Annette Yee Steck leads in County Office of Ed election, for the seat she was ousted from.

A taco Tuesday was the way Annette Yee Steck, who is running for Monterey County Board of Education, started her election night. Her husband and a couple of friends gathered to enjoy some tacos at Carmel Valley Athletic Club. She was wearing comfortable clothes – khaki pants, a dark T-shirt and a blazer. Yee Steck’s plans for the evening were to watch the results from home with homemade brownies and biscotti and strawberries from the farmers market.

Yee Steck was one of two candidates running for the Area 1 position, but for her it was a chance at redemption. She was appointed to fill a vacancy on the board last November and finish out the remaining year of the seat’s term. She then became the focus of a successful petition by parental rights groups that ended in her termination from the board on Jan. 10. Her victory in the June primary puts her back in the seat parents removed her from – a seat up for election again this November, as scheduled.

Her bid to regain the seat showed her leading against Jake Odello, with 58 percent of the vote as of midnight on Wednesday morning, June 8. Odello works in food safety and teaches at Hartnell College.

Area 1 includes New Monterey, Pacific Grove, Del Monte Forest, Carmel, Carmel Valley and Big Sur. Yee Steck notes that for five months, that area has not been represented on the MCOE board, and she expresses her frustration with the cost of the special election: over $320,000.

“It’s one year’s worth of three teachers’ salaries plus benefits, all of that wasted,” she says.