← Election Series · Down-ballot coverage · California
Our call — see the breakdown
The race
Evergreen School District (East San Jose) elects its board at large. Three seats are up on November 3, 2026, and six candidates are running — voters choose up to three. There are no trustee areas and no appointed-in-lieu seats in this race, per the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters' Final Qualified List.
The candidates are: Johnny Ray Reyna, Mary Hien Pollett (incumbent), Corinna Diener, Monte Wright, Thong Quang La, and Magaly Fernández. Five of the six appeared at the 2026 Evergreen candidate forum hosted by the District 8 Community Roundtable (D8CRT), whose published candidate summaries are a primary source for this article; La did not appear in the forum's candidate summaries.
The candidates
Mary Hien Pollett (incumbent) — Record (forum summary): Trustee since 2022; chief business official for another elementary school district; former high school principal and assistant principal and former mathematics teacher; "25+ years in public education and budget expertise." Credit: Genuine fiscal expertise — a working school-district business official is the strongest budget résumé in this field, and she won her seat in 2022 in a contested race. Dirt: None located. The con is structural: she is the administration-side incumbent in a district whose families, per the forum, want money moved from administration to classrooms.
Monte Wright — Record (forum summary): A nurse at Kaiser Santa Teresa, parent of two Evergreen students, 20-year neighborhood resident. His stated want: "more resources directed to classrooms and less to administration." Credit: That is a documented classroom-first, fiscal-stewardship position — stated alignment, in the only public forum this race produced. Dirt: None located. Unproven as an officeholder — not a demerit under this page's rules.
Corinna Diener — Record (forum summary): Retired district school secretary with about 20 years at two Evergreen elementary schools; 35-year resident whose children and grandchildren attended Evergreen schools; former PTA president. Her stated focuses: "district management size and teacher retention." Credit: Two decades inside the district's front offices plus a stated focus on the size of district management — an insider's version of the same stewardship question Wright raises. Dirt: None located. Unproven as an officeholder.
Johnny Ray Reyna — Record (forum summary): A teacher at New Valley High School (a continuation school in Santa Clara) and parent of a kindergartner at Holly Oak Elementary; a former dropout who earned a GED, a bachelor's degree, and a teaching credential. He "emphasizes advocacy at the state and federal level." Credit: A compelling personal education story and a classroom teacher's perspective. Dirt: None located. His stated emphasis — advocacy in Sacramento and Washington — is not the classroom-first, district-level stewardship this page weighs most.
Magaly Fernández — Record (forum summary): Parent and community leader whose four children attended Evergreen schools; former PTA president, secretary, and treasurer; former noon-duty supervisor; translator and advocate for parents; works as a community outreach specialist. She states she has no college degree and "brings listening, accountability, and a collective voice." Credit: Deep parent-side service in the district's own schools and an accountability message. Dirt: None located. Her platform beyond listening and accountability was not documented in the forum summary.
Thong Quang La — No forum appearance in the D8CRT summaries, campaign site, platform, endorsement, or news mention was located in this pass. Unproven; record insufficient (documented below).
Pros and cons
- Pollett — Pro: The field's real budget expert; four years of board service. Con: The administration-profile incumbent; no parental-rights or curriculum positions documented.
- Wright — Pro: Documented alignment: classrooms over administration, from a parent of current students. Con: Unproven in office; single-issue public record.
- Diener — Pro: Twenty years inside district operations; stated focus on management size and keeping teachers. Con: Unproven in office; record is one forum summary deep.
- Reyna — Pro: Educator and Evergreen parent; persistence story. Con: Stated emphasis is state/federal advocacy, not district stewardship or parental rights.
- Fernández — Pro: Extensive parent volunteering; accountability language. Con: "Collective voice" platform with no documented positions on budgets, curriculum, or parental rights.
- La — Pro: None documented. Con: No findable record; absent from the forum summaries.
Record gaps
Searches run for every candidate (October 25, 2026): Registrar's Final Qualified List (roster); the D8CRT 2026 Evergreen candidate forum recording and its published per-candidate summaries (five of six candidates); GoodParty.org pages; San José Spotlight's Evergreen coverage (including its 2022 race file, which documents Pollett's election); candidate-name web searches for campaign sites, Vote411 questionnaires, and endorsements. No Vote411 page, campaign site, or endorsement list naming any Evergreen candidate was located; the forum summaries are the deepest public record this race produced, and La appears in none of them.
OUR CALL
Endorse Monte Wright and Corinna Diener (two of your three votes). Both are unproven-but-aligned on the value this race actually put in writing: fiscal stewardship aimed at the classroom. Wright says it directly — more resources to classrooms, less to administration. Diener, after 20 years inside the district's own offices, names district management size as her focus. Those are documented, stated positions, and unproven status is never a demerit on this page.
No endorsement for the third seat. Pollett is a qualified incumbent but the administration-side profile; Reyna's stated emphasis is advocacy elsewhere; Fernández documents service but no positions; La published nothing findable. None earned the third endorsement on a sourced record.
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 - D8CRT — 2026 Evergreen School District Candidate Forum (published candidate summaries for Fernández, Pollett, Wright, Reyna, Diener) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdJ1gNB37tQ - San José Spotlight — Election 2022: Crowded field for Santa Clara County school boards (Pollett's 2022 candidacy and race) — https://sanjosespotlight.com/election-2022-crowded-field-for-santa-clara-county-san-jose-school-boards/ - GoodParty.org — Evergreen Elementary School Board (seats and filing record) — https://goodparty.org/elections/ca/evergreen-elementary-school-district/position/local-school-board AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.