Don't Vote For Brian Donahue For School Board

 Please Don’t Vote For Me

I Want Something From You, Just Not Your Vote

Fourth in a series about Emeryville’s public schools for election 2026

Opinion / News Analysis

By Brian Donahue

I’m the editor of the Emeryville Tattler, I’m running for Emery School Board and I do not want your vote.  Got that?  I can make this surprising statement because I’m only running to force an election in November at the school district so some new people can become board members, not me.  

I forced the election when I completed my paperwork and registered as an official candidate with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters back in August.  Because I registered and therefore forced an election to happen, other candidates subsequently also registered to run and now there is going to be an election for school board in November in Emeryville.  The Alameda County rule that cancels elections if incumbents are the only candidates running, will not be in effect this time (this was explained in the Tattler’s August 7 story).  For purposes of this, the Tattler’s fourth installment of our 2026 look at Emery schools and the upcoming school board election, I want the people of Emeryville to know I do not want your vote.

Although I don’t want you to vote for me, I do want you to care about good government and I want you to hold bad public servants to account. I want everyone to pay attention to the public schools in Emeryville because we owe it to our children to care about and provide for their education, and because we pay our hard earned money for our government and we expect results.

Because I will not be a school board member by my choice, my name, though on the ballot, is not going to be a viable choice for voters.  You will have to decide who to trust running our schools; the two incumbents running for re-election, or the two newcomers who, unlike me, want to win and are running election campaigns this year.

Emeryville’s public school district is the worst run district in Alameda County and its also the most expensive.  I explained this at length in our viral September 16 story.  The take-away for voters should be to not vote for the incumbents.  You should not vote for me either.  That leaves the two newbies that are running. The Tattler will address that in story number five in our series on the schools and school board election.

You can thank me for running, thereby forcing the incumbents to face the voters this year if you want but please do not vote for me.  I don't want the job of running the schools and I will not take the job.  I am interested in reporting on the schools, not running them.

The Tattler Emery school board 2026 election series:

1st in the series: Why I’m running HERE

2nd in the series: Questions for candidates HERE

3rd in the series: Emery’s failing schools HERE

Emery's Failing Schools Again Urge Voters to See the Urgency Required

 Emery School District Drops to Last Place in Alameda County (Again)

Third in a series about Emeryville’s public schools for election 2026

News Analysis

Every two years Emeryville voters are given a chance to force leadership change at the city's failing school district.  Each time incumbents are re-elected.  The schools in Emeryville continue to slump.

There are 16 public school districts in Alameda County and academically, Emery Unified School District is in last place.  At the same time, in the category of district spending per student, Emery is in first place.  Thus, Emeryville is in a unique but unenviable position: we spend the most money on our schools but we get the worst results. 

Every two years, before Emeryville’s school board elections, the Tattler checks with the California Department of Education to see how our little school district is doing because we don’t want to take the word of the board members seeking re-election.  What we find this year is Emery has slid from second lowest place academically two years ago to now last place.  Six years ago, Emery was also in last place academically.  During all the six years and before, Emeryville schools have maintained the highest spending per student of all districts, now at $17,598.  Piedmont comes in at a distant second at $15,965. 

In terms of revenue per student per year, Emery also is easily in first place at $27,613, beating the second place finisher Albany at $19,648.

The State of California reports students are tested for English and math proficiency and Emery comes in at 39% for English and 23% for math.  Those numbers are very low but it should be stated that test scores have been found to select for student family affluence, meaning, the more affluent the families in the district are, the higher the test scores generally.  Emeryville is considered relatively affluent among towns in the county but Emery Unified School District also takes in the highest number of transfers from other districts.  The student transfers generally come from low income families and that is tracked by the State and puts Emery at 68% on the low income families metric. That number is high, but it’s not the highest in the county.

To get a fair assessment of how the district is doing, it’s important to also acknowledge the numbers of students that are what the Department of Education calls ‘English learners’.  If a student’s first language is not English, they are expected to not score as well in the testing for English proficiency.  In this English learners category too, Emery has a relatively high number (14%).  This high number would tend to bring down the English proficiency level for the whole district (39%).

