BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
On the controversial topic of math in Palo Alto, school board candidate Linda Henigin didn’t have a yes-or-no answer on whether she wants all students grouped together or separate classes for advanced and struggling students.
“What I favor is listening to teachers,” Henigin said. “I don’t think it’s the board’s job to dictate how we deliver instruction.”
When pressed on her philosophy, Henigin said she doesn’t want to lock kids into a path where they have a ceiling on their potential. She said she’s generally on the side of “de-laning,” where students are grouped in the same baseline class.
“But I’m open to having flexible grouping,” she said. “We need to ensure that we’re always meeting the wide range of learners that we have.”
De-laning is the educational practice of merging multiple academic tracks — such as remedial, regular and honors classes — into a single, unified classroom. Critics say that de-laning slows down high achievers, and wealthier families will just get private tutoring.
Proponents of laning say it’s a way of responding to 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.
At a board meeting in May 2025, Henigin said the district already sends high achievers to the most prestigious universities.
“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,” Henigin said.
Henigin told the board that general education classrooms should be the “default placement” for all students.
Henigin has criticized board member Rowena Chiu after Chiu voted against requiring students to take Ethnic Studies at a contentious board meeting on Jan. 21, 2025.
After the board meeting, Chiu reposted a social media post that called out a Black administrator, who saw racist replies to the post.
Henigin said Chiu’s repost “shredded years of equity work” at a meeting on March 11, 2025.
Henigin accused Chiu of running a “permanent campaign” because her supporters wore campaign t-shirts and brought signs into the boardroom at a meeting on April 22, 2025.
Henigin is running against two of Chiu’s supporters, John Craig and Avery Wang, and is backed by two of Chiu’s unsuccessful opponents from 2024: Chris Colohan and Nicole Chiu-Wang.
Chiu’s former campaign manager, parent Virginia Noh, sued Henigin for allegedly misleading voters by describing herself as a “math teacher” on the ballot.
Henigin doesn’t have a single-subject credential to teach a standalone math class. She worked as a part-time aide at Duveneck Elementary School until June and provided math intervention services to students, Credential and Hiring Analyst Laurel Moore said in a letter following Noh’s lawsuit.
Henigin said teaching math is where she received her primary income this year. “A teacher teaches in a variety of ways. I teach groups of children how to do math,” she said in an interview.
Henigin has been involved in organizing volunteers to watch the Caltrain tracks in an effort to prevent student suicides. She advocated for closing the Churchill Avenue crossing at a council meeting in April.
Henigin said the board’s most important job will be digging the district out of a budget deficit without causing division.
Henigin is endorsed by the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, former Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and nine former school board members: Terry Godfrey, Dana Tom, Susie Richardson, Heidi Emberling, Alan Davis, Barbara Sih Klausner, Cathy Kroymann, Amado Padilla and Diane Reklis.
She said she’s generally on the side of “de-laning,”
That means Henigin’s going to just keep delaning and watering down whatever rigor that’s left from the good work done by the teachers in the 80’s and 90’s.
The current curriculum is a joke. High schoolers are assigned graphic novels, aka, comic books as required reading. Instead of reading the classics, they watch the movie adaptation instead. No wonder district enrollment is down by 30%.
Vote for John Craig and Avery Wang, who actually wants the district to properly educate our kids.
More specifically Henigin helps tutor elementary school students in arithmetic. You know, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. A math teacher is credentialed to teach algebra, geometry, algebra II and calculus.
Henigin’s de-laning idea is mediocrity disguised as equity.
Students don’t learn at the same pace or need the same level of challenge. Holding advanced students back to accommodate everyone else isn’t equity—it’s lowering the bar.
If the answer is “wealthy families can just hire tutors,” then you haven’t fixed inequality—you’ve made private tutoring the escape hatch for families who can afford it.
PAUSD needs board members who understand that excellence and equity are not achieved by lowering expectations. This approach raises serious questions about whether Henigin’s educational philosophy is aligned with what our students and district need.
PAUSD should be raising the ceiling for every student, not lowering it for everyone. When you vote, ask yourself a simple question: Do you want a school board that raises academic standards and challenges every student—or one that moves toward a one-size-fits-all model? That choice should be central to how voters evaluate Henigin and the other candidates.
