Health benefits and social-media posts add tension to Marin Board of Education race
Two Tiburon residents are competing for a Marin County Board of Education seat on Nov. 3 in a race pitting the challenger’s attack on the incumbent’s health benefits against his own record of social-media posts denounced as bigoted.
Challenger Avery Lieberman has pledged not to accept the county-paid health insurance if elected, saying the money should go to schools instead. Incumbent Marilyn Nemzer says the benefits are county policy rather than the board’s and that the option lets people of lesser means serve.
Lieberman’s Facebook posts in April described Muslims as invaders and tied them to violence in Europe. He says he was not referring to all Muslims and that he speaks out as a Jewish man alarmed by rising antisemitism. His Facebook posts have drawn accusations of bigotry before: Posts he made about race in 2020 prompted a student complaint at the dental school where he taught. He was notified of his layoff that day and sued the university, alleging it had branded him a racist. The case settled in 2024.
Election 2026: The Marin Board of Education Area 5 candidates at a glance
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The election is also tied to board member Nancy McCarthy, who encouraged Lieberman to run and who has clashed repeatedly with her colleagues on the board.
The contested Trustee Area 5 seat covers all of Tiburon, Belvedere and Strawberry as well as Corte Madera and Larkspur; the Reed Union School District lies entirely within its boundaries. The winner will serve a four-year term until November 2030. It is the first contested race for the seat in at least 13 years: Nemzer was the only candidate to file in 2013, and no challenger emerged in 2018 or 2022, when she was reappointed by default.
The Marin County Board of Education provides citizen oversight of educational programs and services run by the Marin County Office of Education. It works with the voter-elected county superintendent of schools to set county-office priorities.
Its duties include adopting or rejecting, but not modifying, the elected superintendent’s proposed budget; setting the superintendent’s salary; hearing appeals of student expulsions or denied interdistrict transfer requests; and maintaining positive relationships with the county’s 17 school districts.
The Ark interviewed both candidates in August about their priorities and what they want the board to address.
A board member’s role in the election
Lieberman is running after being encouraged by McCarthy, a Greenbrae attorney who has served on the board since 2024. She has drawn criticism from her colleagues in recorded meetings, including claims that she has created a toxic environment during her tenure.
He is one of three challengers seeking to unseat incumbents on the seven-member board, and he said McCarthy also recruited another of them. A sweep could tip the balance of power, as they and McCarthy would hold a four-seat majority.
McCarthy did not respond to two phone calls from The Ark before press time seeking comment on Lieberman’s campaign, on her role in recruiting challengers or on her colleagues’ remarks about her.
Board President Curtis Robinson, who faces a challenger in his reelection bid, described her as the “very outspoken trustee who tends not to follow a lot of the procedure.” He made the remark at a July 14 board retreat, which McCarthy joined three hours after its scheduled start because of work obligations.
Robinson said at the same meeting that McCarthy has made personal attacks against board members regarding board spending and has filed California Public Records Act requests with her own board.
“I mean, this is a trustee of our own organization that’s, that’s trying to uncover things that aren’t there,” Robinson said. “It’s just very weird.”
During her tenure on the board, McCarthy has called for the county superintendent, John A. Carroll, to report to the board instead of the superintendent overseeing the board. She said during the July 14 meeting that “we really don’t have the authority to do anything” as basis for “a complete structural change in the board.”
McCarthy said at that meeting she found it “personally offensive” that board members can “get paid $2,000 an hour in healthcare benefits for showing up 30 hours a year and do virtually nothing, because right now it is the superintendent that makes all the decisions.”
Lieberman agrees with McCarthy, saying it is immoral for board members to take county-paid coverage. Echoing her, he said board members work only 36 hours a year. He provided The Ark with a county report on board member benefits showing Nemzer has accepted $411,043 in health-insurance premiums from 2007 through 2025, or $441,370 counting dental and vision coverage. The 2025 figures cover a partial year.
“It’s time that that money be put toward where it should go, and that’s toward the district, toward improving education, keeping the quality of the education, improving the system,” Lieberman said.
Nemzer, responding to Lieberman’s remarks, said the health benefits are set by county policy rather than by the board. She said she did not know about them until she joined the board.
She said Lieberman’s figure is wrong and put her own time at about 24 hours a month, or roughly 300 hours a year.
Nemzer defended the benefit, saying the option to receive health coverage allows people from lower-income backgrounds to seek the office.
“If your part-time job offers you a benefit that allows you to give time to that job, then I think that’s great — and … I would stand by this in a public hearing,” Nemzer said.
The Office of Education’s approved fiscal year 2026-2027 budget, which took effect July 1, includes $16.65 million in spending on employee benefits. A department summary covering expenditures related to the superintendent and governing board shows a combined $471,040 in employee benefits. That is about 0.69% of the county office’s $68.4 million in overall spending.
For board members who do use health insurance, Nemzer said the total is closer to 0.2% of the overall budget, or about $137,000. That’s enough to cover one, “maybe one and a half” reading specialists’ salary and benefits, Nemzer said, “and the amount of money that we have and resources that we’re putting into reading now is very amazing, and we’re very focused on it.”