Unsurprisingly, the five lowest scoring school districts in Alameda County all share high percentages of English learners and high percentages of low income families.  There is a lot of poverty in the families of the children in these districts and they tend to suffer from chaotic home life associated with poverty that tends to be less conducive to student learning. The five from fifth lowest to lowest are:

12th place Newark School District

13th place San Leandro School District

14th place Oakland School District

15th place San Lorenzo School District

16th place Emery School District

Conversely, the five highest scoring districts are all much wealthier and spend a lot on their schools (but not as much as Emery spends) and they all have lower English learner numbers except Albany Unified School District that has 12% (almost as high as Emery).  These districts feature high income families with lots of private tutoring of the children to augment the public education.  Also, these families tend to have high functioning family dynamics that are supportive of children’s learning. The five, from highest to fifth highest, are:

1st place Piedmont School District

2nd place Sunol Glen School District

3rd place Dublin School District

4th place Pleasanton School District

5th place Albany School District

It is important to know Emery did not score last in English proficiency.  At 39%, Emery scored higher than Oakland (34%) and higher than San Lorenzo (31%).  However, both Oakland and San Lorenzo have considerably higher numbers of English learners (32% and 31% respectively).  Emery’s lower number of English learners (14%) must be factored in.  Emery scored the lowest in math proficiency (23%) but that low number is shared with San Lorenzo.  Mollifying San Lorenzo’s low math proficiency is its low income score of 74% (compared to Emery’s 68%). 

The numbers in the aggregate show how Emery is falling behind comparable districts.  Our ranking over two years from second worse to last place, regardless of the mountain of money Emeryville citizens throw at its schools reveals a lack of leadership at the district.  It can be argued that for all the money Emeryville residents lavish on their schools (in the form of high parcel taxes we have volunteered to pay), we should not be in last place and we should not be getting worse over time. 

Another interesting bit of data from the Dept of Education illustrates how Emery spends its money.  Statewide, school districts spend on average 52% of their budget on classroom instruction.  Among Alameda County districts, the average number is close to the State average.  However at Emery, only 19% of the budget goes to classroom instruction and that’s by far the lowest number of all districts in the county.  The next lowest district is Castro Valley who spends 42% of their budget on instruction.  The bulk of Emery’s money goes to the category of “other” spending and that number too is by far the largest of all districts county wide.  ‘Other spending’ includes paying for corporate educational consultants which Emery does more than any district as a percentage of students enrolled.  Additionally, Emery, being such a small district at about 590 students, spends a greater percentage of its budget on administration salaries.  

One criteria where Emery shines is with the 16:1 students per teacher ratio, and there, Emery is tied with Albany for the lowest among all 16 districts in the county.  Statewide the average is 22:1.

To arrive at our rankings, we tracked the following categories (tracked by the Department of Education):

-Academic performance (English and math)

-Students per teacher

-Low income families

-English learners

-Average revenue per student

-Average spending per student

-Percentage of revenue from local sources

-Percentage of spending on instruction

-Percentage of spending on ‘other’ (unquantified) things

Student Academic Progress
Emery has a larger number of schools whose students are
making less academic progress than their peers at other
schools in the state. 

Source: CA Dept of Education

Emeryville pays more money for its schools per student
than any district in Alameda County.
Virtually all the money over the other lowest scoring five districts 
comes from parcel taxes the people of Emeryville have so 
generously given to Emery Unified over the years.

                                                                  Source: CA Dept of Education

 

Sutter Hospital Says NO Community Benefits Agreement For Their Emeryville Project

 Sutter: Willing to Meet With The City of Emeryville Directly But Not The Community

Local residents will have no say in what, if anything, they'll receive in exchange for welcoming a new hospital complex in Emeryville.  A high level Sutter Health official announced last week the firm will not participate in a Community Benefits Agreement concerning the proposed campus along Horton Street.  