Yes to lanes. On El Camino, on Oregon Expwy, on 101 and 280. Slow lanes if you need to go slow(ly), fast lanes if you want to go fast. Q.E.D.
So basically she is on the side of delaning. Perhaps she should listen to the teachers. Delaning basically penalizes most of the kids, according to many of the teachers I personally spoke to. They end up with roughly 3 groups of kids in the same classroom – these that are behind on the subject, these that are advanced and these that are in the right class. What are teachers supposed to do? They cannot teach all 3 groups successfully, so they will end up focusing on one – generally the one that is in the right class – leaving kids that need extra help even more behind, and kids that already understand the material bored and disruptive. How does this benefit anyone?
Delaning math is one of the worst ideas out there, right up there with San Francisco’s “no algebra till 9th grade” fiasco. It should be disqualifying. Plus Henigin thinks $36k per student (and growing) isn’t enough, and wants to reinstate the property tax surcharge. She’s made no assessment of what’s needed – she just wants more money. She sounds more like a teacher union head than a sensible board member.
When selecting school board candidates, don’t vote for the union-backed Linda Henigin. Never forget what the teacher unions did to our kids during covid! Now they’re bankrupting our school district with their over-the-top pay raises. No to Henigin.
Linda Henigin is lying on the ballot when she says she’s a math teacher and she used the district website improperly to try and recruit student volunteers for her campaign. She also is in favor of raising teacher pay to the skies despite the district being in deficit primarily because of teacher raises. She is also in favor of mandatory, graded ethnic studies classes despite the fact that few students want grades for politically motivated ethnic studies on their transcripts. She wants to pressure the City Council to shut down the Caltrain Churchill crossing, which will cause a traffic nightmare. She’s in favor of de-laning, which will penalize top students in favor of average students. She is against teaching higher math which give students who want to get ahead a head start on college, no doubt saving them and their parents money. She’s well-financed by the teachers’ union and its supporters, however, which is hardly a surprise.
I’d like to hear her and the other candidates address this: We’ve lost three boys who were getting gender-affirming care. They were given “safe haven” in the theater class. They were getting puberty blockers and other drugs to make the transition. Something happened and they decided to jump in front of a speeding train. How should the school district address this situation?
Linda supports bringing homeless to Palo Alto to live and supports the struggling students from EPA. I want someone who will support our Palo Alto students and definitely NO to homeless people, they are not paying taxes.
I agree. Palo Alto’s schools and resources should first and foremost serve Palo Alto students and families who live here\. At the same time, we should have empathy for vulnerable students, including those facing difficult circumstances, and make sure they are treated with dignity and have access to an education.
But compassion does not mean Palo Alto has to become the default solution for every regional problem\. Our elected officials should prioritize the needs of Palo Alto students while working with neighboring communities and agencies to address broader regional challenges\. Palo Alto schools are not a regional entitlement, and there should be reasonable limits on how far our local resources are expected to stretch.
Another article says the judge in my lawsuit said she can call herself a math teachet. That is incorrect.
[Editor’s note: The article doesn’t say the judge ruled she can call herself a math teacher.]
I decided not to pursue holding the printing of the ballots and cause any possible delay to the election. Subsequently, Linda will not be forced to change her ballot designation. However, I do intend to continue with the lawsuit and have filed an amended Writ designating alternate resolutions to holding the ballots.
A merit hearing has not yet been held so the judge has not decided anything on the merit of the case.
It would be nice if she was removed if she gets elected.
The article didn’t say that the judge said Henigin can call herself a math teacher. Read it again, it doesn’t say that.
Here’s what actually happened in court. 1. Noh didn’t serve the Registrar of Voters, which concerned the judge. Essentially Noh, acting as her own lawyer, sued the wrong person. 2. Judge Helen Williams said Noh had to show that Henigin’s ballot title could be changed without affecting the election. But the representative from the Registrar of Voters said Henigin’s ballot title couldn’t be changed because the ballots had already been sent to the printers.
Noh can propose whatever she wants and have a merit hearing (whatever that is), but it’s moot at this point.