BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
Palo Altans got a glimpse of how City Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims selects applicants for city’s Human Relations Commission, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. As former mayor Lydia Kou put it, it was like a scene out of the movie “Mean Girls.”
Through a California Public Records Request, the Daily Post obtained emails and texts of a group chat among Lythcott-Haims, former school board President Jennifer DiBrienza, Nicole Chiu‑Wang and Nana Chancellor last fall. At the time, the council was deciding which applicants for the HRC it would interview in public session.
What does the HRC do? The city’s website says, “The Palo Alto Human Relations Commission strives for equal and fair treatment of people who live and work in Palo Alto, focusing on vulnerable populations.” The commission advises the council on “discrimination,” “inclusion” and “community‑building.”
Scrutinizing an applicant
Lythcott-Haims asked the group about Allyson Rosen, a Stanford psychologist who applied for the HRC.
“I’m hearing there are concerns about (Rosen) based on ‘PAUSD issues.’ Does any of you have an opinion?” Lythcott-Haims asked the group chat on Oct. 3.
“Yes. Do not let her on there,” said DiBrienza.
Rosen has a Ph.D. “in something” and bills herself as “a data person” but twists data to suit her agenda, DiBrienza said.
“She is one of the math acceleration people. She is very unsympathetic toward Gaza,” DiBrienza said. DiBrienza complained that Rosen went to a meeting to make sure nobody blamed academic pressure for student suicides.
It’s unclear to me why the HRC would be concerned with “math acceleration,” that is, allowing students to take advanced classes like multivariable calculus. Isn’t that the school board’s concern?
And Gaza? What does a war 7,400 miles away from Palo Alto have to do with the HRC?
It’s as if Lythcott-Haims and her friends are so obsessed with international and national political issues that they’re using them to determine who serves on a council-appointed commission.
Upon hearing the group, Lythcott-Haims indicated her mind was made up.
“Oy,” Lythcott-Haims replied. “I’m good I’m good no need to say more!”
Supporters of Israel not welcome
I wondered if Lythcott-Haims used the yiddish expression of “Oy” as a joke, since it appears that anyone who supports Israel didn’t have a chance of getting very far in the process. Another supporter of Israel who didn’t advance in the HRC selection process was Deborah Goldeen, who publicly criticized pro-Palestinian protesters. That was enough to put her on the blacklist.
Rosen felt the process was disrespectful.
Rosen said she wanted to help the HRC address student suicides, which she attributes to depression and bullying. She said she thought her background as a psychologist would be helpful, but she feels like Lythcott-Haims judged her politics, not her qualifications or approach.
“This isn’t about me,” said Rosen, speaking for her herself and not in her role as director of dementia education at the VA. “It’s about whether council members are making decisions with fairness, independence and integrity — not based on retribution or personal grievances or irrelevant political litmus tests.”
Process needs transparency
The process needs to change. Council members shouldn’t be making decisions based on information that is obtained privately like this. The public should be able to hear the evidence and verify that it’s true. The applicant should have the right to respond to allegations made in private.
When council interviewed Rosen, they asked her just two questions before picking other applicants for the HRC.
This is a terrible way to select people for public office. It’s embarassing that somebody in leadership in Palo Alto would operate this way.
Lythcott-Haims’s term ends this year. She hasn’t said if she is running for re-election this fall.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.
Julie is quite a piece of work. Makes a decision based on the opinions of some fellow,Israel haters. Did she ever speak with Rosen?
Isn’t she the one who was having an affair with an undergrad at Stanford?
Asking your friends and supporters for their advice on committee appointments happens all the time in local government. The only thing wrong that Lythcott-Haims was to do it on a city phone that reporters could get hold of.
Having said that, her choice of advisers left a lot to be desired.
It appears this woke mean-girl virtue signaling is fully sustainable and locally sourced…
Funny how these folks fall all over themselves about race and ethnicity justice, but never a peep when it comes to Class justice. Wonder why that is.
You said it, Anon! Watching the CA-GOV debate, I tried to get Chat-Bot to advise me which boarding school would be better for my blue team kids: Phillips Andover (where Porter went) or Philips Exeter (were Steyer went). I could not get a straight answer, so I had to revise the question. Which would Thurston Howell III prefer for his grandkids? and you know who programs these things, Exeter (and Styer and Zuck) won. It was a little funny, saying that Howell would not appreciate Andover’s descriptor as a ‘Yale-feeder’. That’s blue team humor, folks…
” The only thing wrong that Lythcott-Haims was to do it on a city phone that reporters could get hold of.”
