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The four candidates running for two seats on the Sunol Glen Unified School District board of trustees discussed the district’s proposed facilities bond measure, transparency, community building and their goals for office at a public forum last week.
Gagan Bassi, Jennifer Kavouniaris, Karen Newcomb and René Turnbull will compete in the Nov. 3 election, which is poised to shift the makeup of the three-person board overseeing the single-campus K-8 district. The Oct. 14 forum, hosted by the Pleasanton Weekly, drew about 40 people.
The elected candidates would replace Peter “Ted” Romo and Chris Bobertz, who chose not to run for reelection. The candidates are all political newcomers.
Renovating a 100-year-old building
The forum touched on several issues the district is facing, with one of the main ones being the condition of the school’s facilities.
Sunol Glen is currently in the process of making some major structural and facilities improvements funded by Measure J, a $10.9 million general obligation bond approved by voters in 2022. The work includes the replacement of several roofs, accessibility improvements and the renovation of the school’s kitchen and cafeteria space.
Measure J is one of two bond measures approved by Sunol residents in the school district’s 100 year history; the other was approved in 1999.
However, during the initial phases of the renovation, district officials said they found many more structural issues than they anticipated. As a result, the board voted to place a $6.1 million bond, Measure K, on this year’s ballot to help pay for infrastructure improvements.
While neither Bassi nor Kavouniaris took a firm position on supporting Measure K —saying they preferred to let voters decide — they both acknowledged its potential to address vital infrastructure needs.
Kavouniaris noted that attending past board meetings showed her the urgency of those facility upgrades for students, while Bassi highlighted that the improvements could also pave the way for new educational programming and activities.
“However, I also believe that this is a decision of the voters,” Kavouniaris said.
Newcomb and Turnbull, on the other hand, were vocal in their support of Measure K.
Newcomb said while she understands why some residents might be wary of the new bond measure after the district passed Measure J four years ago, she emphasized the current funding gap the school is facing for facility improvements.
She said Sunol Glen is one of the lowest funded schools in the region when it comes to bond measures and that the district has an excellent track record, and plan, for appropriately using taxpayer dollars to renovate the school.
Turnbull said as the former dean of Contra Costa College, she has had experience with bond measures and recognized that Measure J funding helped the district discover additional issues with the facilities’ structural integrity, which are natural when dealing with a 100-year-old building. She said the district is seeking to pass Measure K to finish the work it started with Measure J funding.
“We’ve only had these two bonds voted in, and we need additional funds to make sure the school lasts another 100 years,” Turnbull said.
Candidates agree on need for fiscal transparency
Bassi said as someone who doesn’t quite understand a lot of jargon regarding the district’s budget, she would like to see more quarterly financial reports that lay out how the district is doing financially in layperson’s terms. She said those type of one-page slides would give residents more knowledge and confidence in how the district is spending its money.
“Just simple language so, from 18 years to 80 years, anyone can understand what has been done in the last four months, what are our issues and what we are planning to do in the next four months,” Bassi said.
Kavouniaris agreed with Bassi on the importance of the board maintaining open communication with the public and said the budget should revolve around serving students.
Newcomb said the best focus for the district’s three-year operational budget would be prioritizing services and projects to align with the district’s finances.
Turnbull pointed out how hard managing the school district’s budget can be when most of the money goes to paying employees, but she said the district’s newly formed budget advisory committee has been a great way to show the community what those budget discussions look like and further promote transparency.
Moving past old controversies
In addition to dealing with some of the upcoming financial and construction hurdles, the school board candidates addressed several controversies the district as faced over the last three years, including pride flag debate and the recall of former school board trustees Ryan Jergensen and Linda Hurley.
Kavouniaris said she received a lot of negative attention during those controversial pride flag discussions and now regrets a lot of the “political mess” that she got herself into during that time.
Kavouniaris was a vocal supporter of the board’s 2023 decision to ban flying the pride flag at the school, and in old Facebook posts aligned herself with far-right groups that are openly anti-LGBTQIA+.
“My views have changed on a lot of those topics,” Kavouniaris said, adding that now she hopes to just focus on doing what’s right for the children.
Bassi said she remembers those controversial moments and that if elected, she will work closely with students and parents who might still be feeling some of those repercussions and make sure that type of environment never returns.
Newcomb said it was painful to see that type of controversy come up in Sunol and that the community still has a lot of healing to do, which is why she pledged to continue listening to people and providing the resources they need.
Turnbull similarly said it takes a lot for a community to move past that sort of emotional trauma and, if elected, she will work to continue pushing the community forward in a positive direction. She also noted that, since Jergensen and Hurley were recalled, the current school board has had some “really solid, boring school board meetings where they just got work done,” which she said has been refreshing.
Commuter families, students
All four candidates also shared similar views when it came to interdistrict transfer students, a topic that has been contentious in the past. Interdistrict transfers are students who don’t live in Sunol but are given special permission to attend to the school.
During a lot of the political discourse that took place in 2023 and 2024, many commuter families said they felt alienated and not welcomed. Amid Hurley and Jergensen’s recall, commuters were labeled as outsiders.
However, the four Sunol school board candidates said during the forum that commuter students are crucial to keeping the school alive. But they also agreed that more needs to be done to grow the school’s enrollment numbers.
According to the minutes from a Sept. 22 budget advisory committee meeting, school personnel has noted a decline in enrollment from about 260 students to 235 students in recent years, though they did note transitional kindergarten enrollment has been increasing, which they called “a promising indicator of future growth.”
Newcomb proposed the school advertise itself more so families in the surrounding area know just how much Sunol Glen has to offer.
“If elected, I plan to make that the absolute first thing that I work on,” Newcomb said. “It’s going to be a critical balancing act of enrollment versus budget cuts, and the first thing we can do is try to do something positive — boost the enrollment so less budget cuts are required.”
Kavouniaris said one of the ways she would like to address enrollment issues is by bringing more programs to the school. She said she would like to look into introducing classes like robotics, which will challenge students and prepare them for similar high school courses.
Bassi similarly said the school should explore adding more extracurricular activities and programs for students. She also said it needs to find out why more middle-school students are leaving Sunol Glen for other schools.
She pulled her own children from the school and sent them to Pleasanton Middle School.
Turnbull said while she believes enrollment is an important topic, she recognized it may be difficult to have those discussions at the moment given all of the construction happening at the school.
Still, she agreed that interdistrict transfer students do play a huge role in the district and that the school should do more to market its strengths and increase enrollment.
The other topics discussed at last week’s forum included student safety and the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom. Candidates were also asked to share their thoughts on special interests groups influencing the local election.
To hear the candidates’ full answers to all questions, watch the video of the forum embedded in this story above or on the Pleasanton Weekly’s YouTube page.
