Steve Taglio and Pablo Luther won a three-way race for the Los Altos School Board early Wednesday morning, besting candidate Amanda Burke-Aaronson.
Taglio, an appointed incumbent, was chosen by the LASD board to fill out the last year of the term of departing Trustee Margot Harrigan at the end of 2011. The Los Altos resident and a LASD parent said some of the feedback he heard during the campaign were in corporated planning a large community meeting just Monday night.
Pablo Luther, a Los Altos resident who has been chair of the CACF and a parent of students who have graduated from LASD schools, told Patch he learned how truly passionate Los Altans are about education.
Burke-Aaronson, a Mountain View resident whose children attend Bullis Charter School, which falls in the district boundaries, was a distant third.
Results in are in the chart below.
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The race started with four candidates vying for two seats.
The fourth candidate, Vladimir Ivanovic, a Los Altos Hills parent who serves on the district’s Citizens Advisory Committee for Finance (CACF), withdrew Oct. 16 and the field narrowed to three.
Los Altos Patch has provided mini-profiles on each candidate, which you can see by clicking on the name of each candidate. In addition, we have provided links to related stories. Ivanovic’s profile is not included because of his withdrawal from the race.
The Los Altos-Mountain View chapter of the League of Women Voters has additional information on its Smart Voter site, some of which we’ve provided here:
Amanda Burke-Aaronson
Background
- Occupation: RN/University Professor
- Master of Science, Nursing
- Attendance Area Advisory Committee, 2007
Priorities:
- Community - striving to bring the entire community together for the good of our children.
- Communication - soliciting feedback from the community by such methods as constituent surveys, round table discussions, and "open mic" nights
- Innovation - using innovative ways to keep LASD's top programs in the face of the current financial challenges that face
Pablo Luther
Background
Occupation: Finance Executive
Serves on Citizens Advisory Committee for Finance 7 years
Three children who attended private school, Oak, Loyola and Blach LASD schools, now graduated
Priorities
Unite parents, older adults and students
Innovation
Steve Taglio
Background
- Occupation: Appointed Incumbent
- Vice President, Education Software Co.
- Strategy/Planning/Operations experience
- Former President Covington PTA (2 years)
- Golden Oak PTA School Service Award
- Site Council and Technology Chair
- Parent of 2 children in Los Altos public schools
Priorities
- Education delivery innovation
- District growth strategy
- Long-term financial stability
Results
000 of 000 Precincts Reporting (100%) Votes Percentage Los Altos School BoardSteve Taglio 7,400
37%
Pablo Luther 6,580
33% Vladimir Ivanovic (withdrew 10/16) 000,000 6,3% Amanda Burke-Aaronson
4,592
23% *indicates incumbent
But seriously, Amanda herself raised an unprecedented amount of money for an LASD election. Even with the outside money she probably spent more. BCS and their charter backers are the ones throwing around money like's it's water, for example raising $200,000 to try to defeat Anna Song, against her $6,525 "war chest". As far as votes go, the broader community also gave 6% of the votes to the guy who wasn't running so I'm not sure what conclusions you really want to draw. But she did get 3,404 more votes than him so I guess that's good.
It would be far more productive to talk about the possible alternative solutions to the schools facilities issues in Los Altos/Hills/Mountain View/Palo Alto than to use this as an opportunity to regurgitate the demonstrably untrue characterizations about money spent, voter turn out. Anyone interested in the truth about who voted for Steve, Pablo, Amanda and where they live (not surprisingly, Amanda did best in the Hills and in the Crossings) can find the data themselves at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters website; the FPPC reports speak for themselves.
I'm glad to hear Jolie mention that it would have been good if Amanda was on the LASD board. Not for the reasons she mentioned, though. Of course LASD is only making decisions based on what would kill the charter (aka the competition) and not on what is best for all in-district kids, or they would have given adequate space to BCS 10 years ago and not wasted so much time and money. Amanda (or other BCS rep) should be on the board since BCS is now 10-15% of the LASD community. BCS should have a dedicated seat on the board to keep them honest and legal.