She also signs her official City Council emails with an extra line in her signature file linking to one of her business activities.
How things have changed from when for Mayor Adrian Fine’s use of city letterhead for something personal was inappropriately newsworthy!
If that was a big deal then, why isn’t it now when City Council spends more time virtue-signaling and redefining abstract city values?
Some wonder why Julie was only removed from her Council committees dealing with youth nd Stanford for a one single year and then quietly reinstated. Some suggested that members with higher political aspirations want to ride JHL’s coattails re her deep-pocketed fund-raising machine that out-raised all other CC candidates before she’d even served a day.
So while money poured in from big deep-pocketed donors like all the YIMBY groups [Portion removed — Terms of Use violation.] developers, and others from outside PA, she absurdly claimied PASZ (Palo Altans For Sensible Zoning) was “the loudest voice in the room.”
But she’s clearly back — heading up the student suicide listening session and misrepresenting the student petition as about Churchill to avoid exploring the school’s role — just like the mean girls” wanted!
She’s a fraud. For the sake of Palo Altans, hopefully she won’t seek re-election.
The texts around Allyson Rosen’s Human Relations Commission application is not just ugly local politics. It exposes a deeper problem in how Palo Alto has handled student mental health, math access, and data. According to the reporting, Rosen was criticized in the texts as “pro-math” and as someone who “twists data.”
That accusation is especially troubling because the opposite is what many families have watched for years.
Under prior PAUSD board leadership, student mental health was repeatedly framed around “academic stress” and “families,” while the district failed to adequately confront bullying and students’ mistrust of administrators and school staff. That framing was not harmless. It distracted from the issues students were actually naming and from interventions that might have helped.
The same mindset also shaped math policy. A one-size-fits-all pathway was promoted as equity, while students who wanted access to advanced math were portrayed as harming others simply by seeking challenge. That is not wellness. Telling students that their goals, effort, and ambition are harmful to others is itself damaging—to mental health and to achievement.
And the data should matter. If achievement declined, especially for under-resourced students, then calling the policy a success by using softer or more gameable measures is not honest evaluation. It is narrative management. Passing rates are not the same as learning. If state scores and actual outcomes show harm, the community deserves transparency, not spin.
So when a qualified neuropsychologist who wanted to help with youth mental health is dismissed with labels like “pro-math” and accused of misusing data, we should ask: who has really been misusing data here?
Palo Alto needs less gatekeeping and fewer ideological litmus tests. We need people who will look honestly at evidence, listen to students, confront bullying and school climate, and stop treating academic aspiration as a threat.
Our students and our city deserve data-driven, humane leadership—not clique politics dressed up as equity.
What is an “under-resourced student”?
Students who don’t have the same ability to compensate outside of school, for example, those who are socio-economically disadvantaged, or students whose families don’t have the time, money, or background to provide private tutoring or fill gaps when instruction isn’t effective.
That’s why they’re a litmus test for what the school system itself is delivering.
If you look at California’s CAASPP results (Smarter Balanced), the subgroup data for Latino and socio-economically disadvantaged (SED) students in PAUSD is telling. During the period when the district adopted the new math pathways (pushed for by the DiBrienza-led board), these students achievement went from well outperforming the state average for the same demographic to underperforming it.
In a district spending about $35,000 per student per year, that should not be happening. There is no excuse. The “mean girls” happened to include the architect and supporters of that failure.
I agree with the posts above regarding the shoddy treatment and disregard for Rosen and her expertise by JLH. I think it is not appropriate for JLH to run for re-election, but the role that Jennifer Di Brienza, NaNa Chancelor and Nicole Chiu wang played in this is also very troubling! They are all three prominent members of the community who have been in or sought leadership positions.
@Palo Alto Resident, thanks for the information above about the test results. Now it’s clear why JLH and the other “mean girls” were so insistent that no one looked more closely at the test results and the school and instead created the “Close Churchill” circus.
Shame on our “leaders” who supported her diversionary nonsense while loudly hypocritically claiming she supports equity, truth, justice and the American way.