Tamalpais Union High School District: Newcomers Holden and Times-Green dominate vote for two board seats
In a five-way race among newcomers, Jennifer Holden of San Anselmo and Ida Times-Green of Marin City are cruising to easy victories for two vacant seats on the Tamalpais Union High School District board of trustees.
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As of preliminary results from the Nov. 5 election, posted early Nov. 8, voters had cast 48,570 ballots in the pick-two race. Times-Green has 19,090 votes, Holden 18,337 votes, with both picked on about 39% of ballots cast in the race.
They’ll serve four-year terms on the five-member board starting in December, replacing board members Leslie Harlander and Karen Loebbaka, who both declined to seek reelection. The six-school district includes Redwood High School, the main public high school for Tiburon Peninsula residents.
Trailing far behind is Amos Klausner of San Geronimo, at 7,641 votes, on about 16% of ballots cast, and Nicholas Ondrejka of San Rafael, at 7,020 votes, or 16% of ballots cast. Closing things out is Ray Chaudhuri of Mill Valley with 5,644 votes, on about 12% of ballots.
While Strawberry voters also put Times-Green on about 39% of ballots, she saw much lower support in Tiburon, at 33%, and Belvedere, at 30%, where many voters showed a preference for Ondrejka, at about 20% and 18% in the respective towns. Holden’s backing across the Tiburon Peninsula mirrored the districtwide vote.
Some 48,570 of 86,846 registered district voters cast ballots in the race, for turnout of about 56% so far.
Times-Green, 63, is a fourth-generation Tamalpais High School graduate who has a master’s in social work and currently serves as a senior program coordinator with the county Department of Health and Human Services.
She spent eight years on the board of the Sausalito-Marin City School District, noting she has a “proven track record of building consensus to achieve collaborative outcomes.”
“I’m a strong believer in the transformative power of public service, and I see it as my calling,” she said while campaigning.
Times-Green said one of the board’s priorities over the next four years should be improving climate, culture and belonging at all school sites, including working with feeder schools to prepare students for high school when the time comes.
Holden, 45, is the founder of a natural, handcrafted skincare line, Oleema Skincare. She has three children, two of whom attend Archie Williams High School and one who recently graduated from there. She’s been an active volunteer in local schools for some 13 years, including serving on the Tam district’s racial-equity task force and with the Falcon Foundation, which raises money to support academic and enrichment programs at Archie Williams.
She said her volunteer roles within the district have helped her learn more about the needs of students, teachers and the larger community.
Holden has said she wants “to be of service to the community that I love and to make the schools the best they can be,” adding that her priorities are to improve academic performance, rebuild trust with the community by fostering increased transparency and communication and addressing schools’ needs in a fiscally responsible way.
Both supported Measure B, the $289-million facilities-bond measure that passed on the same ballot. Holden said it is “much better” than Measure A — the $517-million bond that narrowly failed in March — because it is responsive to community concerns about prioritizing critical projects.
Times-Green said the importance of Measure B passing to avoid “critical cuts,” as district officials have warned that the urgency of some of the work — particularly districtwide heating, ventilation and cooling upgrades and roof repairs, which need to be done in the next two to five years — meant the district would likely have needed to cut programs to pay for the projects of the measure failed.
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