Carmel Unified School District gets three new board members in first-ever district elections.

Carmel Unified School District will have a new board of trustees after the Nov. 5 election, with three new candidates who won open seats as the district transitions from at-large to district-based elections.

In Trustee Area 1, including Carmel-by-the-Sea and Pebble Beach, former trustee Rita Patel is on track to beat Molly Bozzo, a school administrator. Patel's four children were educated in CUSD schools, and she promises a renewed commitment to data-based decision-making. As of Friday, Nov. 8, Patel has 53.8 percent of the vote, with 1,087 votes compared to Bozzo's 932.

Area 3—which is large geographically, stretching from Carmel Highlands in the north all the way south through Big Sur to the county line—will have a Big Sur representative in Matt Glazer. The hospitality professional who runs Deetjen's Big Sur Inn has 55.7 percent of the vote, or 1,145 votes over attorney Jeanette Witten's 910 votes.

Glazer applied to a vacancy on the board in 2023, and has remained publicly engaged in CUSD issues since then. The appointee at the time, Jason Remynse, ran for the first time in the newly formed Area 5 in Carmel Valley, and in the only race drawing incumbents, beat his current colleague on the CUSD board, Anne-Marie Rosen, with 60 percent of the vote, or 1,163 votes over Rosen's 772, as of the Friday ballot count.

"The community has spoken and this is what they wanted," says Rosen, who has found herself increasingly at odds with her colleagues on the CUSD board, including casting the lone dissenting vote against a contract with the current superintendent, Sharon Ofek. (Rosen also faces felony election fraud charges for allegedly lying about her residency when she registered to run in Area 5; she denies the charges, and is scheduled to appear in court for her arraignment on Nov. 14.)

"The message people voted for is super clear," Remynse says. "There are three candidates that committed to supporting the current superintendent and staff, and they all won by double-digit margins. That says a lot."

Remynse has children currently attending three CUSD schools—Tularcitos Elementary, Carmel Middle and Carmel High.

"I am really excited about where we can go with this [new board]," he says. "We have a new superintendent, a new deputy superintendent, and new administrators at the high school. We know the pitfalls of where we can fail, and I don't think we're ever going to see that again."

(That list of past pitfalls includes a series of challenges at CUSD in recent years, including the termination of a contract with the former superintendent—Remynse was appointed on the day Ted Knight was placed on leave, never to return—and mishandling of sexual harassment and abuse claims among students and administrators, as well as mishandling of reports of antisemitism and racism on campus.)

For one at-large seat up for election this year, part of the transition to staggered district-based elections, Jake Odello won over Monica Tavakoli with 56 percent of the vote, or 5,534 votes compared to her 4,337. 

Glazer, like Patel, promises a data-driven approach to decision-making. 

"The first orders of business are going to be defined by the agenda that we are inheriting," he says. "That means breathing life into whatever strategic planning is going on at the administrative level—that is going to be the benchmark that we as a board can measure against.

"We can take it out of the opinion space and move it into the data-driven space and say, 'Are we on track or do we need to course-correct?'"

Tavakoli, Witten and Patel ran as a slate. The only elected incumbent on to remain on the board will be Sara Hinds, who is midterm and was not up for reelection this year.  

"I am excited to serve with the people I am going to serve with," Glazer says. "We are ending up with a board of varied experiences, different backgrounds—that yields richness. We don't want homogeneity, go-along-to-get-along."