Mads Realmuto will be the first to say he prefers to stay out of the spotlight.
His career in international public affairs allowed him to do just that, staying behind the scenes as he helped others further the goals of the organizations and companies for which he worked.
But the Aptos resident is now running for the Trustee Area 7 seat on the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees in the November election.
With 35 schools, roughly 14,000 students and thousands of employees, it is arguably one of the most public-facing elected positions in Santa Cruz County, with often raucous meetings frequently drawing hundreds.
He says the move into the public arena was inspired by a battle to find appropriate education for his special-needs daughter.
After the 7-year-old had five different teachers at Bradley Elementary School within a year—some of whom were not credentialed for special education—Realmuto realized he needed to become more involved.
He and his husband, Nick, settled with Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which later agreed to provide his daughter with 10 weeks of summer camp over two years, as well as 45 hours per week with a behavior technician and 100 minutes of speech therapy each week.
It was during this process that Realmuto began attending PVUSD board meetings and voicing his concerns during public comment periods.
“Navigating the intricacies around special education is where I really started engaging the board because we were having so many difficulties getting the level of service and support that she needed,” he said.
He joined the Special Education Local Plan Area board and delved into the challenges the district faced in providing special education services.
Then the district proposed cutting special education teachers.
“I was looking at this system where they were already struggling to deliver and were having to settle with us because they couldn’t provide services required in her IEP,” he said, referring to the individualized education program special education students receive.
It was during this period of advocacy that members of the community began encouraging Realmuto to run for the school board.
“That’s where I ultimately decided that I need to run because we need a different approach to how the school board is working right now,” he said.
Challenges
Realmuto sees a current board where interpersonal conflicts often supplant or delay policymaking.
“I’d really like to step in on the board and leverage some of my background in public affairs and international trade to bring down the temperature and de-escalate,” he said. “I think there are ways to engage people you disagree with in a respectful way.”
Realmuto also said he wants to work with Superintendent Heather Contreras as she seeks to improve student outcomes while encouraging a more thoughtful approach to implementing new policies and changes.
As an example, he pointed to the recent proposal to move students from Duncan-Holbert School—which provides special education services—to other locations and relocate Renaissance High School to that campus.
The board tabled the item to give staff time to find alternative locations.
While Realmuto said he understands the reasoning behind the proposal, he said the speed with which it was introduced caused unnecessary stress and work.
“You have to think this through a little bit more before we can move forward with that,” he said. “I want to ask challenging questions, and I want to be creative with them. I think a school board’s job is not to micromanage, but to bring a skill set and a line of questioning that says, ‘Have we considered these other options?’”
Realmuto also said he hopes to improve the way the district communicates with the public.
Over the course of two weeks, Realmuto said he received two messages through the system intended to relay information to parents that instead provided updates on ongoing negotiations with the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, which he called a misuse of the district tool.
“They’re using it on a platform where really that should be about teachers communicating with parents, principals communicating with parents,” he said.
Paired with the roughly 25 messages parents receive from schools—many of them irrelevant—that causes parents either to ignore the messages or opt out entirely, he said.
“And then you don’t get engaged in school,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know that any district communications should go to families. It should all be coming through teachers and principals speaking to their families.”
Experience counts
Realmuto said his experience in international trade relations has prepared him for the role.
“I have a lot of experience taking really complex issues and turning them into policy speak and things people can understand and relate to,” he said. “I think that’s exactly what is needed here: looking at some of those deeply technical issues, looking at data and trying to map that with where we want to take the district and how we leverage data to improve student outcomes.”
Realmuto also said he wants PVUSD to place a higher value on career technical education, both by bolstering those programs and honoring students who choose that path.
“Not every pathway is a four-year college,” he said. “I really want to see us shift our mindset around the whole career technical education piece.”
In addition, Realmuto said the district should rethink the move that began during the COVID-19 pandemic to incorporate computer screens into education.
“We need to get computers out of the classroom pretty significantly,” he said. “They need to be a tool for some of the things that we do, not a replacement for education.”
He also foresees a future with smaller class sizes, as well as more teacher support and training — goals he said could be accomplished by reevaluating the district budget.
“I don’t think we give them enough time to do that level of training, but we also don’t give them enough resources,” he said. “When we look at data, one of the big factors in school success is class size.”
