← Election Series · Down-ballot coverage · California
Endorses Ramirez
The race
This school board election is on the November 3, 2026 general-election ballot in Oak Grove School District (San José, Santa Clara County). Three trustee-area seats are at stake, each contested, per the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters' Final Qualified List: Trustee Area 2 — Victor A. Ramirez vs. Diego Martinez; Trustee Area 3 — Sophie Freestone vs. Kaushik C. Joglekar; Trustee Area 5 — Paul Chun vs. Pradeep Kumar vs. Casino Fajardo. (The Silicon Valley DSA guide mislabels Ramirez's area as "District 1"; the Registrar's list — the county-grade source — places him in Trustee Area 2, and we follow the Registrar.)
This is a thin-record tier race, and we say so plainly: one side of each contest has a documented file and labor backing, and the other side, after the searches documented below, has essentially no public campaign record at all.
The candidates
### Trustee Area 2
Victor A. Ramirez. He carries the published endorsements of IBEW Local 332, OE3, and the Silicon Valley DSA guide. The DSA guide states that Ramirez and Area 5 candidate Paul Chun "are the only ones in their respective races with direct education experience." Credit: organized labor backing plus direct education experience, per those sources. Dirt: none found. No campaign site or questionnaire statement of his was located in this pass.
Diego Martinez. No campaign site, platform, questionnaire response, endorsement, or news mention of his candidacy was found in any source worked. His file is the roster line alone.
### Trustee Area 3
Sophie Freestone. Endorsed by IBEW Local 332, OE3, and the DSA guide, which describes her as "firmly outspoken in favor of the teacher's union." Credit: the only documented public stance in this area — she says who she stands with, in the open. Con, on this page's doctrine: an explicitly union-first posture is not parental-rights or fiscal-restraint governance, and no positions of hers on curriculum, books, budgets, or school choice were found. Dirt: none found.
Kaushik C. Joglekar. No campaign site, platform, questionnaire response, endorsement, or news mention of his candidacy was found in any source worked.
### Trustee Area 5
Paul Chun. Endorsed by IBEW Local 332, OE3, and the DSA guide, which credits him with direct education experience (see Area 2, above). Credit: education experience plus organized backing. Dirt: none found. No campaign site or questionnaire statement of his was located in this pass.
Pradeep Kumar. No campaign record was found in any source worked. Casino Fajardo. No campaign record was found in any source worked. (His distinctive name was searched exactly; the returns were his roster listing only.)
Pros and cons
- Area 2 — Ramirez Pro: Labor endorsements; direct education experience per the DSA guide. Con: No published platform of his own was found. Martinez: No documented record either way.
- Area 3 — Freestone Pro: Documented stance and organized backing; a voter knows what coalition she answers to. Con: That stance is union advocacy, with no documented positions on the subjects this page prices. Joglekar: No documented record either way.
- Area 5 — Chun Pro: Labor endorsements; direct education experience per the DSA guide. Con: No published platform found. Kumar / Fajardo: No documented record either way.
Record gaps
Searches run for every candidate above, by exact name plus district: the Registrar's qualified list (roster and areas); IBEW Local 332's voter guide, OE3's 2026 endorsement list, and the South Bay Labor Council endorsements (Ramirez, Freestone and Chun listed; their opponents listed nowhere); the Silicon Valley DSA 2026 voter guide's Oak Grove section (the only narrative source on this race found anywhere); San José Spotlight's Oak Grove coverage, whose most recent candidate reporting is its 2022 race story; Vote411 and GoodParty listings, which carry the roster and nothing further. No Mercury News, Spotlight, or district-published candidate profile for the 2026 Oak Grove races was found. Martinez, Joglekar, Kumar and Fajardo are insufficient-record candidates in the strict sense: the deep pass above came up dry, and that dryness is documented here rather than filled in.
OUR CALL
Trustee Area 2 — endorse Victor A. Ramirez, on labor's published endorsement and documented education experience, against an opponent with no findable record. Trustee Area 3 — endorse Sophie Freestone, narrowly and on the record stated: she is the only candidate in the area with any documented public position or backing. We note for the record that her documented posture is union advocacy, not this page's doctrine — voters who weight that differently have the same facts we do. Trustee Area 5 — endorse Paul Chun, on the same basis as Area 2: documented education experience and organized backing against two opponents with no findable record. In all three areas the alternative to these endorsements was no call at all on a documented-empty field; where one side shows up in the public record and the other does not appear in it at all, we say who showed up.
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 - 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 - IBEW Local 332 — Voter Guide (Oak Grove endorsements: Ramirez Area 2, Freestone Area 3, Chun Area 5) — https://www.ibew332.org/voter-guide - OE3 — 2026 California endorsements (Oak Grove endorsements) — https://www.oe3.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/1001_CA_Endorsements-3.pdf - Silicon Valley DSA — 2026 November Voter Guide, Oak Grove section — https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQAtAN3xtKSl7Pkx34nNpJyypPlm_Zga45PZHEYVk6jNpwxcp0GDBFrLsU9wjTjliya6ZP0OrMkljEt/pub - San José Spotlight — Election 2022: Candidates vie for Santa Clara, Oak Grove school board seats (most recent Spotlight candidate coverage found) — https://sanjosespotlight.com/election-2022-candidates-vy-for-santa-clara-oak-grove-school-board-seats/
Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.
AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.