Meet The Pleasanton School Board Candidate: Thomas Choi

PLEASANTON, CA — Patch reached out to three candidates running to represent Area 5 of the Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees with questions we feel voters want to know.

We reprinted their answers verbatim.

Below, read the responses of Thomas Choi, an attorney and business executive.

What is your educational background?

I hold a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, and a Juris Doctor (J.D.), and have been a licensed California attorney since 2016.

What is your professional background?

I serve as Vice President at a Fortune Global 500 technology company and am a licensed attorney in California. In my corporate role, I negotiate multi-million-dollar commercial contracts, manage risk, and resolve high-stakes operational disputes.

Have you ever held public office, whether appointive or elective?

I serve as Treasurer on a Homeowners Association Board, exercising direct fiduciary duty over operating budgets, reserve funds, legal compliance, and vendor bidding. I have not previously held elected office. I am running as an independent public school parent whose sole loyalty is to our students, frontline educators, and taxpayers. My campaign is 100% self-funded—free from partisan politics, special-interest obligations, or beholden PAC agendas.

What are the top three issues facing PUSD right now?

1. Fiscal Solvency & Misplaced Priorities: PUSD is the only district in Alameda County under state Negative Budget Certification, forced into a $20M emergency loan (September 2026) to meet payroll. Minimum operating reserves sit at zero while central administrative overhead and outside consulting retainers have grown unchecked.

2. Protecting Classrooms Over Bureaucracy: PUSD eliminated 76+ student-facing positions—including classroom teachers, reading specialists, and support staff—and budgeted multi-year wage freezes for frontline workers while allowing scheduled executive raises to take effect. We must stop balancing budget deficits on the backs of classroom staff.

3. Restoring Broken Public Trust: Closed-door capital decisions have blindsided families. Projects like paving over Hearst Elementary's playfields for an industrial maintenance depot or planning the Alisal expansion for 18 months without neighborhood notice show that leadership treats community input as an afterthought.

What is one specific action you would prioritize during your first year in office?

Pleasanton taxpayers and families deserve an ironclad governing standard: we must cut every nickel of central office waste and administrative bloat before cutting a single cent from classrooms or laying off another educator.

I will immediately initiate an independent forensic audit of central administration along with legal and consulting contracts—which ballooned to over $12M in recent filings.

Alongside this audit, I will push for an immediate executive pay freeze and fix the broken internal accounting systems identified by state fiscal advisors that produced recurring multi-million-dollar budgeting errors.

By eliminating top-heavy bureaucracy, we can permanently restore operational solvency and reinvest those savings directly where they belong: in our classrooms, our teachers, and our kids.

Declining enrollment and rising costs have created continuing fiscal pressure in PUSD. What should the district protect, reduce or restructure to achieve long-term stability?

PROTECT: Classrooms and frontline staff must be untouchable. We must protect classroom teachers, Reading Intervention Specialists, Special Education aides, Health Services Assistants, counselors, and campus custodians. We must also defend signature programs in STEM, arts, music, athletics, and world languages that define Pleasanton's academic excellence. Cutting programs drives families to private schools, worsening the enrollment decline that drains state funding.

REDUCE: Cut top-heavy central overhead, not school sites. We must freeze executive cabinet pay, rein in outside legal and consulting retainers billing up to $900/hour, canceling unbid vendor contracts (such as the $155K headquarters thermostat project) and curbing non-essential central office spending (such as $775K in executive facility furnishings). Every administrative dollar saved keeps a teacher in the classroom.

RESTRUCTURE: PUSD must overhaul internal accounting and staffing controls to eliminate recurring structural budgeting blunders exposed by external audits. We must restructure capital debt management to relieve the operational drain created by the $30M Arroyo Center PUSD HQ acquisition.

As enrollment changes leave some campuses with excess capacity, how should PUSD decide whether to repurpose, lease or dispose of school property?

PUSD must manage public property with long-term vision, not panic-driven fire sales:

Mandatory Upstream Community Notice: End the backroom planning culture. Homeowners and parents must be consulted before blueprints are drawn, ensuring neighborhoods are never again blindsided by projects like the proposed relocation of PUSD's MOT industrial depot to Hearst Elementary's playfield and bus fleet to PMS.

Repurpose for Urgent Community Needs: Before considering commercial leases or school closures, underutilized campus space should be repurposed to serve local families. We should expand Transitional Kindergarten, community preschools, affordable before-and-after school childcare, and hands-on STEM and robotics labs. These services attract young families and reverse enrollment loss.

Stop Liquidating Neighborhood Land: I favor extreme caution regarding the sale of school green spaces to address operational shortfalls. Property sales provide only one-time revenue rather than solving structural budget challenges, while permanently removing community assets that future generations of students may need.

Why do you feel you're a better candidate than your opponents?

I offer independent oversight, professional competence, and an authentic personal stake in our schools. As an Area 5 dad with two children at Hearst Elementary, my family has a ten-year investment in this board's decisions.

Over the past school year, I was the only candidate who attended and spoke at nearly every board meeting. I defended 76+ student-facing staff against layoffs and demanded an executive pay freeze. Crucially, I was also the only candidate who spoke out against relocating the MOT industrial maintenance depot to the Hearst playfield, launching an online campaign and neighborhood petition with 150+ families that is covered on my campaign website, savepusd.com.

As a corporate attorney and engineer, I have the skillset to audit complex budgets, enforce contracts, and restore fiscal solvency. My campaign is 100% self-funded, independent of PAC obligations, and proudly endorsed by the exceptional frontline school workers of CSEA Chapter 155.