The M-A Chronicle Editorial Board endorses Mary Beth Thompson for the District Board of Trustees Area B seat.
Thompson currently serves as the executive director of Summit Prep, a Redwood City charter school in the District, and has been an educator for nearly 15 years. She lives in San Carlos with her husband and 3-year-old son.
Thompson is the only Area B candidate who has a background in education. If elected, she would be the only board member with administrative experience.
“I’ve dedicated most of my professional career to serving students,” she told the M-A Chronicle. “When I started attending board meetings last year, I was really taken aback that there wasn’t an educator on the board.”
As both a parent and an educator, Thompson would bring an informed and balanced perspective to an increasingly contentious board. Her experience as an administrator directly working with the District has given her a greater understanding of its policies, positions, and personnel.
In a candidate questionnaire, Thompson was the only candidate who referenced specific District programs, education codes, and the District’s strategic plan in her responses. She has also demonstrated a deep understanding of both the strengths and, more importantly, the challenges of the District. From day one, she would know where to prioritize District resources and drive meaningful improvements.
Thompson’s experience at Summit also makes her the Area B candidate best positioned to advocate for minority voices in the District. In the 2023-24 school year, 80.5% of students enrolled at Summit were Hispanic or Latino, a community often over-represented in student dropout rates, suspensions, and truancies and under-represented in advanced classes and many extracurricular programs in the District. Her familiarity with the needs and challenges of the District’s Latino community gives her a unique perspective in championing their voice, which she’s already demonstrated in her advocacy for students in the English as a Second Language program.
As both a parent and an educator, Thompson would bring an informed and balanced perspective to an increasingly contentious board. Her experience as an administrator directly working with the District has given her a greater understanding of its policies, positions, and personnel.
Thompson is endorsed by numerous community members and elected officials, including Congressman Kevin Mullin, East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio López, former trustees Alan Sarver and Chris Thomsen, and three of the five current board members: active trustee Amy Koo and outgoing trustees Shawneece Stevenson and Carrie DuBois, who currently holds the Area B seat. Most importantly, Thompson is endorsed by the Sequoia District Teachers Association.
Receiving the backing of the teachers union indicates that educators—who don’t always feel represented in board decisions—have faith in Thompson to make crucial choices about their roles in the classroom. This is vital to sustaining a district that supports our teachers not just with a fiscal raise but also with trust in their knowledge and experience.
Receiving the backing of the teachers union indicates that educators—who don’t always feel represented in board decisions—have faith in Thompson to make crucial choices about their roles in the classroom.
Thompson is the only Area B candidate who openly opposes the reinstatement of tracked honors classes. After the board refrained from voting on the future of detracking, candidates’ stances on the issue are likely to play a key role in November’s elections.
When it comes to this often-controversial topic, Thompson takes an informed and appropriately moderate approach. She consistently seeks to clarify misconceptions, introduce facts, and assess issues through her understanding of multiple perspectives.
“I oppose restoring freshman and sophomore honors classes because the District’s data-driven approach is working. The comprehensive report shows more students are taking and passing advanced exams under the current system, supporting equity goals. Reintroducing honors classes would undermine the progress made in providing high-quality, inclusive education,” she told The Almanac.
“I want to clarify that the District nor myself has no interest in removing any additional honors classes, AP classes, or AS classes,” Thompson said in The Almanac’s candidate forum. “The classes that were removed were one or two from the ninth and 10th grade curriculum for very specific reasons to increase the sense of belonging—in the words of [Sequoia High School Principal] Sean Priest, ‘Let people find their people’—when they come to freshman year of high school.”
As seniors, we were the first group of students to take the full set of detracked freshman and sophomore courses. Through those diverse classrooms, we’ve formed valuable relationships with students from all walks of life. Thompson is the only Area B candidate who recognizes the value these classes bring to us as students.
One of detracking’s desired outcomes is allowing students to take advantage of their school’s diversity and get to know peers they wouldn’t have otherwise been in a classroom with. While this may work for schools like M-A that have a wide range of racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, schools with less diverse student populations may not be able to fully reap detracking’s intended benefits. Thompson understands this sort of nuance, which is essential to allowing each individual school to best serve their students’ particular needs.
“I think the school sites should have a lot of autonomy on how best to serve the students that are in their community,” she said during the candidate forum.
Last year’s District detracking report found that, while there wasn’t a significant increase in M-A’s freshman English pass rates during the first year of the detracked course’s implementation, nearly twice as many socioeconomically disadvantaged, or SED, students passed the class (received above a C-) the second year.
Detracked classes still prepare students for advanced courses in the future. During the 2023-24 school year, M-A saw a record number of students both take and pass AP exams. 94% of exams received a passing score of 3 or higher, and 41% of the exams earned a 5—the highest possible score. Moreover, AP English Language, AP Biology, and AP Chemistry scores and pass rates showed either continued improvement or little to no change from previous years.
