Winooski School Board member Alex Yin runs for VT governor as a write-in candidate
Photo courtesy of Alex Yin. Visit Yin’s campaign page at https://www.writeinyin.com/.
A Winooski School Board member is running for governor as a write-in candidate — and he hopes to send more money to schools for infrastructure needs and more as part of his self-described longshot campaign.
"There are a lot of good things about Vermont, but it seems like sometimes we're working twice as hard to achieve just as much, and it shouldn't be that hard," said Alex Yin, who announced his run last month.
Yin faces five candidates on the ballot: incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott, Democratic nominee Brenda Siegel and independent candidates Peter Duval, Kevin Hoyt and Bernard Peters.
Yin said he's aware he's facing an uphill battle: Scott secured nearly 70% of the vote in the Aug. 9 primary, and Siegel ran unopposed on the Democratic side. But he believes he can unite parties and urban and rural communities by focusing on education.
Yin is funding his campaign himself. He's encouraging his supporters to donate to school districts rather than to him.
He’s been relying on word of mouth and social media to get his name out there rather than yard signs — a deliberate strategy.
"Vermont doesn't have billboards, so I'm going to steer into that value and not have picket signs, which litter the roads," he said. "If you really look at the language of the campaign, it's about the values."
Yin, who has served on the Winooski School Board since 2017, said Vermont needs updated information systems and to focus on schools.
"The pandemic was an ultimate stress test to see how well our systems are doing," Yin said. "I agree that our current state government did a good job with COVID, but it also highlighted a lot of failures, like our data infrastructure systems are a mess."
Yin referred to when the Vermont labor department resent 180,000 tax forms because the ones previously sent were printed double-sided and included other people’s private information.
In addition to fixing mistakes like these, he said it would also draw companies to the state, drive the economy and help Vermont be a leader in areas the state already excels at, like sustainability.
"When I first moved to Vermont, I didn't want to build another Silicon Valley, but why can't we build a Green Valley?" Yin asked. "We need to build the technical infrastructure so that we can have that kind of power to do that."
Originally from New Hampshire, Yin works as executive director of institutional research and assessment at the University of Vermont. He earned a Ph.D. in higher education and a master’s in applied statistics from Pennsylvania State University. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Yin is a strong advocate for increased state funding for education. For one, he said, the state should help fund school renovation projects, which it hasn’t done since 2007.
"So you want to improve the economy, but you're not going to take care of the kids for the future?" Yin asked. "No wonder, if you look at some of the data, that our kids don't feel like their communities care about them."
Yin was referring to a 2019 Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey that found 41% of Vermont students either didn’t think or weren’t sure if they mattered to people in their community.
That statistic prompted Yin to run for school board and become a youth mentor, he said. He believes investing in young people will help improve the economy. But it's not just K-12 education that needs investment, he said — retaining college graduates should be a priority, too.
"We complain about recruiting young people into our state, but our state universities recruit over 7,000 out-of-state students,” Yin said.
Creating programs that lower student debt could be one strategy to keep them here.
"We talk about the nursing crisis, and our higher education institutions graduate about 100 to 200 nursing students, but 60 to 70% are leaving the state because they are paid higher and can pay back their debt," said Yin. "The talent is there, yet we don't take advantage of it."
As a member of the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity advocacy group, Yin testified last session to pass Senate Bill 287, a measure focused on equitable education funding. The bill adjusted the formula for how much the state spends per student to send more funds toward schools with greater needs: those with a lot of English language learners or small populations, those that are small or in low-income and rural districts.
That experience, he said, is one example of how Vermont can unite urban and rural communities, political parties and often muted voices.
"People look at me and stereotype me as the Asian data guy, but really I think my strong suit is relationship building," he said. "With the educational equity funding formula, we set the tone by uniting rural and urban communities because we knew that we both need each other."
Yin hopes his priorities can appeal to voters outside of Chittenden County, too.
"I want to make sure people know that I'm not just about Chittenden County," said Yin. "It's very easy to be that, but I'm really about all of Vermont, and I hope that they can see that with the passion that I have."