← Election Series · Down-ballot coverage · California
No endorsement
The race
Berryessa Union School District (North San Jose) elects its board at large. Three seats are up on November 3, 2026, and four candidates are running — voters choose up to three. There are no trustee areas in this race and no appointed-in-lieu seats; all three seats are genuinely contested, per the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters' Final Qualified List.
The candidates are: Jaria Jaug (board president, running for re-election), Thelma B. Boac, Jamal Khan, and Shanna Brewer. The district is in the middle of a school-consolidation process driven by an enrollment decline of more than 25% over 20 years and roughly $6 million in planned funding reductions, per district communications reported in a San Jose council newsletter — consolidation is the live fiscal question in front of this board.
The candidates
Jaria Jaug (incumbent, board president) — Record (documented, in her own words): Jaug is the only candidate in this race who answered the League of Women Voters' Vote411 questionnaire. Her stated priorities: (1) academic achievement "grounded in equity," with targeted programming for McKinney–Vento (homeless) students, students with disabilities, and low-income families; (2) "pathways to the future" — workforce housing, leasing district land, and "strong union partnerships … to increase retention and longevity"; (3) school safety, climate infrastructure, and protected mental-health services. She is a Berryessa schools product, first elected in 2022 at 23 — the board's youngest member and its first openly bisexual member, with equity named as her top priority in profile coverage (Queer Silicon Valley). Credit: She answered the questionnaire when no one else in the race did, and she points to after-school programs, online tutoring, summer math, safer-routes construction, and leasing unused sites for childcare revenue. Dirt: No misconduct finding was located; the con is programmatic, not personal — hers is the documented equity-and-union-partnership program this page opposes as a governing model (see Pros and cons).
Thelma B. Boac — Credit: Boac has prior service as a Berryessa trustee (she is named as a Berryessa Union board member in earlier Santa Clara County campaign records) and is a known figure in San Jose's Filipino-American community. Dirt: None located. Gap: Boac did not respond to Vote411, and no 2026 campaign site, platform, or endorsement was located in this pass.
Jamal Khan — No Vote411 response, campaign site, platform, endorsement, or news mention was located in this pass. Unproven; record insufficient (documented below).
Shanna Brewer — No Vote411 response, campaign site, platform, endorsement, or news mention was located in this pass. Unproven; record insufficient (documented below).
Pros and cons
- Jaug — Pro: The race's only documented platform; incumbent board president with four years of service and specific claimed deliverables (tutoring, summer math, site leasing). Con: Her platform, in her own words, is equity-grounded programming and deeper union partnership — the progressive-program governing model this page exists to oppose. No parental-rights, curriculum-transparency, or fiscal-restraint commitments were located.
- Boac — Pro: Prior board service; community roots. Con: Published nothing findable for 2026 — no positions on consolidation, curriculum, or budgets.
- Khan — Pro: None documented. Con: No findable record.
- Brewer — Pro: None documented. Con: No findable record.
Record gaps
Searches run for every candidate (October 25, 2026): Registrar's Final Qualified List (roster); Vote411/LWV questionnaire page for this race (Jaug responded; the other three are recorded there as "Candidate has not yet responded" — each checked individually); GoodParty.org candidate pages; San José Spotlight and San Jose Mercury News name searches; candidate-name web searches for campaign sites and endorsements (including the Santa Clara County Democratic Party and Democrats for Public Education endorsement lists, on which none of the four appears in the results retrieved). Khan and Brewer: the deep pass came up dry — insufficient record is an earned verdict here, documented as above.
OUR CALL
No endorsement — insufficient record, and no aligned candidate documented. Voters must fill three seats from four names. The only candidate with a documented record, Jaug, runs on the equity-and-union-partnership model this page opposes, so we do not endorse her. The other three published nothing we could verify — no platform, no questionnaire, no endorsement trail — and this page does not endorse names it cannot source. Berryessa voters facing a real consolidation fight deserve candidates who publish positions; three of these four did not.
For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website. Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same. --- Sources — bulleted with URLs. - Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters — Final Qualified List of Local Eligible Candidates, Nov 3 2026 General Election — https://files.santaclaracounty.gov/exjcpb1296/2026-09/qualified-list-of-local-candidates-9-28-26.pdf?VersionId=CM6jbwAVTLFIjLakj6hJku2l9KPAIxli - Vote411 / League of Women Voters — Berryessa Union School District Governing Board Member questionnaire (Jaug response; three non-responses) — https://onyourballot.vote411.org/race-detail.do?id=69304151 - GoodParty.org — Berryessa Union School Board candidates and current officeholders — https://goodparty.org/elections/ca/berryessa-union-elementary-school-district/position/local-school-board - Queer Silicon Valley — Jaria Jaug profile (youngest trustee; equity as top priority) — https://www.queersiliconvalley.org/tag/berryessa-union-school-district/ AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.