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The race to fill three seats on the Woodside Elementary School District Board of Trustees looks a little different this year, with three of the five candidates running together as a slate. Incumbent Jenny Hayden has teamed up with Brett Westervelt and Amanda Peiffer, while candidates Rick Yost and William Dunn are running individual campaigns.
Hayden and her slate are endorsed by current WESD board president Jennifer Zweig, current WESD board trustees Peter Bailey and Neil Sequeira, Woodside Mayor Dick Brown and other current and past Woodside elected officials.
Jenny Hayden: Getting back to normal after the pandemic
The only incumbent in a pack of five candidates vying for three seats, Woodside Elementary School District (WESD) board trustee Jenny Hayden’s top priority if reelected is getting the district back to a sense of normalcy.
“Our school is a tight knit community and the special part of it is the connections between all members of the community,” said Hayden, who attended Woodside Elementary School herself as a child. “Many connections were lost during COVID and our challenge is to rekindle that community spirit.”
Hayden said she and her fellow board members already made some headway on this goal by bringing back as many traditions as possible, such as the Back to School BBQ, Back to School Night and Operetta, an annual musical production starring the 8th grade class.
Having served the district through the pandemic, 44-year-old Hayden said she’s running for reelection because she still has work she’d like to get done, like implementing the recently adopted strategic plan.
One of the biggest challenges she foresees the district facing in coming years is its large backlog of deferred maintenance.
“We have a Facilities Committee and we will be working through this over the next few years to identify the projects with the highest priority and the funds needed to complete those,” she said.
Hayden, who has two kids enrolled in WESD, believes the district has done a good job at managing its budget and implementing statewide mandates such as the Universal Meal Program and universal transitional kindergarten (TK). But she also anticipates that funding those programs will be a challenge the district must find creative ways to overcome. If reelected, she said she’ll “look for different sources of funding like grants and continue to look to run the school more efficiently.”
Something she’s not concerned with is enrollment. Though most local public schools saw sharp dips in enrollment after the pandemic started, Hayden believes things have since stabilized for WESD.
“Enrollment has been 360, 363 and now 372 in the past three years,” she said. “I believe young families are still moving to Woodside. Our preschool is completely full, which is a good sign that those students will move into the elementary school.”
While Hayden is the lone incumbent in the race, she’s running as part of a slate with two other newcomers: Brett Westervelt and Amanda Peiffer.
“Brett, Amanda and I have a tradition of service and commitment to the school that our school needs,” Hayden said of her decision to run as part of a slate. “We are all committed to maintaining the excellence of our school while also looking to make it even better.”
Brett Westervelt: Professional skills are a unique asset
A parent to two children enrolled in the Woodside Elementary School District, Brett Westervelt said his decade of career experience in management and product design will offer a unique perspective to the school board.
“I believe I can contribute my experience as a people manager to help support the superintendent and school staff in their work,” said Westervelt, 40, who’s running as part of a slate with incumbent Jenny Hayden and fellow newcomer Amanda Peiffer. “As a designer, my work involves empathy and close collaboration with others I’ll leverage this experience to understand and support the needs of key school stakeholders.”
If elected, Westervelt’s top priority is working with the board and school leadership to implement the recently adopted five-year strategic plan for the district. He also looks forward to maintaining “the academic excellence that’s made WESD an attractive school for families,” he said, something he believes the district does particularly well.
Westervelt also wants to make sure the district is inclusive and approachable for all families, an area in which he believes it still has some work to do.
“WESD has a rich history with wonderful traditions, but it can sometimes be challenging for all students and families to feel a part of the school community,” Westervelt said. “I’d like to find ways to maintain the spirit of these traditions while also making sure that everyone feels included.”
Another challenge he anticipates navigating is the impacts of the pandemic on students and staff.
“I’d like to look for ways we can increase our support of teachers and continue investing in counseling and other areas to meet the needs of each of our students,” he said.
Like his fellow slate members Hayden and Peiffer, Westervelt is keen on investing in infrastructure and facilities. The three-member slate is unified in not being concerned about enrollment, each stating that enrollment has stabilized and the district’s full preschool is a good sign that this will remain the case into the future.
“I decided to run with Jenny and Amanda because I think they’d be amazing members on the board and I’m excited about the prospect of working with them and the two incumbent board members,” Westervelt said of his decision. “Jenny has been a committed, effective board member over these past four years and Amanda is clearly committed to the school community and brings valuable experience from her nonprofit service and volunteer work.”
Amanda Peiffer: Implementing WESD’s strategic plan
Board trustee hopeful Amanda Peiffer has been involved in the Woodside Elementary School District since her kids started attending in 2015. Now with four children currently enrolled in the district, Peiffer believes she knows the district well enough to make a difference on its board of trustees.
