Pattie Cortese Selected for ESU School Board
The East Side Union High School District board has appointed Pattie Cortese to fill a vacancy on the board.
Cortese, wife of Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese, also a former East Side trustee, was chosen Monday from among five finalists for the slot. She will fill out the remaining two years of the term of Magdalena Carrasco, who resigned to take a seat on the San Jose City Council.
Pattie Cortese has worked in volunteer recruitment and has volunteered with the Santa Clara County Youth Foundation, now known as Bright Futures, and with several other organizations, She has worked on a Santa Clara County program to divert first-time offenders from the criminal justice system.
Among her priorities as a board member, she listed student discipline, caring for teachers, as well as technology, innovation and student achievement.
A committee including representatives of unions, ethnic groups, parents and students interviewed the 14 applicants for the vacancy and recommended five finalists to the board. Besides Cortese, they were William Derek Grasty, Louis Barocio, Merryl Kravitz and Mariel Caballero.
The board interviewed each candidate for 30 minutes. In the first round of voting, board President Van Le and trustee J. Manuel Herrera each named Barocio, Grasty and Cortese — trustees could vote for as many candidates as they wanted — and trustees Frank Biehl and Lan Nguyen voted for Cortese. She was chosen in a subsequent round and was sworn in after the vote.