“My point is we don’t have to choose between focusing on reading and focusing on that,” Nemzer said.
Nemzer said education-office staff have become demoralized by McCarthy, whom she described as “destructive, obstructive and negative.”
She said calls to make the superintendent a board-hired role instead of voter-elected would add “one more layer of bureaucracy” and give the board more power that isn’t in its purview.
Lieberman’s posts online
Lieberman occasionally posts on social media about national and state politics, much of it name-calling aimed at liberals and elected Democratic officials. The Ark reviewed a series of posts on his private Facebook profile that are different in kind, directed at Muslims as a group. Two are representative.
Lieberman in an April 19 post shared a Breitbart story headlined “North London Synagogue ‘Firebombed’ in Latest Anti-Jewish Attack.” Above the link he wrote: “For those of you who favor open borders and unelected judges (Obama appointees) who block efforts to deport violent hate filled Muslims.”
In an April 17 post, Lieberman shared a message from conservative commentator David J. Harris Jr. paraphrasing Catholic Bishop Athanasius Schneider: “They are not refugees, they are invaders who want to Islamize Europe. They want to destroy historical culture in Europe.” Harris asked, “Thoughts?” Lieberman answered, “And they’ve succeeded.”
Responding by email Sept. 3 to questions from The Ark, Lieberman said he wrote or shared the posts and defended them. He said they were “from 6 years ago,” though the Breitbart story he shared was published April 19 of this year.
“It could have been in April, but it doesn’t ring a bell,” Lieberman said in a subsequent phone interview, adding that he does not post on Facebook often. “If you say that was from April, then it probably is.”
He said he was not referring to all Muslims.
“Most are peaceful and tolerant but a small percentage aren’t,” he wrote.
Lieberman, who is Jewish, said much of his family was killed in the Holocaust, that he is worried about rising antisemitism worldwide and that he feels an obligation to speak up about attacks on Jews. He said that shortly before he wrote the post about the London synagogue, his son had been called a “dirty Jew” by a classmate at a Tiburon school.
Of the post quoting Schneider, Lieberman said he agreed that an immigrant who intends to “destroy historical culture” and impose beliefs on others through violence “is not a refugee. That person is, in fact, an invader and should be deported.” He said he supports immigration and opposes deporting “peaceful immigrants who want to assimilate and contribute to society.”
Lieberman said those who “try to label me as racist or hateful” over the posts should recognize that he has been a victim of hate himself. He said he would stand up for people of all races and religions.
“I support diversity, equity and inclusion, but only when applied to everyone, not just certain groups,” he wrote.
Lieberman has faced the accusation before. In November 2020, he sued the University of California, alleging he was laid off from his job as an assistant clinical professor at its San Francisco dental school and publicly branded a racist over posts on his personal Facebook page.
The dispute began in June 2020, days after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. A student complained that Lieberman’s posts were offensive, according to court filings. A faculty member relayed the student’s words in an email quoted in the case: “Apparently this is how he feels about people of my skin color.” The student said Lieberman had since deleted “a lot of the racial posts.”
In one post, Lieberman wrote that saying “all lives matter” was “now considered to be the ‘go-to response from a racist.’” He also commented “So true!” on another user’s post invoking slavery, Jim Crow and reparations. Lieberman deleted the “all lives matter” post and apologized publicly after a colleague told him students had been hurt by it, according to his complaint. In a deposition, Lieberman acknowledged a reader could construe his agreement with the latter post as racist.
He was told of his layoff in June 2020, the same day the complaint reached the dean. The next day, the dental school’s dean sent an email newsletter that “a member of our community has been making racist social-media posts” and that “this person will no longer be a member of the UCSF community.” Lieberman alleged students and faculty understood the message to refer to him and that it destroyed his reputation.
The university said in filings that his layoff was one of more than 20 in his department after an April 2020 order to cut its budget because of the coronavirus pandemic. It said that the decision had been made before officials learned of the posts and that the dean’s email referred to a different faculty member. Lieberman contended he was the only employee actually laid off and that others’ appointments were not renewed.
A judge refused to dismiss the case in April 2023. He ruled that a jury should decide whether the layoff was driven by budget concerns or by hostility toward Lieberman.
The same judge threw out Lieberman’s harassment claim, writing that he had failed to show a hostile work environment and had admitted no one made offensive comments about his race. Lieberman later dropped his discrimination and retaliation claims.
He went to trial against the university on defamation and whistleblower retaliation, but the parties settled in October 2024, with no admission of wrongdoing and no allegations tested at trial.
Nemzer says she cares ‘about all the right things’
Nemzer, 84, has represented the Tiburon Peninsula on the board since 2001 and is seeking a seventh term. She has lived in the Del Mar neighborhood since 1983.
Nemzer began her career as an English and French teacher in San Francisco high schools and later became a middle-school counselor. After moving to Marin, she started a nonprofit that provided tutoring, helping lower-income Marin students reach literacy goals.
