Should School Board Members Run For Re-Election? They Should Resign in Shame

 The Worst Academic Record in the East Bay: 

The Emery School Board Members Should Not Be Running For Re-Election

Instead, They Should Do What Failed Leaders Do In Japan: 

恥ずかしながら辞職 

Opinion

Perennial Emery School Board member Brynnda Collins spoke for the whole board at the recent League of Woman Voters candidate’s forum when, on camera, she told the attendees that Emery school district must "stay on track".  That’s a cliché line commonly used when a politician wants to run on their record.  But Ms Collins and her slate mates, Susan Donaldson and Regina Chagolla, the three Emery school board members who are running for re-election, really don't want to run on their records – so Ms Collins’ line was only meant to obscure.  In truth, they don’t want us to know their record.  Because the more Emeryville voters find out about the record of the existing school board, the more they want Emery to get off that track.

On their watch, Emery Unified School District hasn’t budged from last place academically among Alameda County school districts.  The current culture of failure began six years ago when Emery slid to the bottom.  And there it has remained ever since.  But it’s not for a lack of spending.  Emeryville taxpayers fund their school district at the highest rate of any school district in the entire East Bay.  We pay more than $27,000 per student per year for them to run our school district.  The next highest spending comes from Berkeley Unified where they spend about $18,000 per student (California average is about $14,000).  But Berkeley gets excellent academic results for the money they pay.  We spend the most and get the worst results.  Our students score 23% proficiency in math and 37% in English, the worst scores in Alameda County.  And so these three incumbent school board members are out talking to voters about anything other than their record.

Where does all the money go at Emery?  How could they spend so much and get such bad results?  The answer is administrators and consultants.  Emery has the highest ratio of administrators to students in Alameda County.  But more distressing is the squandering of public funds going to educational consultants over the last six years on the school board's watch. 

Emery spends millions of dollars on educational consultants. The numbers tell the tale: whereas California school districts spend on average 52% of their budget on instruction, Emery spends only 19%.  Other school districts spend on average 12% of their budget on 'other spending' which includes educational consultants where Emery spends 67%.  That’s an awfully high percentage of the budget to be spent on something that's clearly not helping.

Meanwhile, teachers at Emery are paid so poorly they can’t afford to live here.  Paying teachers more could help Emery attract the best and the brightest to our little district.  If we stopped spending so much on consultants (and administration) we could pay the teachers more.  Teachers know how to educate children in the real world, educational consultants don't.  Teachers are the ones in the trenches, doing the real work. To empower teachers is to upset the dysfunctional 'top down' culture at Emery.

Now these three incumbents at Emery school board want us to vote for their re-election.  They're asking us to vote for dysfunction.  They're asking us to vote to keep Emeryville schools on the bottom, the worst in Alameda County.

The Japanese have an expression commonly used by CEOs of large corporations when they fail to manage the corporation and bring shame upon themselves, it’s called Hazukashinagara jishoku or 恥ずかしながら辞職 , meaning to shamefully resign.  That’s what should be happening at Emery instead of them running for re-election.  

Alas, this is part of the current trend in America; failed leaders doubling down and gaslighting the public.  In Japan, a place where public shame still exists, failed leaders announce for the good of the organization they will 恥ずかしながら辞職 as they step down in humility.  Here, they tell us to keep them on track.

A valuable site to verify how Emery is failing the children may be viewed HERE.  Make sure to scroll all the way down to 'Academic Summary' and 'District Finances'.

This is how they do it in Japan
Executives at a Dentsu Corporation press conference resign in shame
over a worker 'karoshi' scandal or death from over work.
In America, failed leaders double down.