When Thomas Vu first stepped into a classroom, he felt more at home than he’d ever been.
“School became a place of, almost like a refuge,” he said. “I loved to learn, and it almost felt like an escape and a validation.”
Vu won the District 2 seat on the Alachua County School Board on Aug. 20, defeating incumbent Diyonne McGraw. Now, as the 37-year-old Gainesville resident prepares to take his seat on the ACSB, Vu said he is driven to make that same safe, empowering environment a reality for every student and teacher in the district.
Vu, a son of Vietnamese refugees, grew up in a family that he said urged him to “keep his head down and don’t make waves.” When he was in elementary school, he discovered his dad had a secret family, which left his mother to raise him alone, he said.
“I was just being nosy, rifling through my grandmother’s stuff in her room, and I found pictures of what ends up being my half sister’s fourth birthday,” he said. “And it’s a half sister I didn’t know about, no one knew about.”
When Vu was young, he was bullied in school for his Asian descent and experienced backlash for coming out as gay. Looking back, Vu said he felt many aspects of his struggles were normalized.
“Someone makes fun of an Asian kid by doing slanty eyes and things like that,” he said. “How am I supposed to expect other people to love and embrace me for who I am … when the very people who should love you the most don’t accept you?”
Vu said his experiences fueled a “strong call to action” that ultimately drove him to run for the school board, and the campaign journey allowed him to fully embrace it.
Vu graduated with a finance degree from UF. He worked as a civics teacher and math teacher for grades six to 12 then spent two years in the ACPS district office, and now he works remotely overseeing the design of online courses for a Georgia school district. He lives with his husband, Joshua Bellamy; their dog, Charlie and three cats: Lucy, Peach and Grayson.
Vu’s platform and future goals for the ACSB fall on one regard — board accountability.
Platform and vision
To Vu, ACPS emerged from the pandemic as a district “in crisis,” where maintaining long-term goals fell through due to a lack of consistency.
“I’d say everything now is just exacerbating issues that have already existed and completely ignoring the realities of the landscape we’re in,” he said. “Let’s actually do a good job, instead of looking like we’re doing a good job.”
On the administrative side, Vu said he believes the ACSB delegates too much power to the superintendent. The broader approach past leadership has taken has caused major changes without a board vote, he said. In addition, he said current board policies don’t force the board to vote enough on changes.
Both of these issues are coupled by what Vu said is a “lack of program evaluation,” where there isn’t a guarantee to taxpayers or teachers, who are implementing new policies from the board.
“We just spend a bunch of money at something and hope it worked,” he said. “To me, it’s crazy that we ask teachers to do things, but we don’t even tell them if it worked or not.”
Vu said this leads to a lack of public accountability, where the community no longer has faith and confidence in the district. Vu said the conversations he had with citizens about homeschooling and ACPS enrollment rates also drove him to continue the campaign trail.
“There’s no reason why the population of Alachua County has steadily increased the last 10 years, but our enrollments in our public schools have gone down year after year,” he said. “Even today, when it’s hard to fill classrooms with certified teachers … we still mistreat them.”
Vu said he wishes to see more metrics reported every year, so the board has more correlative, comparative data to pinpoint internal policy issues.
Vu said conversations on the campaign trail helped him further understand the struggles ACPS families face, even if he isn’t a parent himself.
“I cried a lot with people about how hard it was for them to be parents today,” he said. “It’s really upsetting how much the system condescends to parents and how little it does to truly help them and their kids.”
Colleagues and community perspectives
District 3 Board Member Sarah Rockwell met Vu at a lunch meeting when he was seeking out endorsements from other elected officials, she said.
With a background in finance and math, Rockwell said she’s most looking forward to Vu “deep diving” into the district budget. She also said she believes it’s “extremely beneficial” that Vu has middle and high school teaching experience, noting many board members primarily have elementary teaching experience.
Rockwell observed Vu had a “broad coalition of support” on the campaign trail, where he was able to speak to voters with a wide variety of perspectives and find common ground with them, she said.
“I think that Thomas has shown he is a consensus builder and a collaborative problem solver,” she said. “I think that will serve us very, very well as a board.”
Rockwell’s advice to Thomas is to have a “thick skin” as he steps into his board seat. When the board is the face of the district, Rockwell said she advises him to listen and respond to the community with compassion.
District 1 Board Member Tina Certain met Vu when he was a teacher as she was visiting schools after she was elected, she said.
Certain said many of his goals align with her visions for the board, including positively impacting student outcomes, making the district more accountable and developing a functioning strategic plan.
Vu also shares Certain’s concerns about the student achievement and performance of Black students, she said.
Certain said she foresees Vu going through the same challenges every board member went through — the transition from a candidate to campaigning and then to an elected official.
“I think I’m hopeful that he will come into the fold, so to speak, learn his role quickly and mesh his current knowledge,” she said. “He would marry that knowledge with his ability to be a board member.”
Ashley Webster, a 36-year-old registered nurse, lived in Gainesville since 2008 but recently moved to Alabama. She’s been friends with Vu for nearly 20 years, and met him as they were both working at Olive Garden to put themselves through college, she said.
To Webster, Vu’s openness to constructive feedback and “emotional intelligence” are the qualities that stand out most to her.
Although she never envisioned Vu becoming a teacher when they met, she said Vu’s passion “transformed” after she had kids and when he started teaching middle school.
“I remember him having this realization of ‘Oh my gosh, I’m not just a teacher, the education system really, really impacts kids as a whole,’” she said. “I really think that’s when I started putting things together … I should probably pay attention to what the school board is doing.”
Webster said the community should trust Vu because the accountability he wants in ACPS is something he also wants in himself.
“I think that the most important aspect is … what’s best for the kids,” she said. “So that’s what he’s going to fight for, even if there’s conflict, even if it challenges the status quo.”
Courtney Shannon, a 42-year-old raised in Gainesville and previous resident, met Vu when he shadowed her class at Lincoln Middle School when he was a student in Santa Fe’s Educator Preparation Institute.
When Vu became a full-time math teacher at Lincoln, Shannon said she also observed a “not quick to judge” quality she feels will serve him well on the school board.
“He’s got a level of follow-through that is really well-suited for someone who’s moving into a public service role,” she said. “I think it’s a win for the whole county.”
Looking ahead
Vu, who considers himself an introvert, said his younger self never envisioned he’d be a school board member.
“It’s kind of this acceptance where other people, even when I was running, would be like ‘You’re a leader, whether you like it or not,’” he said.
Vu will be sworn into the school board on Nov. 19. Although he is unsure of the challenges he’ll face, he said he’s hopeful about the future of ACPS.
“I can say for sure, I’m never going to stop trying,” he said. “I always want to make things better.”
Contact Sara-James Ranta at sranta@alligator.org. Follow her on X @sarajamesranta.
Sara-James Ranta is a third-year journalism major, minoring in sociology of social justice and policy. Previously, she served as a general assignment reporter for The Alligator's university desk.
