A former classified employees union president will square off against an education researcher for a six-month term on Morgan Hill Unified School District’s board of education—which has been governing without a seventh member since late last year.
Pamela Torrisi, 64, who spent 34 years as a paraeducator for MHUSD before retiring in 2014, and Thomas Arnett, 31, who works as an education research fellow for a national, nonprofit think tank called the Clayton Christensen Institute, are the only two names on the June 7 ballot.
Up for grabs is the trustee seat vacated by former board member Amy Porter-Jensen—who resigned in October 2015 amid an alleged harassment claim involving a community activist. Her four-year term is set to expire in November.
Torrisi headed up the Service Employees International Union for 10 years and was also a member of the union’s negotiating team. The Live Oak High School alumna (Class of 1969) said she was prompted to put her name in the hat after regularly attending the sometimes-combative school board meetings.
“I think the children are important. It’s what we need to be focusing on,” said Torrisi, whose son also graduated from LOHS in 1987. “It’s important to get involved. I see what’s happening and I don’t like what’s happening.”
Arnett graduated from LOHS in 2002 and attended San Martin/Gwinn Elementary School and Britton Middle School prior to that. A father of three, Arnett’s oldest son is a kindergartner at the Charter School of Morgan Hill.
“I care deeply about our community and the success of our school system,” said Arnett, who travels across the country studying innovative school programs in addition to working with districts and state legislatures on educational policy issues. “I’ve spent my career working in education because I strongly believe that education lays a critical foundation for a child’s success in life, and I want to ensure that every student has the opportunity to receive an excellent education.”
Torrisi was born in Campbell and moved to Morgan Hill for high school, but her family has had local ties for 50 years, she said. As a paraeducator in the district over three decades, she’s worked with kindergartners up to high school students, including children with special needs.
“I’ve been around Morgan Hill my whole life,” she said. “I just really want to get the message back to the children and what’s going on in the schools.”
Torrisi noted that she lives in the same trustee area designation as Porter-Jensen and will run for re-election in November when three MHUSD board seats are set to expire (Porter-Jensen, Bob Benevento and Rick Badillo).
It will mark the first trustee area election—where candidates must live within those boundaries and only those residents who live there as well can vote. The district was forced to ditch its traditional at-large process, where everyone regardless of address votes for trustees, after being threatened with a lawsuit from a local Hispanic group calling themselves Community Action Coalition.
“There are a lot of positive things happening,” Torrisi said. “Instead of focusing on negative things, we need to focus on positive things that Morgan Hill Unified is doing for the children.”
Arnett resides in Trustee Ron Woolf’s zone and will not be able to run for re-election in November. Instead, if Arnett chooses, he must wait until Woolf’s seat expires in 2018.
“However, if I am elected and as we begin to see positive change, I am interested in finding opportunities to continue serving the district,” Arnett said. “My primary goal is to bring new perspective to some of the pressing issues in the district.”
In December, the board failed in their effort to appoint a replacement trustee and save the $58,000 expense of holding the election—and none of the seven candidates who sought that appointment decided to run in the election.
