Nathalie Rosen will serve as MBUSD board trustee
By Mark McDermott
Nathalie Rosen spent the better part of two years asking Manhattan Beach voters to say yes. This fall, she didn’t have to ask.
Rosen, who co-chaired the 2024 campaign to renew the Measure MB parcel tax, is joining the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education without a single vote being cast in her name. She, Board President Tina Shivpuri and Trustee Wysh Weinstein were the only three candidates to file for three open seats, after Trustee Jen Fenton chose not to seek another term. Under state law, when candidates do not outnumber seats, the election is canceled and the candidates are seated as if elected. Their names did not appear on Tuesday’s ballot.
“I’ve spent years working on the funding side of this district, from co-chairing the Measure MB renewal to serving as legislative representative and taking parents, students and teachers to Sacramento,” Rosen said. “Running for the board felt like the natural next step: I wanted to bring that work inside the room where the decisions get made.”
The funding side of local education has been critical work. Rosen moved to Manhattan Beach in 2021, a year before a $1,095 citizen-led parcel tax, Measure A, lost with 69 percent of voters opposed. When the district went back to the ballot in March 2024 with a straight renewal of the existing $225 tax, Rosen and Tyler Morant ran the campaign.
“It’s basically a re-up,” Rosen said at the time. “It’s exactly the same measure, same amount, same duration. Nothing is different.”
The renewal finished election night at 65.11 percent, short of the two-thirds required. It climbed as late ballots were counted and was certified at 67.74 percent, 8,459 votes to 4,028. The $2.5 million a year it preserves allowed the board to rescind 20 of the 38 layoffs it had authorized that spring.
That math is at the center of what Rosen says she intends to do on the dais.
“Measure MB funded 27 teaching positions when it first passed, and it covers about 17 now,” she said. “That’s not a local spending problem; it’s a state formula problem, and I plan to keep saying so to anyone in Sacramento who will listen.”
Rosen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in international relations and works as a bookkeeper and litigation paralegal. She and her husband have three children in MBUSD schools. She has served as vice president of membership for the Pennekamp PTA, legislative representative for Manhattan Beach Middle School, a Young at Art docent, and a member of the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation board.
“My priorities are to build on what already makes MBUSD excellent, to keep pushing for a fix to our funding at the state level, and to explain budget decisions in plain language,” she said. “All three come back to the same thing: keeping great teachers and staff in our classrooms and giving our kids the programs, support, and stability they deserve.”
Rosen will be sworn in at the board’s organizational meeting in December. ER
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