On Wednesday, 13 former school board trustees called for the resignation of Rowena Chiu, a newly elected member of the Palo Alto Unified School District board, referencing Chiu’s recent repost and comment on an X post by “Asians Against Wokeness.”
Former board members called Chiu’s social media activity “detrimental, unprofessional and unacceptable,” stating it “villainized” Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Danaé Reynolds.
Chiu expressed her feelings of unsafety in her comment on the post: “I am a Harvey Weinstein Survivor. In 1998, Weinstein told me, as he attempted to rape me, that he ‘liked Chinese girls, because they’re discreet.’ In 2025, as an elected official, I spoke up about Asian oppression, and I was suppressed yet again.”
The X account Chiu reposted, which claims to represent “Asian-American activists exposing woke insanity, violent crime and leftist indoctrination,” according to their bio, posted that the PAUSD board meeting “[ganged] up on [an] Asian school board member” on Monday.
This post is in reference to Reynolds’s comment at a Jan. 23 special board meeting stating that she was worried about Chiu’s use of the word “unsafe” throughout the meeting.
“I want to say personally I have not felt very safe in this room,” Chiu said. “The feedback that I’ve heard from the community so far has made me feel very unsafe. … So I will attempt to be constructive and ask questions with an open mindset.”
Chiu later discussed the course’s potential impact on students, citing concerns about transparency and safety.
“The fear is based on an ideological framework around ‘oppressor-oppressed’ that will make some students in this school district feel unsafe,” Chiu said. “If the community has not had, in their view, sufficiently transparent instructional materials … that fear is only going to grow.”
“I worry about the word ‘safe’ as a person who has to worry about my husband driving and coming home if he gets pulled over. So the word ‘safety’ is something we have to be aware of what that means,” Reynolds, who is Black, said. “Now, being uncomfortable, absolutely.”
Chiu also reposted an X post by PAUSD parent Edith Cohen that criticized the district’s leadership and Reynolds for dismissing Chiu’s concerns regarding safety.
Yesterday evening, 65 members of the Palo Alto Management Association — a union of principals, administrators and other school board members — also issued a public letter urging Chiu to resign. The letter states that Chiu’s actions “threaten the very foundation of inclusivity and educational equity that PAUSD upholds.”
Additionally, the PAMA’s letter outlines Chiu’s violations of the “ethical obligations of her position and [her betrayal of] the trust of the community she was elected to serve” by “posting and commenting on an incendiary social media post filled with racially charged rhetoric and personal attacks against [Reynolds]”.
As of the writing of this article, Asians Against Wokeness’s X post has amassed over 1,000 likes and 100 comments. Chiu’s original repost has since been removed, but her comment on the post remains.
This is a developing article.
