The Portola Valley School District (PVSD) governing board chose Aimee Armsby and former trustee Bob Bauer as its newest members of the five-member board last week.

The board appointed the two during a meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 17. They replace board President Brooke Day and trustee Jeff Klugman, who resigned in September, effective Nov. 20. Armsby and Bauer will fill the rest of Day and Klugman's terms, which end in November 2022.

Armsby is an attorney and former Portola Valley Schools Foundation board member. Armsby's children attended district schools.

She said during the interviews that she "threw her hat in the ring" now because, until September, she had a conflict of interest working for the San Mateo County Counsel's Office, where she advised governing boards on legal matters.

Bauer, who served on the PVSD governing board from 1979 through 1987, is a ​​retired technology executive and physicist and former district parent.

Key issues during Bauer's previous board tenure included the inception of the local parcel tax, district property sales, labor group contract negotiations, settlement of the voluntary transfer program litigation and the budgetary implications of the passage of Proposition 13, according to his application. Prop. 13 "drastically" limited property taxes, which meant they were no longer a major source of funding to public schools, according to EdSource.

Bauer describes the period when he was on the board as "very difficult and challenging."

"When I saw that there was a vacancy for a year and the challenges that the district and the board have in front of them coming out of the pandemic, and the construction at the same time, plus declining enrollment and a few of the other things I learned, it seemed like this year (if you) had somebody that kind of knew the ropes, so to speak, (it) would be useful," he told the board during the interviews.

The board interviewed three other candidates: Ron Dolin, a lecturer at Harvard Law School; Terry Lee, district parent and the Nueva School’s associate head of school; and Amod Setlur, a former pandemic recovery working group member.

Two other applicants, Tom Bochnowski and Sarah Raffaelli, withdrew their applications on Nov. 17 before the interviews.