Rob Galanakis
Rob Galanakis ran for election to the Portland Public Schools Board of Education to represent Zone 6 in Oregon. He lost in the general election on May 20, 2025.
Galanakis completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Rob Galanakis was born in Floral Park, New York. He graduated from West Hempstead High School. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Pratt Institute in 2007. His career experience includes working as a business owner.[1]
Galanakis has been affiliated with the following organizations:[1]
- Glencoe Elementary PTA
- Mt Tabor Neighborhood Association
- Bike Bus PDX
- Strong Towns PDX
Elections
2025
See also: Portland Public Schools, Oregon, elections (2025)
General election
General election for Portland Public Schools Board of Education Zone 6
Stephanie Engelsman defeated Rob Galanakis, Simone Crowe, and Joseph Mains in the general election for Portland Public Schools Board of Education Zone 6 on May 20, 2025.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Stephanie Engelsman (Nonpartisan) | 81.6 | 81,500 | |
 | Rob Galanakis (Nonpartisan)  | 12.1 | 12,077 | |
| Simone Crowe (Nonpartisan) | 4.4 | 4,400 | ||
| Joseph Mains (Nonpartisan) | 1.5 | 1,541 | ||
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.3 | 306 | ||
| Total votes: 99,824 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Galanakis in this election.
Campaign themes
2025
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Rob Galanakis completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Galanakis' responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I’m running for School Board to bring urgency, creativity, and boldness to how PPS approaches problem solving. Educating our kids has gotten harder, the scope of our problems larger, our resources stretched, and we need creative approaches to meet these challenges.
I came into the school advocacy space through transportation advocacy and kids getting to school safely. I saw how our transportation system impacts the health of our planet, our city, and our kids. I learned the major impediment with improving how kids get to school, was how PPS thinks about transportation: yellow school buses, or not their problem.
That led me to create our school’s Bike Bus and become PTA president, which exposed me to more of what was going on inside of school. And not just our own school. The closed-off mentality PPS had around transportation, it had everywhere else. PPS’s culture and policies were top-down, not bottom-up.
Seeing how all of these threads came together, I saw that the work of myself and other advocates would end with burnout and failure. I’m running for PPS Board because we need a renewed spirit around listening to teachers, listening to parents, and working with partners on bold and creative solutions.- Fiscal stewardship: We must stop looking to new funding to solve our problems. We need to acknowledge the reality of public budgets going forward, and be more responsible with how we spend funds, and be more creative with how we solve problems. If the best solution is financially infeasible, it doesn't help our kids. We can make incremental and affordable, but achievable, gains across the board in student performance, health, climate mitigation, and more, but only if we own up to the reality of our long-term state and local financial problems.
- Safe streets: Kids aren't even showing up to school, and when they do, it's often after a long bus or car ride. They don't have the independence to visit their friends houses. Safe streets and active transportation (walking and biking) leads to higher attendance, better behavior, stronger academic performance, healthier kids, and more connected communities. This positively impacts both the day-to-day, and also bigger picture issues like rebalancing school enrollment.
- Creative solutions: The "golden hammer rule" says that "when all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail." This is true at PPS: the only instrument they seem to use is the very expensive golden hammer of education policy. But PPS's problems start far upstream, and we need to work and advocate upstream. This means advocacy, like better housing policy leading to increased enrollment. This means partnerships, like reestablishing a liaison with the Mayor's office. It also means looking more broadly across school and city concerns, like PPS using its considerable capital spending capacity to rehabilitate community centers and pools.
Strong Towns (the books and website) explain my philosophy on municipal finance and how to build a healthy city.
I strongly believe that, for local offices in particular, candidates should be able to demonstrate a deep and nuanced understanding of policies and tradeoffs. It may be good electoral politics to tell people what they want to hear; but it means, when push comes to shove, you have no idea what you're going to get (more likely you're going to get very little).
It isn't enough to complain about insufficient school funding; what are you willing to cut, or what taxes are you going to raise? It isn't enough to complain about high costs; who are you going to pay less, what services or projects are you willing to eliminate?
Many current PPS Board Policies have not been updated in decades, and many Administrative Directives have serious problems. Many board members rarely visit schools, except when there is a crisis, or they are trying to convince voters to support their candidacy or a new bond. These are all a serious lapses, and whoever is elected must do better.
Nonfiction: I read about 40 nonfiction books a year, so it's hard to choose, but the Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow has to be it. Graeber, an anthropologist, has long demonstrated how non-factual so much of what we think we know about history is. Dawn of Everything is a compelling attempt at a unified theory of this better-informed history of humanity. It's a shame he passed away.
They also need to have relationships with the city and county. We need to see schools in the context of the larger community.
- Modify the Local Option portion of the school funding formula so we can raise more money for teachers/staff through property taxes. The current low limit is bad. This is revenue-neutral for the state.
- Identify state-level general fund expenses that should be cut. There is between $1-$3 billion for freeway expansions that should be cut from the Oregon Dept of Tranportation's budget for example. It's not enough to just ask for more money; what can we take away?
- Ensure Portland passes stronger pro-housing and zoning laws. More people means more enrollment means more funding.
- Adjust school start times by implementing better transportation alternatives.
- Use the trips to and from school for exercise, by getting more kids walking and biking.
- Use bond money to buy and rehab rec centers and pools, and have Parks continue to operate them.
- Improve air quality and student performance with Idle-Free Zone enforcement and better air purifier compliance.
Eddie Wang, PPS Board Chair
Rita Moore, Frmr PPS Board Member
Rex Burkholder, Former Metro Councilor
Chris Smith, Frmr Portland Planning Commissioner
Coach Sam Balto, Nationally Recognized Safe Routes to School Advocate
Effie Greathouse, School Air Quality Advocate
Kiel Johnson, Owner and Founder, Go By Bike
Victoria Via, Architect & Strong Towns PDX Co-Lead
Michael Andersen, Cities + Towns Director, Sightline Institute
Cathy Tuttle, PhD City Planner
Walt Alexander, Co-founder, Pine State Biscuits
Tony Jordan, President, Parking Reform Network
Alan Hipólito, Digital Justice Advocate
Shawne Martinez, Award-winning Safe Streets Advocate
Eva Frazier, Former co-owner, Clever Cycles
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
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Candidate Portland Public Schools Board of Education Zone 6 |
Personal |
Footnotes