“As a classroom volunteer, a longtime member of the Woodside School Foundation, which is the fundraising institution for the district, a girls’ sports coach, an involved partner with my children’s teachers, and a regular PTA volunteer, I am knowledgeable about the traditions, values, culture and challenges of the district,” 45-year-old Peiffer told the Almanac.
Peiffer’s top priority if elected is to implement the district’s recently adopted five-year strategic plan, which she sees as the best way to “further the educational and operational excellence of the district.”
Like her opponents Jenny Hayden and Brett Westervelt who are running as a slate of three for the three open seats this election season Peiffer anticipates that whittling down the district’s list of deferred maintenance projects will be one of its biggest challenges in the coming years.
“These big ticket projects will need collaboration with school leadership and the community,” Peiffer said. “It will also require the board to be responsible fiscal stewards.”
To that end, Peiffer said she will help the district maintain a healthy budget if elected, being mindful of costs pertaining to program, facilities and staffing, she said.
While public schools across the Bay Area saw a decline in the size of their student bodies after COVID hit, Peiffer believes WESD has recovered well.
“One strategy to further increase enrollment is to market the incredible community and student-centered program to families who live in Woodside but send their children to non-district schools,” Peiffer said. “In fact, this is a stated goal of the strategic plan.”
Peiffer said of her slate, “Jenny, Brett and I all see the way forward as incremental improvements, while respecting the values and traditions of our community.”
Rick Yost wants to step up its campus security
As a former U.S. Army Officer, Rick Yost said his background will help him address his top concerns if elected to the Woodside Elementary School District board of trustees.
“I am concerned about security. We have an open campus and the district is in a town that could be a target,” Yost told The Almanac. “As a former U.S. Army Ranger qualified officer, I am uniquely qualified to review our security measures and posture to keep our students and teachers safe.”
Yost, who now works as a technical program manager with Google Cloud Security, believes falling test scores are another big challenge the district faces.
“Academic excellence is the mission of this school and that is what matters to families,” Yost said. “I have talked to many families that have left and several indicate that Woodside Elementary School is not as good as it used to be.”
That being said, Yost believes WESD’s response to COVID-19 helped kids stay relatively on track.
“I think that by sending our kids back to school in person relatively early, we were able to avoid most of the negative ramifications that are being documented across the state and country,” Yost said.
He added that the continuous COVID testing was “certainly a good preventative measure,” but he would have opted to remove the mask mandate earlier.
Though the district’s enrollment has stabilized in recent years, Yost said it’s still a top concern for him after the pandemic brought enrollment rates down for public schools across the Bay Area.
“I think this is an indicator that we need to focus on the things that have made this an excellent public school,” he said of enrollment rates.
If elected, Yost says he’ll advocate for fiscal responsibility and ensuring that local tax dollars are put to good use.
“I think the budget needs to be reviewed and the question asked, ‘Is this the best use of our monies in accomplishing our mission of academic excellence?'” he said.
William Dunn wants to help put divisiveness in the past
William Dunn, an airline pilot and California Air National Guard Officer, believes the Woodside Elementary School District Board of Trustees needs greater diversity of thought and that he’s the candidate for the job.
“The board traditionally acts unanimously, which is good, but the discussion of policy and debate of ideas that precede those unanimous votes should be rigorous and thought provoking in order to serve the best interest of our community,” Dunn told The Almanac. “I believe that I can be a voice for those diverse ideas, viewpoints and values that will make our governing body stronger.”
Dunn, 41, grew up in Woodside and attended district schools before leaving to attend the United States Air Force Academy in 1999. He returned in 2015 with his wife and their kids, three of whom are currently enrolled in the district.
One thing Dunn believes the district is already doing well is offering Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs) to students who need them. But he believes the district falls short in developing programs for accelerated students.
“Many parents feel their children have particular academic gifts that are not being fully developed with the standard academic timeline at Woodside,” Dunn said. “They seek private schools and other alternatives that offer accelerated paths in order to cultivate their gifts. I believe Woodside can offer differentiated learning, and in doing so draw students back to our school.”
If elected, Dunn says he’ll advocate for recruiting “the best educators in the region.”
“Our teachers are our school’s greatest resource and without them we have nothing,” he said. “I know from my children’s classes that we have amazingly talented teachers and the school does an exceptional job of deliberately placing children into classes with the right teacher-student match.”
He also hopes to help foster a common ground among different viewpoints, “given the controversial climate surrounding education in our country today,” he said.
“My final goal is to reinvigorate fundamental educational principles and in doing so shelter our school and teachers from controversy,” Dunn said. “There is so much that we can all agree should be taught to our children. By pushing forward on common academic priorities we can set aside differences that manifest themselves in divisiveness and controversy.”
Email Staff Writer Malea Martin at mmartin@mv-voice.com.
