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For four local school districts, there’s no need to wait until Election Day to learn who will be serving on their school boards. Woodside, Portola Valley, Ravenswood and Las Lomitas school districts all have uncontested races and will welcome new and returning school board members this fall.
Woodside Elementary School District
School board candidates for Woodside Elementary School District will be running unopposed on the Nov. 3 ballot, with two new board members and one incumbent serving four-year terms. Incumbent Amanda Pfeiffer will be returning alongside newcomers Sujay Jaswa and Mia Hall.
Jaswa is a Woodside parent and co-founder of WndrCo, a technology investment firm based in the Bay Area. He is also a lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Jaswa did not submit a candidate statement or respond to a request for comment.
Hall is a parent to four children at Woodside Elementary and previously served on the boards of the Parent Teacher Association and the Woodside School Foundation. She’s volunteered as a coach for the Alpine Little League and has dedicated many hours over the last decade to working in classrooms, helping school staff and administrators, and fundraising for the school.
Hall said she wants to prioritize evidence-based curriculum and enrichment programs, maintaining small class sizes and top-tier resources in science, music, physical education and English learner programs.
Peiffer is the only incumbent returning to the school board and was first elected in 2022. She’s lived in Woodside since 2015 and currently has two children enrolled at Woodside Elementary and two in high school. Along with serving on the school board, Peiffer also volunteers on two nonprofit boards and coaches fifth-grade girls’ basketball.
During her first term, Peiffer said she is proud to have worked on the district’s new kindergarten and transitional kindergarten building, which was completed on time and on budget, along with other facilities improvements across the campus.
She told The Almanac in an email that she is running for reelection to continue working on other district projects, including campus modernization, creek stabilization work, developing the district’s five-year strategic plan and creating an artificial intelligence framework for the district.
Portola Valley School District
Two incumbents will be returning to the Portola Valley School District board: Robert “KX” Jin and Aimee Armsby. The uncontested race will not be on the ballot.
Jin was appointed to the board in November 2025 to fill in a vacancy after board member Amod Setlur resigned in October. As a parent with children at Ormondale and Corte Madera, Jin has volunteered on the district’s AI Task Force, helping staff develop a strategy to integrate technology and artificial intelligence into the educational space.
“We should provide age-appropriate AI literacy and prepare older students to use AI effectively without displacing their thinking,” he said in his candidate statement.
Jin believes that the district needs sustainable budgets that will support educational priorities, attract and retain staff, and maintain campus facilities.
Aimee Armsby was appointed to the school board in 2021, filling a seat after two board members stepped down a year before their term ended. She is a local parent, an attorney and former Portola Valley Schools Foundation board member.
Las Lomitas Elementary School District
Incumbents Heather Hopkins and Gautam Nadella will serve another term on the Las Lomitas Elementary School District board along with Erin K. Tiedens, who was provisionally appointed to the board on Aug. 26 to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of Paige Winikoff. All candidates will serve until 2030.
Tiedens is a substitute teacher and parent who is deeply involved in districtwide initiatives. She is currently serving her second term as president of the La Entrada PTA and was elected to the La Entrada School Site Council, where she works with parents and educators to create a district plan to drive student achievement, according to her candidate statement.
Tiedens also founded the Las Lomitas Inclusion Initiative, which aims to bring parents and caretakers of students with learning disabilities together to strengthen the community. She began substituting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her goals as a board member are to effectively listen, ask questions and make decisions supported by data. Tiedens’ priorities also include financial stewardship, the interest of students, transparency, accountability and collaboration between families, staff and board members.
Hopkins returns to the board after serving one full term as a trustee. She was appointed to the board in 2021 to fill one of two vacancies left by former trustees Dana Nunn and John Earnhardt. Hopkins has also founded two educational nonprofits: Community Equity Collaborative and My Red Shoes.
As a board member, she led efforts to strengthen spending oversight, increase transparency and update district policies, according to Hopkins’ candidate statement. In her next term, she said she will prioritize supporting student growth, maintaining the district’s long-term financial stability and stewarding district land for the benefit of the community.
Nadella was first appointed to the board in 2021 along with Hopkins and won in 2022 to serve a full term. He is a father to two boys in the district, one with special needs. He works as a CEO of a private equity operating company and previously served as a board member for the Las Lomitas Education Foundation.
Nadella believes that his experience in financial management and strategic decision making strongly applies to his role on the board. In his candidate statement, he said that he will focus on ensuring the district remains financially strong, academically excellent and that every child is given the opportunity to achieve.
Ravenswood City School District
Three incumbent school board members will continue to serve the Ravenswood City School District next year: Laura Nunez, Mele Kasavu Latu and Tamara Sobomehin.
Nunez is a math teacher and athletic director at East Palo Alto Academy. She is an East Palo Alto native and her family has lived in the area since 1997. Nunez was first elected in 2022.
Latu was appointed to the board in 2020 to fill a vacant seat and won an election in 2022 to serve a full term. She has over a decade of experience working in East Palo Alto and previously worked as a senior manager at Emerson Collective.
Sobomehin is a graduate teaching assistant at Stanford University Graduate School of Education and chief education officer of StreetCode Academy, an East Palo Alto nonprofit dedicated to teaching coding, entrepreneurship and design to economically disadvantaged communities.
Sobomehin was elected to the Ravenswood board in 2018 and will be serving her third term.
The district’s candidates did not file candidate statements and could not be reached for comment.
