RULE to Vet School Board Candidates

Emery School Board November Candidates: Take Heed

The citizen's activist group Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE) has announced they will interview candidates with an eye towards endorsement for November's Emeryville School Board election.  Foraying into Emery School District Board Trustee elections will be a first for the group, long active in vetting and endorsing City Council candidates.
RULE will be conducting the interviews of School Board candidates on June 21st at 10:00 AM at the Doyle Street Co-Housing 1st floor common room, 5514 Doyle Street.  All interested people, candidates and the general public are encouraged to attend.  Depending on the number of candidates seeking endorsement, the following July RULE meeting (to be announced) may also be reserved for interviews.

Below are the questions to be asked of all School Board candidates:

1. What is your view of charter schools? How should the District respond

to any applications it might receive to create a charter school within

District boundaries?

2. What, in your view, is the primary mission of the District?

3. As an individual trustee, how would you want to interact with

teachers? Would you want to meet with teachers as a group, individually,

and if so, how frequently? Or would you primarily rely on the

superintendent or public Board meetings to communicate with teachers?

4. What is the appropriate role of standardized tests? How would you use

the scores? Should scores be used to evaluate the performance of

administrators or teachers?

5. In recent years the District has fired or reduced the hours of some

staff in favor of outsourcing school services such as the breakfast and

lunch programs. When is it appropriate to outsource an existing school

service? What factors should guide these decisions?

6. What role should a Trustee play in District fund-raising from

businesses, non-profits, and grant-making institutions?

7. The District controls three properties. How should it allocate

resources amongst these properties? Assuming the completion of the 
Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL) in 2016 and the use 
of the San Pablo Avenue site for K-12 instruction and administrative 
offices, what should the District do with the Anna Yates and 
Ralph Hawley sites?

8. Should Emeryville schools receive contributions directly, or should they be 

managed by a third party?

This year's School Board election will contest three seats, those now occupied by current long time School Board members seeking re-election; John Affeldt* and Miguel Dwin and also a newcomer; the recently appointed member Christian Patz who was selected this spring to fill in for recently departed Josh Simon.

RULE says they hereby invite these three people to be interviewed and any other Emeryville residents  considering running for School Board Trustee this November.

*Note to readers: The seat now occupied by Board member Melodi Dice was inadvertently named as a contested seat in the original iteration of this story.  In fact the actual contested seat is the one now occupied by Board member John Affeldt.  The Tattler stands so corrected.  We apologize for the mistake.