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
18) Why is Brian so stupid?
ReplyDeletePlease let us know which questions you think are stupid.
DeleteThe argument that consistent 5-0 votes show a group think culture is a good one. I would ask them if they are comfortable with this. Why ARE there so many 5-0 votes?
ReplyDeleteSome of the questions are very good and others are loaded, but I like the overall push. To me, though, they point toward a more fundamental problem: EUSD may simply be too small to operate efficiently as an independent school district. EUSD has about 78 staff for only 600 students, and only about half of those staff are classroom teachers. That helps explain the extraordinarily high spending per pupil. An independent district has fixed costs—a superintendent, finance, HR, administration, compliance, and so forth—that have to be paid whether the district serves 600 students or 6,000. At the same time, roughly 40% of EUSD students are interdistrict transfers, mostly from West Oakland, particularly the portion of 94608 outside Emeryville. Yet EUSD students remain roughly 1.5–2 years behind Berkeley students academically, even after adjusting for family income. We are spending a great deal of money per student without getting correspondingly strong results. That suggests a structural problem rather than one that can be solved by simply electing better board members or trimming a few consultants. Emeryville may not have enough resident students to justify maintaining an entire independent K–12 bureaucracy. I think we should seriously consider merging with Berkeley Unified. Emeryville would bring good school facilities and resources to the table, while Berkeley already has the administrative infrastructure and scale that we are paying to duplicate. Berkeley's student population is roughly ten times ours, while its budget is only about six times as large. That difference is exactly what economies of scale look like. The goal wouldn't be to close Emeryville's schools. It would be to keep the schools and students while eliminating the unnecessary duplication of running a separate school district around them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughtful comment. I too have suggested Emery merge with Berkeley Unified over the years and I made that part of my campaign for the school board the last two times. Its went over like a lead ballon. Provincial forces are still in control here at Emery Unified, even though the children pay for the board's stubborn failure to see this. I remember for years rational voices tried to convince the city council to merge the then Emeryville Fire Department with the Alameda County Fire Department to realize savings and better service. But stubborn council members (Nora Davis) refused for years. Finally the crash of 2008 happened and Nora finally allowed the merger. It has net a savings of about 25% per year to the Emeryville taxpayers all while improving service. I suspect eventually rationality will take over the provincialism at Emery and you will be vindicated. We have to wait for the bigots at the school board to stop being bigots.
ReplyDelete