How the newly elected, youngest-ever Fremont school board trustee won over her skeptics

Rinu Nair, the youngest-ever woman elected to the Fremont Unified School District board, arrives just a few minutes behind schedule to her father’s new South Indian restaurant Vande Bharat in Milpitas.

She smiles, the glint in her eyes showing the eagerness and excitement with which she approaches not only politics but life in general. She speaks quickly, but articulately. When she first hit the campaign trail, she says, some people questioned whether she was too young to serve on the board, and some were critical of what they considered her inexperience. At the same time, her youthful enthusiasm clearly charmed plenty of voters.

“My age was a positive and a negative for some people,” Nair says. And she admits she wasn’t sure about her decision to run at first, either. “I took a huge risk making this decision. I put my future plans on hold for this.”

The 18-year-old Fremont resident is still reeling after putting together a winning grassroots campaign in just six months. And her schedule is packed. She is juggling this term’s final exams as a full-time student at De Anza College, where she will further her studies as a double major in neuroscience and political science.

Before the summer, tech engineer Ganesh Balamitran was the only candidate in line for the school board’s Area 4 seat. But in June, Nair decided to enter the political arena against him, a bold — and somewhat last-minute — move from the young competitor who just recently graduated from Irvington High School.

Her parents, Anu and Reema Nair, were encouraged by her chances as an enthusiastic and knowledgeable candidate. With the help of family and friends, they all began knocking on doors in the district. Since Rinu was a child, she had been volunteering with her family for community service organizations both in the Bay Area and India.

“I was also involved in the community. She has seen that,” her father, Anu, said. “I wanted to make sure my kids have an emotional attachment to the people in their community. I was able to build some of that in them.”

Any chance she got, even between classes at De Anza, Rinu began going to as many homes as possible to campaign and talk to constituents. In the end, it was her mother, Reema, who spent the most time with her on the streets door-knocking. For many of Rinu’s constituents, she says, it was the first time they’d ever had a candidate knock on their door.

“It’s a really good opportunity for her to see the real world, face the real issues and solve problems every day,” Anu said. “Everybody complains about issues, but nobody is there to take action, and nobody is there to vote.”

When the dust settled after the November election, Nair beat Balamitran for the Area 4 spot on the five-member school board, with her 6,606 votes against his 6,580, according to the certified final results from Alameda County released Thursday. Area 4 of the district includes over 44,000 residents in parts of South Fremont spanning from the Dumbarton Bridge through parts of Irvington and Warm Springs. She will also become the direct representative to her teenage brother Rischi Nair, an Irvington sophomore.

While Nair’s parents appear to have donated over $10,000 to their daughter’s campaign, she also received several other small donations in the hundreds or thousands from other constituents along the way. Taking in over $34,000 in donations to her campaign, she also out-fundraised her competitor, even though his campaign received more than $18,000 in political donations from the Fremont Teachers Union alone, according to campaign finance records.

Nair will replace Yajing Zhang, the outgoing Area 4 trustee and board president who appeared well ahead in the Fremont District 5 City Council race this election.

Zhang — along with several other key officials, including board vice president Larry Sweeney and outgoing Fremont Mayor Lily Mei — was pivotal in establishing Nair’s political credibility as a first-time candidate. She also won the endorsements of the majority of the sitting school board, including trustees Vivek Prassad and Sharon Coco, as well as other Fremont council members Yang Shao and Kathy Kimberlin.

“I think it’s very brave of her. She’s very mature and smart and just a grounded person,” Zhang said in an interview. “I support her. I think that she reflects what students need. And she would be the most important voice to evaluate what policies work for the students or not.”

Zhang, who will leave the school board after winning the Fremont Council District 5 race this year, was Nair’s first major endorsement.

But Nair believes she probably could not have won if it wasn’t for all the time she put in going door to door.

“I mainly attribute my success to door-knocking,” Rinu said. “It really does make a difference.”

In her upcoming four-year term, Nair faces major challenges and intricate problems, such as the district’s faulty infrastructure, a $34 million budget deficit, upcoming labor negotiations with the teachers union and more. District residents also just passed Measure M, which authorized the district to issue $919 million in bonds from a new 4.9-cent property tax to repair and upgrade schools. She will have a say in how that money gets used and says it could be helpful at her alma mater, Irvington High School, which has outdated facilities and needs more counselors.

The budding college freshman currently lives at home and shares a car with her father. She enjoys reading, hanging out with her friends at specialty bakeries, trying new restaurants and watching bad horror movies. She said her favorite part of high school was being in the Irvington Vikings marching band, and offered something she learned from playing tenor saxophone:

“When we win, we win together,” she said.