The Tattler Delivers to the People of Emeryville, a Choice in the Governance of Their Schools

 The Tattler Brings You 

An Election!

Emeryville Citizens Will Be Able To Vote For School Board This Year Because of the Tattler

Commentary

By Tattler Editor Brian Donahue

I’ve lived in Emeryville for 42 years and during that time, the citizens here have been able to vote for their school board only a few times.  Usually, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters does not hold an election in Emeryville because nobody seems to want to run for the school board position if incumbents are running, which they almost always are.  This year is different.  Because I decided to run, there will be an election and the people get to have their say about who runs their schools, a rare occurrence in Emeryville history.  Insularity is the thing at Emery Unified School District, democracy, generally not well-received.

How individuals rise up and become new Emery School Board members is by appointment by the Board rather than by election by the people.  It’s all legal. Insularity is locked in at Emery.

Here’s how it works in six steps:

1)  A Board member tells their colleagues they want to resign before their term is up.

2)  The rest of the Board appoints a favored replacement for a short term (until the next election).

3)  The appointed new Board member announces they are running as an incumbent in the next election, benefiting from the incumbent advantage.

4)  Nobody rises up to challenge because of the well known incumbent advantage.

5)  The County Registrar of Voters does not hold an election.

6)  The friend, newly appointed by the Board, gets to be on the Board for a full new term (unless they too quit early) without ever facing Emeryville voters.

This year I threw a monkey wrench into all that.  

Here’s how I forced an election this year:

1)  The two incumbents indicated they were going to run for re-election to the two seats in contention.

2)  I waited until two days before the deadline to see if anybody registered to challenge the two incumbents (which I hoped for but doubted would happen).

3)  Sure enough, nobody registered to challenge the two incumbents.

4)  I quickly registered, thereby forcing an election.

5)  The incumbent, Kimberly Solis, who was herself earlier appointed to the Board, withdrew her registration to run for re-election.  She obviously was waiting to resign until right after winning a second term with no election, enabling the Board to appoint her replacement (until I messed that up).  Her withdrawal forced step 6 to happen.

6)  The Alameda County Registrar extended the deadline to register by one week as they legally are required to do when this happens.

7)  During the extended registration period, with two seats up and only one incumbent, a new challenger who wants the seat and who would be good at it (Elsie Joyce Lee), quickly registered.  Democracy flowered.

8)  The Board quickly found a favored replacement to run for the open seat against Elsie Lee (and I); the Board's choice is the husband of an existing Board member (who will get something close to an incumbent advantage in the election with the whole Board’s endorsement). 

Elsie Joyce Lee was not going to run for the Board until she saw a seat open without an incumbent. As a result, now there are four people running for two seats; one a straight incumbent, one, the husband (a near incumbent who may not get the full incumbent advantage), Elsie Lee and I.  This brings the possibility of the rarest of things, a new face and new ideas at Emery Unified, vetted by the people instead of the School Board.  

Seeing how Ms Lee, a very good candidate for any school board, is trying for the one open seat against two competitors (me and the husband of the existing Board member), I will make an announcement about this soon.

Emery schools are terribly run, just as they have been for years.  We’re the second worst school district in Alameda County (more on that in a future Tattler story).  At the same time, Emery is the best funded school district by far, in the county.  To be second from the bottom and at the top for funding means the management is terrible.  The culture that enables this terrible condition at Emery to continue for decade after decade is the cynical insularity promulgated by the School Board, their friends and family members.  A real election with the people of Emeryville deciding, could be the beginning of much needed change.