After Rubio: School Board Hopefuls Need a Litmus Test

Emery Unified School District:

Emeryville's Last Bastion of 

Pure Civic Dysfunction

With a New Superintendent and a New Board President,
Will We Have Turned a Page?

We're Guessing NO

The only change that will come will be from the ballot box

News Analysis/Opinion
Last week two more teachers announced they will not be returning to Emery Unified School District in the fall.  That adds to the eight that already announced earlier for a total of ten this, the last year of John Rubio as Emery superintendent.  Really bad, but an improvement over last year's 37% teacher exodus.  Emery, under John Rubio, infamously can't hold on to its teachers. 
Mr Rubio's anti-teacher tactics, described by the teachers themselves as "bullying" and "racist", however bad, are nothing new for Emery superintendents.  The last two out of three supes here tried to outright destroy the teachers union.  The last one, Debbra Lindo, offered to testify against Emery's teachers in the union busting Vergara case after receiving a vote of 'no confidence' from 92% the entire teaching staff in their 2012 Teachers Resolution.  Rabidly anti-teacher policy: It's an ongoing pattern and practise at Emery.

 But now it would seem Emery is changing.  The leadership, if you can call it that, is falling like dominoes; we're getting a new superintendent and just last week the School Board ganged up and kicked President Cruz Vargas out of his leadership position.  Normally you would expect after a substantive course change with that kind of power shift, a move towards competency at least would be forthcoming.  But this after all is Emery, and therefore it's ossified.

Every time a superintendent is removed or a School Board is replaced or a breathlessly announced new program is initiated, we inevitably drift back into the same culture of dysfunction centered around incompetency, lack of transparency, authoritarianism and a general aversion to evidence-based policy.  Politics as usual. The results for Emery where the rubber meets the road, are low enrollment numbers and low student academics resulting in failing school 'growth' and a district-wide lowered ranking.  The only way forward by the way (and the only way not tried at Emery), is to support our teachers, not engage in a war against them, the heretofore default Emery programmatic expediency from an uncreative and ossified School Board.

The debacle at the June 14th School Board meeting is emblematic of the culture of decline that has a stranglehold at Emery.
To wit: A power hungry and vituperative Board President pissed off one too many colleagues (as well as the Superintendent) and found himself kicked to the curb.  Stepping in to correct a locus of dysfunction; that would normally be considered a good move made by a public entity trying to center itself around what should be its core duty.  But again, this is Emery.  So what ensued instead was just another political power struggle.  What could have been a moment of accountability  turned instead into just so much more counterproductive churlishness.  Due to Board factious infighting, what the people of Emeryville now have is a School Board president and vice president that none of us ever voted for; in what should be a democratically elected body we now have two unelected and unaccountable leaders.  That's a terrible place to be with a new superintendent coming in.

The Definition of Out Of Touch
He's working for the kids...blah, blah blah.
In reality, Board member Donn Merriam  joined
colleagues Bailey Langner and Cruz Vargas
in saying NO to affordable housing
for Emeryville families. 
72% of Emeryville voters
disagree with them. 

Post Vargas, there is no reason other than pompous impetuosity that the people of Emeryville couldn't have figured into the equation.  What about democracy, Emery? You know, the people themselves getting the chance to have the people they picked govern this public enterprise?

If the Emery School Board weren't so highly dysfunctional, the Board President would now be the people's choice....the one who faced the voters and who the voters said they liked to run Emery; namely Barbara Inch.  But politics as usual has taken hold once again. This is not a good sign.  It foretells that where we're headed is where we've been.  Again.  A new superintendent, who presents us with a moment of great possibility, will be infected by incestuously base and venal Board politics.  Again.

Now presents a rare chance to actually change this District the Board has refused to seize.
It's rare because we have a new superintendent who wants to do the right thing (but needs a competent Board).  Rare, because this time our new superintendent will be the beneficiary of a "threesy" election this November.  Three Board members will be selected by Emeryville voters.  This aligning of the stars could actually change this school district.
But Emeryville voters will have to step up.  We cannot leave this to the usual lying poseurs seeking office.  Anyone running for School Board needs to face a litmus test.  The test need not be anything radical...it only needs to be radical for Emery.  Below are the minimum bars needed for prospective School Board members at Emery:

• Do they accept high teacher retention as a worthy goal? 
• Will they work to ensure high teacher retention is achieved?
• If Emery again fails to retain teachers (as compared with other districts), will the prospective Board member intervene?  How exactly?
• Will criticism from parents or the citizenry be encouraged?  How?
• Will bad news or flawed policies be openly discussed?
• Will rational and evidence-based policy be the default?  Will the prospective Board member be open to public discussion and debate, supported by the evidence, about merging Emery with a neighboring school district if that's shown to be the best course for the students?
• Will all parents be treated equally?  How about law abiding but unpopular and critical parents?  Will they be treated the same as popular and flattering parents by the Board member?
• Will the Board member generally support teachers over administrators?
• Will they own up to failures on their own?
• Will they be available to parents, the citizens and the press?  Even a critical but law abiding press?
• Do they think it's possible to measure the job performance of a schools superintendent?  How?

Three out of four current Emery School Board members would fail every bar above.  If a majority of School Board members passed the above bars, the end result would be better educational prospects for Emeryville's children.
We need to leverage this new Superintendent's skills with a normal, not dysfunctional School Board.  A normal school board.  That's something Emeryville hasn't had for more than a generation so it's easy to see how naysayers will spin this.  Our normal IS dysfunction.  But it really doesn't have to be that way.
This opportunity may not come this way again for another generation.  We can't squander this: We need to elect three new School Board members that have a progressive vision of public education.  That's Emeryville by the way: progressive.  All we need to do is keep out the ego driven charlatans, poseurs and con men.  We only have to elect the same kind of people we've been electing for the City Council: not necessarily great, just competent and reflective of our values.  That should be an easy lift.  Remember, we recently elected Donn Merriam to the School Board and he rallied against Measure C, the affordable housing for families bond initiative that passed by 72% of Emeryville voters.  Donn would never have passed our litmus test.  We could have stopped the sociopathic Donn Merriam.  Let's make sure we don't elect another sociopath to the Board.

Let's use a litmus test this time.

Emeryville voters: Imagine a school district that's not in the news....a school district quietly doing its job.