Geetha Ganti for Walnut Creek School Board
Why I'm Running
My kids made me care about these questions. My experience taught me what to do once I started asking them.
Right now
This starts at home — with a fourth grader and a kindergartner, and the everyday moments of this school year: homework at the kitchen table, reading before bed, the questions my kids ask on the walk to school.
The point is simple: these aren't abstract policy questions. They're the decisions shaping my kids' childhoods right now.
These years don't come back
Elementary school is a small window. Reading and math foundations, confidence, curiosity, friendships, independence, a healthy relationship with technology, physical and mental well-being — these take shape now, and the years don't come back.
I started asking questions
Ordinary parent questions — about curriculum, teacher support, critical thinking, AI, school funding, transparency, movement, mental health, and access to opportunity — kept turning into longer searches for answers that should have been easy to find.
Then I started doing the homework
So I did the homework: finding the documents, reading the budgets, checking the sources. Then I decided to publish all of it, so other families don't have to start from scratch.
My experience taught me how to work through hard problems
Only here does the résumé enter the story. These are the disciplines I bring to a question once I start asking it.
- Journalism
- Public health
- Health technology
- Product management
- Financial accountability
- Systems thinking
These experiences didn't make me care about schools. My children did. My experience taught me what to do once I started asking the questions.
How I work
What I do when I don't know the answer
Parenting has a way of giving you questions nobody hands you an instruction manual for. Public education isn't much different.
Ask
Start with the real question, not the talking point.
Listen
To parents, teachers, students, and people who disagree.
Look at the evidence
Find the data. Check where it comes from.
Question my own assumptions
Especially the ones I was sure about.
Understand the trade-offs
Every decision costs something. Name it.
Explain what I learned
In plain language, with sources.
Honest governance
What I can promise, and what I cannot
I will not promise that every program can be protected from every future cut. No responsible board member can make that guarantee.
Funding changes. Enrollment shifts. Costs rise. State and federal decisions affect what is available locally. Even when voters approve additional funding, the board must still decide how to allocate it, and those decisions may need to change as circumstances change.
What I can promise is that I will make those trade-offs visible.
I will ask what produces the greatest value for students, what teachers need in order to deliver it, what the full cost will be and what we may have to give up in return. I will insist on measurable goals and explain the reasoning behind my decisions.
My commitment is not to pretend uncertainty does not exist. It is to confront it honestly and make the best possible decision with the information available.
“I cannot promise that circumstances will never change. I can promise that I will ask hard questions, make the trade-offs visible and tell the community how I reached my decision.”
What I will personally do
- I will ask for the underlying data.
- I will explain the trade-offs.
- I will listen to educators, families and residents.
- I will evaluate whether spending is producing results.
- I will make my reasoning public.
- I will question assumptions before supporting a major investment.
See where the questions led
Each campaign priority began as one of these questions — with the evidence and open questions attached.