Questions Any Emery School Board Candidate Should Be Able to Answer

Election '26:

 Here Are 17 Questions That Should Be Answered By The School Board Candidates

As the campaign season gets ready to heat up, Emeryville citizens who normally only vote for city council members should consider how their vote can have a bigger effect in ameliorating government dysfunction at the school district board race than the city council race.  That’s because a large majority of voters don’t pay attention to the school board because they don’t have children enrolled in Emery schools.  But they should pay attention because their one vote makes a much bigger difference in a school board race than a council race.  Also, for as dysfunctional as Emeryville city hall is, it’s no match for the government dysfunction at Emery Unified. 

Emeryville citizens without children enrolled at Emery schools with a modicum of civic mindedness should have no patience for government dysfunction in a general way of course but true as well they should find objectionable their (forced) financing of it.  All citizens, home owners and renters, pay for Emery schools.  Help can be only one election away.  At Emery, there’s a rare combination of great need and possible great effect: the dysfunctional culture has a great need for democratic electoral oversight that your one vote has the power to deliver.  

Owing to the ignorance of the average Emeryville citizen in school affairs, the Tattler presents here 17 essential questions for anybody running for the board.  These questions are mostly specific to Emery.  Because the Tattler editor is running for the school board, we don’t feel it’s fair for us to put these questions we authored to the other candidates on our own.  However Emeryville citizens can ask these questions (and more of their own) of the candidates. Citizens should ask these questions any way they can during the campaign season and vote according to how the candidates answer.   The best thing we can do for Emery and for the children under its care is to demand good governance through transparency and accountability that only can come from citizen involvement.   

The Questions:

1). Emeryville spends more per student than any school district in the East Bay.  Why is it so expensive to run our schools?  Can we run it more efficiently?

2). Emery has the highest number of inter-district transfers of any district in the East Bay, meaning Emery takes the most students from other districts in order to fill our schools.  Why is that?  What can be done to lower the number of inter-district transfers if you think we should do that?

3). Emery spends more on consultants than any district in the East Bay.  Why?  Should we be spending more or less on consultants?

4). The current school board members don’t return calls of parents with children enrolled in our schools.  Is that ok?  How can this be rectified? 

5). Because the Brown Act forbids the superintendent of the schools and the school board from answering citizen’s questions at public meetings, should they hold press conferences from time to time so the public can ask questions about their district?  If NO, why?  Is there another way questions can be answered?

6). What does the school district owe the public (if anything)?

7). Test scores at Emery are low.  More importantly, our ranking among other school districts in the East Bay is very low.  This has been the case for decades.  How can this be improved?  What specifically needs to change?

8). Emery teachers are paid about average for the East Bay. Should they be paid more?  If teachers should be paid more, how do you propose raising or allocating the money to do that?

9). The ratio of administration pay to teacher pay at Emery in terms of the total budget is skewed towards the administration more than any school district in the East Bay.  Why is that?  Should it be changed?  How?  

10). What is the best way to stop bullying among the children?  Is the current system acceptable? How will you implement your ideas if they differ from the current system?

11). Should the school board be answerable to the press?  To the extent they are not now, how will you change that?

12). How important is school security?  Because the public should not be able to enter the campus during school hours on their own without checking in with the front desk, is the school district (and the school board)  responsible for keeping the children safe?

13). The City of Emeryville is responsible for keeping the children safe at the ECCL but the City is failing to always keep the children safe because they fail to keep security doors locked.  If elected, will you personally step in to demand and make sure the doors are secure?  How will you change the current lax safety culture to accomplish that?

14). What should be done with all the surplus school property in town (the Ralph Hawley and Anna Yates sites)? 

15). How has this school board done a good job? How have they done a bad job?

16). Emeryville has the lowest number of children per home in the East Bay.  Is it a part of the job of the school board to try to improve this low number?  If elected, will you appeal to the city council to build more family friendly housing?  How? 

17). Do you currently have your own children or have you ever had your children enrolled at Emery?