I only wish truth had a way of shining through so that the falsehoods that are repeated over and over again by LASD Voices, the LASD BoT, Doug Smith's blog and the Hutts would come to light. Their strategy of if you say it often enough, people will believe it, has worked. Sad reflection on our community. As the Court of Appeals said about LASD -- the evidence is there to support a claim of bad faith.
How much money did the Huttlinger Alliance spend supporting Taglio and Luther? Save us a trip to San Jose and just tell us. Tell us about the cooperation between the Hutts and those two campaigns. Tell us about the cooperation between the Hutts, Dave Cortright and Doug Smith. Love to hear about that.... Yes, it would be wonderful to talk about alternative solutions but the real problem is that you do not want any solution that requires that your children and BCS children are treated equally. Hard for anyone at BCS to get behind their children getting 60% of what your child gets.
As far as Amanda's campaign I can find no written evidence she has ever brought up her BCS affiliation between her campaign site, her facebook campaign site, her Patch candidate statement and transcripts of candidate forums. She has only talked about it when challenged by others. You're the one who is being misleading, again and again.
Yes, I did mention the Palo Alto Daily Post article on David Cortright and his blog -- I did not start that discussion only mentioned it after I read about it. I found that inappropriate for someone running for an office related to educating children. Maybe you don't but I did. That was only written about because it existed and someone at the Daily Post decided it was newsworthy. That is up to each of us whether or not it is. As for Amanda and where her kids go to school -- I don't seem to recall seeing Steve and Pablo mentioning at every moment, on every sign where their kids went to school. Why hold Amanda to a different standard? It really seems hard to claim that Amanda keep it a secret when the Town Crier mentioned in in the first article they wrote and subsequently in their endorsement of her. Frankly, I'm much more interested in why Pablo Luther has never disclosed the business relationship with Mark Goines. What are your thoughts on the Court of Appeals finding that evidence supported bad faith on the part of LASD? How is that a smear campaign? It was in the opinion. I suggest you read it. So where is the truth and decency in that?
Steve and Pablo are proud of their kids going to LASD and write about it up front. Amanda tried unsuccessfully to hide her BCS conflict of interest. She would talk about it only when challenged about it. Big difference. I've read the court opinion. It's the courts way of saying they didn't rule out bad faith, not that they found bad faith or even that bad faith is more likely than not. More importantly, the court fined BCS $50,000 for not following the rules and is poised to rule against BCS on every one of the motions. Between those issues above or your opinion of who's trying to buy elections, you have a pretty distorted view of reality.
The Court did not need to find bad faith for the ruling they made. However, for the Court to cite that in an opinion is extremenly damning and unusaual There was no reason for the Court to even mention it other than they found LASD behavior so awful that they felt compelled to mention it even though it was not part of the case. BCS never made a claim of bad faith but on oral argument the Justices asked about it. And Judge Lucas has yet to order anything. You have rather jumped the gun on that one. So let's get your facts straight. She may rule for or against LASD. I imagine whatever the ruling, more litigation will follow. It's a shame that LASD cannot treat the 600+ public school students at BCS equivalent to the other public school students.
A couple things about the court case, which as we know, failed miserably for BCS in their goal of closing a thriving neighborhood public school. 1. The original LASD offer didn't count "the shrubbery" because LASD was comparing a 100% usable campus to a variably usable normal school campus. The trial court agreed with what BCS was doing. 2. The appeals court disagreed, saying that LASD must include roughly equal useless space, so include it they did in the most recent offer. 3. The appeals court mentioned that the fact that the District measured differently could LOOK LIKE bad faith if you weren't paying attention, but they understood that the District was simply measuring differently and that although they disagreed, they declined to rule that BCS was acting in bad faith because in fact they were not. Amanda left her association with BCS out of all of her materials both online and printed. No honest person can believe that was an accident. It clearly had everything to do with the fact that BCS is soundly rejected by the voters of Los Altos over and over and over again.
You're probably right when you say that more litigation will follow. BCS and its wealthy donors have proven time and time again that they're willing to use their seemingly bottomless litigation budget to repeatedly sue an elementary school district.
Why can't both sides present a solution to the land owning tax payers? We have all certainly benefited significantly through property appreciation due to having TWO great public school systems in our town. Let's all work towards solving this together and stop the mud throwing. Our children and great community depend on it.