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A teacher who works in Hayward and hails from Pleasanton will be looking for a seat on the Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees during this November’s election.
Charlie Jones, who officially launched his campaign for the Area 4 seat on the school board on May 26, said he has been concerned about how the PUSD Board of Trustees has been operating and said as an educator he can bring in fresh, new perspectives to tackle some of the district’s challenging issues.
“I felt like if you want something done right, you want the people with the best experience that understand what’s going on,” Jones told the Weekly. “I’m an educator. I’m a teacher, this is what I do … this is my area of expertise and that’s the type of person that you want making these difficult and tough decisions.”
He will be competing to take over longtime educator Steve Maher’s seat on the board. Maher told the Weekly he will be stepping down from the school board after eight years because he felt it is time to move on and let someone new take the reins.
Jones is a product of the PUSD after his family moved to the city when he was in first grade. After graduating college, Jones moved back to Pleasanton and began teaching social studies at Hayward’s Tennyson High School in 2017.
He said he always knew he wanted to be a teacher growing up and it was the teachers at Amador Valley High School who inspired him to follow in their footsteps.
It was also those same teachers who helped him after coming out as gay during high school and have even pushed him to be comfortable as a gay teacher.
If he is elected to the PUSD school board, it would signify a major milestone, according to his campaign: Jones would be the first openly gay elected official in local office in Pleasanton’s 130-year history, which Jones said could open the doors for others in the LGBTQIA+ community.
However, that milestone isn’t the only reason Jones is running for the seat. He said he decided to throw his name in the race because he doesn’t like how the district has been spending money.
“I didn’t like that we were deficit-spending for about five years now,” Jones said. “Selling property is not the solution and eventually you don’t have property to sell and we risk cutting programs that we love and care about as time goes on if we don’t fix this problem.”
He also hasn’t liked how many times the district has been at an impasse during negotiations with the teachers union because it causes distrust between the district and the community, which is something he wants to restore.
Jones said he wants to expand programs such as the dual language immersion program so all students can have successful pathways toward their futures because student success is important to him.
While this is his first time running for public office, Jones said he has been a part of several funding discussions, committee meetings regarding surplus spending and has served at his local union in Hayward, which all gives him the experience needed for the job.
“This is something that Pleasanton Unified School District really needs,” Jones said. “A person who understands right from day one what needs to be done and how to do it to make sure that our district is not just back on track, but is better serving the needs of all of our students.”
If elected, his goal is to build consensus with the board because he believes that people can still do great things even while working with people they don’t get along with and he also believes the board will always put students first, which should make working together easier.
“I definitely know we’ve seen tension and issues around this board between different people but that’s normal,” Jones said. “That’s where you come up with not just compromise but you come up with clever solutions that you might not have thought about otherwise.”
More information about Jones’s campaign can be found at CharlieForSchoolBoard.com.