One of the original goals of detracking was to increase enrollment of SED students in AP courses. M-A AP scores and enrollment for SED students have improved since detracked courses were implemented and reached all-time high levels during the 2023-24 school year (excluding the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when tests were significantly shortened).
Thompson also recognizes detracking’s ability to alleviate unnecessary stress during the first two years of high school. While the other Area B candidates have said they prioritize student mental health, their opposition to detracking limits our confidence in how much value they’ll place on the issue if elected.
“We put a lot of pressure on our students, and I know this as a high school principal because I see it every day,” she said at the candidate forum. “It’s not just burnout on our teachers, it’s burnout on our students.”
As students in the District, we know firsthand that our school provided us with plenty of academic challenges as underclassmen, even while taking detracked courses. We want a board member who understands the value of reduced stress upon entering high school, and Thompson’s genuine concern and dedication for students reflects that.
As seniors, we were the first group of students to take the full set of detracked freshman and sophomore courses. Through those diverse classrooms, we’ve formed valuable relationships with students from all walks of life. Thompson is the only Area B candidate who recognizes the value these classes bring to us as students.
Thompson is running against former Carlmont student trustee and Stanford freshman Jacob Yuryev—who deferred his Stanford admission to 2025—and San Mateo County Republican Party Vice-Chair Daniel Torunian.
Neither Thompson nor Yuryev, despite seeking it, were able to secure the San Mateo County Democratic Party’s nomination.
While Yuryev’s experience as a student trustee is valuable because he is—to some extent—in touch with student life at the District, he is still young. Yuryev lacks the depth of experience that inherently comes with time. He is knowledgeable about board politics, but his one-year tenure in the District is incomparable to the thorough understanding of education systems that a teacher and administrator of more than a decade, like Thompson, would have.
This experience is important: trustees vote on multi-million dollar bonds and parcel taxes for teachers and administrators. The Board’s responsibilities also include addressing pending litigation, allegations of misconduct, and sensitive issues like sexual assault, all of which demand a level of discretion that can only be obtained through years of experience.
Yuryev’s age also wouldn’t add much new perspective to the board: both the student trustee positions and Area D Trustee Sathvik Nori, who graduated from M-A in 2021, already bring student viewpoints to board meetings.
Yuryev was interviewed in and spoke at screenings of Killing America, a documentary released in April that largely focuses on and criticizes the District and M-A. The documentary includes arguments that the District’s detracking efforts are “Marxist” and calls the push for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion a “Trojan horse” that “permits antisemitism.”
When the M-A Chronicle asked Yuryev if he agreed that DEI policies were a “Trojan horse” that “permits antisemitism,” he replied, “I have no comment on this issue.”
Voters have a right to know where their elected representatives stand on critical issues, and Yuryev’s refusal to comment on his past actions and beliefs is concerning.
During a Q&A following a screening of the documentary, Yuryev described his interview process for the student trustee position. “I knew exactly what they were looking for. I applied, I was one of the students selected for the interview. During that interview, without actually personally agreeing with what I was saying, I spoon-fed exactly what they wanted to hear, and was selected as a result,” he said. “That’s kind of what’s required in order to succeed in these kinds of situations and provide the school district with genuine student thought.”
We should not elect a trustee who has lied during an interview for a position on the board, let alone someone who is comfortable publicly sharing that he lied. His willingness to openly admit this demonstrates a lack of respect for the board and a lack of maturity and transparency, which are necessary traits in an elected representative.
Yuryev has consistently called for data-driven decisionmaking, but then excused research opposing his stance on detracking as “cherry-picking” and a result of grade inflation.
He has also claimed that the primary indicator of grade inflation at the District comes from state testing scores, which he said “are either flat or decreasing.” However, at M-A, the school with the most detracked classes, state testing scores have increased across the board.
Zahara Agarwal, Yuryev’s fellow student trustee during the 2023-24 school year, said that working with him “opened [her] eyes to how young harmful prejudices can take root.” “I found myself shocked by his lack of empathy, especially towards some of our fellow students who came from different backgrounds,” she said.
“I believe his campaign does not represent our diverse district and is devoid of the compassion needed to make a difference. I cannot endorse his campaign knowing that his stances are rooted in misinformation and ignorance,” Agarwal added.
Torunian is a former PayPal executive with the least experience in education of the three candidates.
In an interview with The Almanac, he openly supported restricting transgender athletes’ participation on sports teams of the gender they identify as, despite state law explicitly banning districts from doing so.
While we respect his goals of improving communication between the board and parents, his overall lack of experience with education policy and the District makes him unprepared to take on the role of a trustee.
Not only does Thompson have far greater experience in education and the District than the other candidates, but she also clearly cares for its teachers and students. Because of her passion for education and the District’s community, she is the best choice.
