Ex-PayPal executive running for Sequoia district school board

Candidate became more interested in politics after career in tech

by Arden Margulis | August 22, 2024 11:34 am | RWCPulse | LINK

Daniel Torunian says he would capitalize on business expertise in the area, among other things, if elected to the Sequoia Union High School District Board of Trustees. Courtesy Daniel Torunian.

Former PayPal vice president and San Mateo County Republican Party Vice-Chair Daniel Torunian is one of three hoping to replace Trustee Carrie Du Bois on the Sequoia Union High School District governing board.

Torunian, a Redwood City resident, is running against former Carlmont High School student Jacob Yuryev and charter school principal Mary Beth Thompson.

Torunian managed information technology at PayPal for 11 years before retiring in 2022. After 40 years in corporate America, he became active in politics.

“I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable that we were moving into kind of almost one party rule and I think that that’s never healthy,” Torunian said. “In the end, I don’t think that schooling and education, safety, homelessness, are necessarily Republican or Democrat issues, and many of them are just common sense issues.”

Detracking

Torunian became interested in the Sequoia district because he aims to help high schoolers prepare for their future.

“As this next generation starts to become young adults — they go into the workforce, they get married, maybe some of them become our future leaders. How do we prepare them for all the challenges that the world is sort of throwing at them, and how complex things are?” he said.

“I think that these questions have a direct correlation to the curriculum,” he said. “There’s this ongoing debate right now that I’ve been watching from a distance about: do you modify this kind of the merit hierarchy that we see in many of these schools?”

The Sequoia Union High School District has cut many freshman and some sophomore honors classes. The district has said that grouping students together increased socioeconomically disadvantaged students’ graduation and A-G completion rates and did not hurt non-socioeconomically disadvantaged students. The district has yet to remove an AP class due to detracking, but parent groups were concerned the district may be planning to in the future.

“I feel like [detracking] could be a slippery slope, if not dealt with in the appropriate way,” Torunian said. “The problem we’re trying to solve is we want to lift more students up. We want to see higher graduation rates. We want to see more success. I don’t know if I’m completely there that [detracking] is the right strategy to achieve that outcome.”

He says he wants to speak more with parents, educators and students about detracking to inform himself more on the issue.

“I’m in that phase of just absorbing and taking it all in,” he said. “My instincts tell me that I am not in favor of [detracking]. I would like to support those instincts with more data and more information, but I don’t feel like that is a tactic that is going to lift up other students. I really want to lift everybody up and find the appropriate way to do that, as opposed to maybe penalizing those who are in AP classes or other merit based classes.”

Transgender athletes

Currently the Sequoia district follows California’s Interscholastic Federation’s rules that allow transgender athletes to play in sports as the gender with which they identify without requiring surgery or medication. Other states have restricted transgender women from competing in female leagues due to a potential unfair biological advantage.

Torunian cites a study of transgender people in the U.S. Air Force that found after two years of taking feminizing hormones, even though transgender women no longer have an advantage when doing pushups or situps, they are still on average 9% faster than biological women.

“That led me to the belief of look: we don’t know a lot about this just yet, and maybe time will help shape our perspective differently. But right now, girls and young women’s sports should stay girls and young women’s,” Torunian said. “And if we do have students who are transitioning and want to be active in athletics, let’s create a safe and appropriate space for them to compete, but against other transgender athletes.”

State law currently prevents districts from creating such policies, though local districts can advocate for the CIF to revise its policies.

Teachers’ curriculum

Sequoia Union High School District Trustee Shawneece Stevenson comforts the distraught student during a tense discussion about over a controversial ethnic studies lesson during a January school board meeting. Photo by Arden Margulis.

In October 2023, a Menlo-Atherton High School teacher taught a controversial lesson on the Israel-Palestine conflict, prompting some groups to call for increased oversight of teachers’ curriculum. Torunian thinks that teachers should be able to share their perspective, but that there needs to be a separation of opinion from facts.

“Every teacher is a human being and has their own perspectives and their own experiences,” he said. “I would never want to stifle a teacher from being able to share: ‘this is what history has shown us, but this is how I experience or see that issue.’ I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, as long as it’s done in a thoughtful and balanced manner, and that doesn’t become the overarching, presiding view of that class.”

“I actually would encourage teachers to take their students and say, ‘I want you to research this group’s perspective’ and then ask them, ‘How would you resolve this? How would you go about resolving this conflict?’” said Torunian. “I think it varies but teaching our students and young adults how to solve complex problems, or how to think about solving complex problems, is very important. Do I have a book that I can point to? No, but I would love for that critical thinking aspect to be part of different classes.”

School safety

Torunian has concerns about safety in district schools.

For example, two guns were found on M-A’s campus in 2022. Additionally, an M-A student allegedly got into an altercation with an administrator and was then tackled and arrested by police at a bus stop near campus.

“There is no room in our educational system for violence,” said Torunian. “It feels like a very different dynamic these days. It feels like things are much more impassioned, much more influenced and driven by what people are seeing on social media. So I’m a firm believer that we just can’t tolerate violence in schools.”

Restorative justice

When asked how schools should approach misconduct by students, Torunian said, “I’m not a big fan of only taking one approach and making something be very binary, but there needs to be an understanding that students have to be accountable to a particular code of conduct.”

He said that if it’s an egregious offense, then administrators may have to look at some kind of disciplinary action, whether that’s an expulsion or a suspension.

“If it is a non-egregious offense, maybe the parents have to be informed, maybe you assign that student to do some kind of civic activity or something. … But in the end, it’s less to me about the punishment. It’s more about teaching accountability.”

Fiscal responsibility

With the district’s large operating budget of around $230 million, the community has the opportunity to at least ask questions.

“I want to bring the wealth of my business experience and knowledge to how we make sure that we’re optimizing that number, and if that number needs to grow or be redistributed, how do we make that happen as well?” said Torunian.

Torunian also wants to introduce business leaders from the local area to students to help prepare them for their future careers.

“I think there is so much that can be learned from people who are in business, and I’m not thinking of them as a replacement to, you know, our wonderful teachers, but just to bring in the real world experience to help balance out what they are learning in the classroom, so that they have a better sense of if I went to work for one of these midsize or large companies, what it would be like,” he said.

A Santa Clara County office building that formerly occupied the 231 Grant Ave., Palo Alto property has been demolished and the land sits empty, ready for construction on an educator housing project that commenced in 2023. Photo by Zoe Morgan.

Teacher pay

Torunian said that if we “truly want the best of the best for our kids,” then the pay scale for teachers has to represent that.

“But I would put the caveat next to it, that teachers need to be looked at from a performance lens,” he said. “We are paying a premium because we want premium results, but if we’re not getting premium results, then there needs to be a conversation there.”

Torunian would also like there to be a subsidy for teachers to live in the community where they’re teaching.

“I think there is a much better connective tissue to the community if you’re able to provide a path for that teacher to be a homeowner or at least a viable renter in the community that he or she teaches in,” he said.

Some counties have provided teachers with subsidized apartments and district-owned housing.

Torunian said, “I’m very supportive of that philosophically. Of course, the devil is always in the details as to how that plan would be executed.”