The Candidates:

CHRISTOPHER KEITH ALLEN 

Parent

email: keith2allen@att.net 

REGINA CHAGOLLA 

Incumbent

web: chagollaforemery.com 

BRIAN DONAHUE 

Businessman/Journalist/Parent

email: sophbeau@yahoo.com

DAVID RIDLEHUBER 

Parent/Contractor

6251 SHELLMOUND ST. 

EMERYVILLE, CA, 94608 

email: dridlehuber@yahoo.com 

KIMBERLY SOLIS (formerly served on the Emery school board)

Student 

email: soliskimberly@proton.me

Why I'm Running For The Emery School Board

 The Tattler Should Be Reporting on the School Board Election, Not Running In It...

Right?

Opinion/News Analysis

By Brian Donahue

Voters may notice and wonder why the editor of the Tattler, Brian Donahue, is on the ballot this election.  Again, like last time, two years ago and two years before that, I have run for Emery Unified School District Board of Trustees in order to force an election so that Emeryville citizens may be able to cast a vote for the candidate of their choice and to force the candidates to face the voters, making their case for why they should be trusted running our schools.

The above sentence may seem fatuous but let me explain:  I’ve lived in Emeryville for 44 years and during that time there have been only been a handful of school board elections.  Most commonly, there are no elections at all.  What commonly happens is incumbents run unopposed.  And when that happens, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters cancels the election and the incumbents are automatically re-upped without having to face the voters.  No League of Woman Voters candidate debate, no media vetting of the candidates, no media reporting fact checked election claims, no candidates meeting the voters door to door presenting their case to the people.  Without elections, democracy is not served and the whole school district suffers as a result.

No Elections? Don’t We Have Them Every Two Years?

It is important to know how this sorry state in Emeryville perpetuates.  Unfortunately, the much vaunted incumbent advantage is especially strong for the Emery school board elections owing to Emery’s small size and the lack of an engaged citizenry in its schools.  School board races are much less popular than city council races here in Emeryville as it turns out.  So existing school board members who are tired of the job quit and their friends on the board appoint a replacement member of their choice, skipping the voters.  Then when the next election cycle comes, the replacements are incumbents with the incumbent advantage and this process thus repeats ad infinitum.  Would be candidates from the community don't run when incumbents are in the way because they know they will lose.  This is how it is nearly impossible for change to happen at Emery and why solvable problems tend to become systemic problems here.

The group-think culture at this unchecked and sclerotic school board means the children’s educational prospects are dimmed at Emery.  Virtually every vote on the school board has been 5-0 unanimous over the decades and that's not good for a school district with very low academic performance such as Emery.  The children themselves of course bear the brunt of this entrenched and homogeneous culture on our school board.

It is noteworthy that since I registered to run this election, two of the three incumbents dropped out of the three seat race, upsetting the normal way this plays out.  The two probably didn't want to have to do the work of actually running as a result of me being in contention.  That has set off a flood.  Seeing a real election about to happen, three new never before been on the board candidates have entered the contest (and one former board member who felt compelled to throw their hat in it).  That makes a total of five candidates for three board positions.  There could be an incumbent win and one or even two new faces on the school board.  Democracy is flowing freely at Emery this year.

I will weigh in on what is wrought by the lack of democracy at Emery later on in the campaign season but suffice to say that school board candidates facing voters, as they will do this election, can only be good for the district and the children.  

This season at Emery, candidates will seek money for their respective elections and the Tattler will report on where they’re getting it.  We will chronicle and fact check what they say on the campaign trail.  The only thing that won’t happen is there will be no Tattler candidate questionnaire this time because of the unfair advantage that would be gained by me as a candidate posing the questions.  So the citizens will have to ask questions of the candidates themselves.  We will suggest what we think voters should be asking the candidates. 

So that’s it.  After 40 years of mostly undemocratic unaccountability at the Emery School Board, this is the new Emeryville where voters will be able to decide who has the best ideas for how to run our public schools.  I will run for school board every time from now on to assure the old way, the no election way, is relegated to the dustbin of history.  After I’m gone, someone else should pick up the task.  

Democracy has come to Emery Unified and that’s a good thing.  Maybe school board elections will become as popular as city council elections around here.