BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A Palo Alto school board candidate will keep her description on the ballot as “math teacher” after a parent’s challenge missed the deadline.
“This was a Hail Mary,” parent Virgina Noh said at a court hearing Tuesday.
Judge Helen Williams said Noh has to show that candidate Linda Henigin’s description could be changed without affecting the election. But Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Matt Moreles said the ballot and voter information guide were already sent to vendors to print on Friday.
“Any change to elections materials at this point will have a cascading effect on the preparation of the official election materials and will imperil (my) ability to comply with statutory requirements,” Moreles said in a court filing on Monday.
Noh filed her lawsuit on Aug. 25, alleging that Henigin lied on the ballot about her credentials as a math teacher.
“She shouldn’t be calling herself that. Math is important in this community … She knows that uninformed people are going to see ‘math teacher’ next to her name, and they’re going to click the box,” Noh said in an interview yesterday.
Henigin hasn’t returned a request for comment since last week, nor has she responded in court. She described herself on the ballot as “math teacher/ mother.”
Henigin works as a classroom aide at Duveneck Elementary School. She has a “multiple subject” credential that allows her to teach a combination of subjects to the same classroom up to eighth grade. That includes elementary school classrooms and middle school core classes.
Teachers need a “single subject” credential to teach standalone subjects like math, according to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
Noh said she is thinking about other remedies the court can provide, besides changing the ballot, before another hearing on Sept. 15.
Noh and Henigin are on opposite sides of a debate in Palo Alto about whether students should be grouped together or allowed to advance in math in smaller groups within the school. Delaning is the educational practice of merging multiple academic tracks — such as remedial, regular, and honors classes—into a single, unified classroom. Critics say that delaning slows down high achievers.
Proponents of laning say it’s a way of responding to allegations of systemic bias. Historically, lower academic “lanes” have been filled with minority and low-income students, inadvertently locking them out of advanced pathways early in their schooling.
Henigin said general education classrooms should be the “default placement” for all students at a May 2025 meeting.
“Our schools, as they currently operate, are launching some of our kids into the highest heights possible in our country,” she said. “Please remember that when parents come to you complaining that our district lacks rigor or that we are ruining their children’s chance to excel. The students who are not yet achieving at their potential are the ones who aren’t yet being well served here.”
Noh managed board member Rowena Chiu’s 2024 campaign. Chiu has advocated for bringing back Multivariable Calculus, a high-level math class that was removed from the high school course catalog in March 2023.
Noh also supports Henigin’s opponent Avery Wang, an engineer and co-founder of Shazam who sued the district in June 2020 for allegedly holding his son back in math.
The district agreed to move Wang’s son into a more advanced class and pay him $5,000 to drop his case.
“While he’s not a math teacher, that is his specialty.” Noh said. “And I think it’s important that you be hon-est, especially in a race for school board, that you’re not lying about your educational qualifications.”
It’s been proven that letting students learn at their own pace is much more effective than forcing then to go faster or slower than they are comfortable with. I’m surprised that this is even controversial these days, but Linda Henigin thinks it is. The same is true for colleges. Some students need more personal attention and less pressure than what they receive at UCLA and UC Berkeley, for example.
Wang wouldn’t have had to sue the district if he was granted a voucher to use taxpayer money to send his son to a school that met his needs. That’s what we really need. Right now we’re giving people zero choices which is the main factor leading to these suicides.
“The students who are not yet achieving at their potential are the ones
who aren’t yet being well served here.”
What evidence does Ms. Henigin have that the behind-the-median kids are the only ones who fit this description?
I suspect most community members with such views have not had a kid of their own who truly enjoyed and excelled at math or other academics. A kid for whom it was suggested, “well then why don’t they go help the teacher with some of the other kids.” A kid from whom it was suggested, “well they’re so far ahead they (and by extension their parents) should just feel fortunate.” A kid who was so angry that they weren’t allowed to take a particular course early, that they instead read the textbook, aced the AP test, and majored in that subject in college without ever having taken it in high school.
The reality is that it does not take very much effort or resource to offer a few advanced classes, as we all saw with MVC; the main resistance by school board and administration members is philosophical: should some kids be held back, on the assertion that allowing those kids to achieve at their potential (Ms. Henigin’s words) causes harm to other kids? Which itself is an assertion with no presented evidence.
Every school board candidate should answer this question on the campaign trail. If Ms Noh’s procedural exercise here has done anything, it has at least raised the visibility of this question.
Henigin and her backers are falling into the trap of trying to mandate the same outcomes for every student. Some students are just better in school than others and you can’t correct that using some top-down government manipulation. Of course, they’re going to try it anyway just like people keep trying to make communism work for the first time.
It is very sad to see misinterpretation of de-laning and MVC at our schools. MVC is offered through dual enrollment and hence accessible to students. Its not part of the regular curriculum for a reason. De leaning of math from elementary to middle was done to elevate the floor of Math standards and not to stop students from advancing to higher lanes when they were ready! Yes the skip tests should be looked at better to ensure more kids can advance to higher grades based on their actual test scores. Its unfortunate how this candidate was being targeted to remove from ballot while she is actually a person who helps children with math interventions…how do you label such a person who would hold back children with math potential?? Crazy angst being spread through misinformation and misinterpretation! Sorry to see the politics of Rowena Chiu and gang. Avery could aspire to bring math excellence to pausd but at what cost? Do we not want our chdren to excel in life overall? Please vote for a person who understands children and not just math! Also keep politics out of our schools. All the anti DEI talk by supporters of Avery wont serve our children who face the world becoming increasingly unhappy in spite of having all resources at their disposal. Children who face no adversities in life suffer in their adulthood as expecting red carpet at every point in life is impractical. Teaching children how to face hardship and some failures are better than fighting their war by the extra frantic parents who push their children to success at any cost. Please have a balanced approach to life and children will be happy and succeed more in long run!