Quick Take
On Tuesday, Pajaro Valley Unified School District trustee Jennifer Holm announced her resignation from the board, citing the “increasing demands” from her job as Cabrillo College nursing program director. A successor will be appointed to complete the remaining two years of her term. Holm told Lookout she’s proud of her tenure and doesn’t have any regrets about her time on the board.
Jennifer Holm said it was a very difficult decision to resign from the Pajaro Valley Unified School District board of trustees after representing Area 7 for the past six years.
Holm was named Cabrillo College’s nursing program director in January 2023 and oversees 29 faculty members. Since then, she said she’s been thinking about the increasing demands of that job and how to balance it with her role on the school board. Previously, Holm was a nurse at Watsonville Community Hospital from 2005 to 2020 – some of it in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), caring for newborn babies with complications.
Looking back, she said there have been highs and lows – including the challenges of the pandemic, and recent graduation ceremonies where she watched kids cross the stage whom she took care of as newborn babies.
“Graduations are always a highlight, because, especially in the last couple of years, where people that I took care of as a NICU nurse at Watsonville Community Hospital when they were the tiniest of babies are walking across the stage,” she said. “That was a highlight for me.”
Holm announced her resignation in a news release from the district on Tuesday, effective Oct. 10. Officials said the school board would kick off a process to appoint someone to her seat within 60 days. That person will finish serving Holm’s term through December 2026. The seat will go before voters again in November 2026.
Her resignation comes two months before three of her fellow board members are running for reelection against three new candidates. The competition for the PVUSD seats is rare in this year’s election, as the vast majority of races for school board seats across Santa Cruz County went uncontested, and some open seats had zero candidates.
Holm said there are many factors that could be contributing to a lack of candidates for school board. For example, she said it could economic reasons. Perhaps people have less spare time for volunteering for a school board, she said, as they have to work more jobs or longer hours to support their families in the country’s most expensive housing rental market.
It could also be the need “to have a real thick skin.”
She recalled how during the early weeks of the pandemic, when the board had to decide whether to close schools, she and fellow board members grappled with strongly opposing opinions from community members. Holm said sometimes peoples’ comments were personal.
“I would have one email that would tell me that if I really cared about the kids, I would close all the schools completely,” she said. “The next email would say, if I really cared about the kids, then I wouldn’t close them at all and let the virus run its course.”
Still, she said having to wrestle with hard decisions during the pandemic also had its highlights.
“The challenging times, like during COVID, that was a brutal time to be on a school board,” she said. “And communicating with the public and making the best decisions we could with the information we had at the time, that’s a powerful opportunity, and I was glad to be part of that.”
PVUSD teachers union president Nelly Vaquera-Boggs said she’s sad to see Holm leave, but that she understands Holm’s decision. She hopes the board can fill Holm’s seat with another person who can take the time to understand the job of a public school educator.
“We helped put her in that seat years ago, when she was first elected,” Vaquera-Boggs said. “It is a loss to the board, as she is a labor advocate, so she understands the passion and challenges of advocating for workplace rights and fair wages. She’s an educator, in higher ed, so she [understands] how educators are treated.”
Vaquera-Boggs added that the teachers union will be meeting Monday to decide whom it will be endorsing in the upcoming election.
“[We hope people] really take the time – with this race, and any race – to learn about the candidates,” she said. “And ask, why are there people running against incumbents?”
On the November ballot, for PVUSD trustee Area 2, incumbent Georgia Acosta is facing Carol Turley. In trustee Area 3, Gabriel Jesse Medina is competing against incumbent Oscar Soto. In trustee Area 6, incumbent Adam Bolaños Scow is facing Jessica Carrasco.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.