paperwork to start fundraising on Sept. 10.
Came to Chiu’s defense
Both Wang and Melamedov came to Chiu’s defense after an emotional board meeting about requiring students to take Ethnic Studies on Jan. 23, 2024.
At the meeting, members of the crowd jeered and laughed when Chiu asked about offering Ethnic Studies as an elective.
“I am attempting to maintain an open mindset, but the feedback that I’ve had from the community so far has made me feel very unsafe,” Chiu said.
That’s when Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Danae Reynolds jumped in to suggest that Chiu was uncomfortable, but not unsafe.
“I worry about the word ‘safe’ as a person who has to worry about my husband driving and coming home if he gets pulled over,” Reynolds said.
After the meeting, Chiu reposted a social media account, Asians Against Wokeness, that called out Reynolds. Chiu said she felt silenced. Reynolds was subject to racist comments underneath the post, and Chiu apologized and deleted it.
Former school board members and the union for principals and psychologists called for Chiu to resign, and Chiu’s colleagues on the board removed her from her committees.
Subject of a ‘witch hunt’
Melamedov said Chiu was the subject of a witch hunt and smear campaign by “activist educators.”
“The real goal is to silence voices who are asking tough questions about an ideologically charged and one-sided curriculum,” Melamedov said in a letter to the editor at the time.
Wang and a group of parents started a recall campaign against Dharap after he introduced a resolution condemning Chiu’s repost.
“The district has taken a sharp anti-academic direction ever since Shounak joined the board,” Wang said in an interview at the time.
But Wang dropped out of the campaign after meeting with Dharap.
Wang also circulated a petition last summer against renewing Superintendent Don Austin’s contract.
The petition called out the district for removing Honors Biology for freshman, mandating Ethnic Studies and no longer offering Multivariable Calculus for high school credit.
The petition said Austin has “a track record of stonewalling, intimidation and gaslighting” and gathered 1,457 signatures.
The board voted 4-1 to renew Austin’s contract on June 3, with Chiu voting no.
Austin left the district with a $596,802 payout on Feb. 20. On Feb. 23, the board picked Deputy Superintendent Trent Bahadursingh to fill in while searching for a permanent leader.