She founded The Book Exchange in 1987 and was its executive director until 2024. The nonprofit, also known as The Global Book Exchange from about 2000 to 2022, gave more than 1 million books a second life in schools, libraries and homes during her tenure. It shipped more than 100,000 books to 45 countries.
The nonprofit received a local Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2009 and the Award of Excellence from the Marin Economic Commission in 2004.
“My whole life has been about service to children and service to schools as well,” Nemzer said. “So, for me, being on the county board was just an absolute, natural evolution — it was a natural step for me.”
Raised in San Francisco, Nemzer attended Lowell High School and graduated with a bachelor’s in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. She studied abroad at the University of Bordeaux in France. She earned a master’s degree in French from San Francisco State University, where she also received her teaching credential. She holds school-administration and counseling credentials from the University of San Francisco.
Nemzer has been married since 1976, and she has three grown children who attended Reed Union schools.
Of her career as a teacher, a counselor and a nonprofit director, Nemzer said her tenure on the county board “has been one of the most rewarding,” saying she is able to learn what the county office offers students, “and it seems that a lot of people don’t realize that we do.”
The county office provides alternative education programs and regionalized programming for students with extensive support needs. Those include physical, cognitive or developmental disabilities and low-incidence conditions, such as students who are deaf or hard of hearing, or blind or with low vision.
She also pointed to a body she co-founded, the Efficiency and Effectiveness Collaborative, which brings local superintendents and district board members together to find ways to cut costs by sharing services or buying in bulk. She is also the county board’s representative to the Marin County School Board Association, which provides support and resources for local districts and their board members.
“I think it helps all the kids in the county more for the trustees to network more, and that’s what I’ve been focusing on in addition to my regular board duties,” Nemzer said.
Among her priorities in seeking reelection, she said she wants to continue the education office’s long-term programs that are not mandated by state law.
Those include the county office’s Walker Creek Ranch outdoor education program at its namesake 1,700-acre site in West Marin and career-readiness programs such as Career Technical Education, which offers courses in plumbing, construction, automotive skills and welding.
“We’re very, very focused on workforce training and making sure that every single kid has a chance and can just have the exposure and opportunity to learn about different careers, and they may not want to go to college,” Nemzer said. “Some kids don’t go because they don’t want to go, they want to do something else. So, we want to offer a really well-rounded program.”
Nemzer said she is the candidate who cares “about all the right things,” pointing to her career as an educator and advocate for youth education.
“I walk the talk, I talk the talk, I run the talk,” Nemzer said. “I do everything — I’ve done everything in my life for children, for teachers, for schools and I want to continue.”
Lieberman says ‘focus has to be on the kids’
Lieberman, 65, has lived in Tiburon for 31 years and is a former assistant professor of dentistry. He taught at the University of the Pacific’s Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry in San Francisco from 2008 to 2015 and at the University of California at San Francisco from 2008 to 2009 as a volunteer and again from 2019 to 2020.
He had clinical practices at various locations across the Bay Area from 1986 to 2005. He also ran a consulting business advising dentists on how to build their practices from 1995 to 2000 and helped design the antisnoring mouthpiece ZQuiet, consulting for its maker from 2008 to 2018. He was a consultant on Medi-Cal dental coverage from 2022 to 2023.
Raised in San Francisco and on the San Francisco Peninsula, Lieberman graduated from Burlingame High School. He earned a degree in biological sciences from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a doctor of dental surgery degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.
He is a former member of the advisory boards of WestAmerica Bank and Family Service Agency of Marin and a former Tiburon Peninsula Little League commissioner. The family agency has since folded into Buckelew Programs’ operations.
He is married and has two sons who attended Reed Union School District schools and now attend University of California campuses.
Lieberman said his experience at both public and private universities convinced him that the University of the Pacific offered a better education and “a better prioritization” than UCSF did.
“I saw that, in that instance, the students were the priority,” Lieberman said. “And the money and whatever resources went towards a better outcome for teaching. In the public (school), I didn’t see that as much.”
That led Lieberman to take an interest in participating in education “on a local level,” saying that students who attended private schools “are clearly coming out with a better education” than those attending public schools.
“It gave me the insight to say, ‘Hey, it doesn’t have to be this way,’” he said.
One of Lieberman’s priorities is maintaining local control for school districts. He pointed to groups such as Better Together for Public Education in Marin, which has called for county school districts to consolidate. The group has not been active since at least 2022, and its website domain and email address have since expired.
He said consolidating districts would disrupt students’ social lives, add cars to the highway “that don’t need to be there” and detract from “what makes Marin great for families: it’s that local feel.”
“As a parent, I hear about it, and people are scared,” Lieberman said, adding that families “want the local schools to stay local.”
Another priority he cited is ensuring childhood literacy goals are met, from reading proficiency to comprehension and overall education quality, which he said “has to be … the No. 1 priority.”
Lieberman acknowledged he has plenty to learn in the role but said he is doing his homework. He said he wants the board to “use its powers to influence money to put it in the right direction,” from improving teaching conditions to the technology educators use in the classroom.
“I’m not there for fun, I’m there to make the experience better for the students,” Lieberman said. “This is not about me. This is about the students.”
Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.