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.  

Alameda County Releases Final Election Results

Alameda County Certifies Emeryville 

Election Results 

Finally, it's official.  The Alameda County Registrar of Voters has certified the November 4th election in Emeryville.
Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue are our newest City Council members and they join with Donn Merriam as our newest Emery School Board Trustee.  John Affeldt and Christian Patz, incumbents both, will return to the School Board.  Miguel Dwin, a School Board incumbent, loses his seat.  Yes on Measures U&V won, those being the charter city and real estate transfer tax measures as well as Measure K, the school parcel tax.

The Registrar certified these results today:

Emeryville City Council  (top two)

• Dianne Martinez   1219
• Scott Donahue    1141

         John Bauters    950
          Ken Bukowski    341

Emery School Board  (top three)

• John Affeldt    1255
• Christian Patz    1152
• Donn Merriam    730

         Miguel Dwin    709

Measure U

• Yes    1314

         No    967

Measure V

• Yes    1353

         No    921

Measure K

• Yes    1952

         No    327

New High Buy-In Make Emery School Board Elections Exclusive

$832 Stops Democracy in Emeryville

But a Fix is On the Way

Opinion/News Analysis

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters this year has quietly raised the fee to print a 'candidate's statement' in the official Voter's Guide to $832, making the cost for non-incumbents to run a credible campaign for Emery School Board now beyond the reach for all but the independently wealthy.  The punishing new bar set by the County openly discourages all and outright stops many would-be participants from seeking the non paying, no benefits and high workload job of a school board member at Emery.

This high fee is doing a major disservice to the idea of democracy in public education, having the effect of entrenching power by exacerbating and increasing the incumbents advantage while pushing down newcomers who offer a change.  In a School District like Emery where for years, an anti-teacher, anti-parent culture has taken over the School Board, this new high bar for entry to challengers has already proved to be nullifying to democracy: We know of at least one new candidate considering a School Board run this November who was scared off by the high fee.

New ideas at Emery School
District can't see the light
of day without a bunch of 
these behind 'em.

The $832 fee reflects the printing cost of including a candidate's statement along with the candidate's name in the Voter's Guide, or so Alameda County tells us.  They're doing an end run around accusations of anti-democratic high fee exclusivity by continuing to allow a candidate to have his/her name appear in the Guide and on the ballot for a nominal fee.  It's the candidate's statement, the critical chance to inform voters what the candidates stand for, that costs $832.  Rather than go to war against the prodigious plenipotentiary power of the County Registrar of Voters, we see a fix for this intolerable problem here in Emeryville.

The Emery Fix: District Picks Up The Tab

Emery Unified School District is going to have to start paying the County for non incumbent Emery School Board candidate's statements. Incumbents are helped as everybody knows by the fact they're incumbents and voters know that fact because it appears in the Voter's Guide (for no extra money) and on the election ballot.  Non-incumbents will need financial aid from Emery.  

Since it's unreasonable and too expensive for the School District to pick up the tab of every non-incumbent candidate, we propose the aid be doled out on a first come first served or a lottery basis, enough to fill out a full slate of challengers on the ballot.

  Allowing the millions of dollars this school district spends on questionable 'community engagment' given in the form of lucrative contracts to chummy corporate consultants for all sorts of less democratic citizen empowerment than this, we trust they will not cry poverty with this idea.

"After spending millions on 

'community engagement' forwarding 

the Center of 'Community' Life, 

they're going to have to spend 

a little on democracy."

We find it hard to overstate the importance of lowering this fee and allowing new voices on the School Board.  As we stated, this new fee has already curtailed democracy here at Emery.  This year it has stopped the people's right  to have a choice in the direction of their School District: as a result of too few candidates running, the best case scenario for those wishing change will be a 2-3 School Board minority (the 3 representing the existing established power).  We can only elect two challengers this year and that's not enough to bring about new direction.  This November, we can only hope to bring incremental change, change at the margins for our School District.  The $832 fee has limited our choice.

School Board members here at Emery tend to not fill out their terms.  They resign early, giving the power elite on the Board a chance to appoint their favored new replacement (even if sometimes an independent, less-than-compliant pick gets in by accident).  This is no good.  The citizens need to be able to effectively weigh in here. Every election cycle, the people of Emeryville should always have the capacity to vote for a change in their government be it at the School District or at City Hall.  At Emery Unified School District this November, there's going to be no chance for change, regardless of what the people want.  This is unacceptable.  $832 shouldn't stop democracy.  It's time for the School District to pony up, even if the idea of change is threatening to them.  We're going to have to spend a little from now on to ensure democracy doesn't go missing.  Ironically, they may learn to love it; real democracy will give legitimacy to this District and that's something that's also been missing.