Sutter Health Vice President of External Affairs, Melissa White surprised community leaders when she announced the corporation will not take part in a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) associated with their proposed billion dollar Emeryville hospital project proposal.  The surprising announcement places the City of Emeryville in the hot seat after City Hall's Senior Planning Manager Miroo Dessai assured community members earlier a CBA for the project would in fact be expected.

Melissa White
Sutter's Vice President
of External Affairs
Sutter will not negotiate directly
with the community.

While a community benefits agreement is not mandatory, these types of covenants have become common with large development projects and assure local residents are compensated in some way for perceived burdens.

CBAs are legally binding contracts signed by community groups and a real estate developer that requires the developer to provide specific amenities and/or mitigations to the local community or neighborhood.  They can be construed as coming from a loss of full faith by the community in the local government as a partner.  Thus, cities are not signatories on CBAs and they are not supposed to have any influence in negotiations between the community and the developer.

Accordingly, if Sutter refuses to take part in a community benefits agreement, there will be no community benefits agreement associated with the Emeryville Sutter Hospital.

Emeryville resident Brandon Soublet, who is running for city council in November expressed shock by the directness of the Sutter email, “I’m shocked but not surprised. I’ve been in every public meeting about this project and saw no desire from the Sutter team to meaningfully engage with the community” he said. 

Sutter began to back away from the community benefits agreement idea in August when Ms White claimed her corporation could not even enter into a community agreement if they wanted because of internal structures at Sutter, “A CBA is intended for developers and for-profit development projects. We are neither, we are a nonprofit organization, not a developer; our role is to provide healthcare services to the community” she said in an August 28th email.   After that, on September 2nd, Sutter confirmed there will be no CBA for the Emeryville hospital.

However, non-profit status doesn’t preclude a corporation from entering into a CBA and in fact it is quite common.  The claim that Sutter Health is not the developer of the Sutter Emeryville project is also factually untrue.  It is unlikely Sutter is unaware of these conditions and so their refusal to meet with the community to negotiate a CBA is probably their preference.  They would rather negotiate only with the City of Emeryville through a Development Agreement (DA), the document produced through standard negotiation processes between developers and municipalities.  Development Agreements are between cities and developers whereas CBAs are between the community and developers.  Both DAs and CBAs run concurrent with each other. 

Brandon Soublet
City Council Candidate
Shocked but not surprised
at the Sutter decision to
exclude the community.

CBAs usually arise when the community loses faith in the city to produce a DA that faithfully represents the community’s interests.  Over the years, Emeryville has earned a reputation for being business friendly and the Sutter CBA pull out represents a marginalizing of the community that will likely produce blowback.

Indeed, the local citizen activist group Emeryville Neighbors United (ENU) is already weighing in on the Sutter announcement.   Judith Timmel, a 34 year Emeryville resident and founding member of the group told the Tattler,  “This is not a response that one would hope to get from a  developer partner for the City of Emeryville. While I am opposed to the Sutter proposal for a 330 foot tower tucked away in a small corner of my city, if such a thing were to come to fruition, I would expect that the community, the residents, the workers would have a voice in measures to help remediate the overwhelming consequences of such a decision on the part of the city.”

Lillian Schroth, also a founding member of ENU said, “Sutter’s response is unfortunate and seems very disingenuous. Call it a community benefits agreement or something else – the principle behind it is the same: that Sutter is willing to work with the community to mitigate some of the huge impacts that this project is going to have on our neighborhoods.”

Council candidate Soublet indicated he is having trouble understanding Sutter’s ‘no CBA’ goal, he questioned, “Will pride in having a state-of-the-art nonprofit medical center cut our city’s budget deficit, help our housing problem, or improve the quality of life for the average Emeryville resident without a CBA?”

Plans to strengthen parts of Berkeley Alta Bates Hospital against earthquakes and add new facilities have long been stalled by Berkeley neighbors over construction, noise and traffic, prompting the non-profit hospital chain to study relocating to a medical center proposed at Horton and 53rd streets in Emeryville.  Sutter also operates facilities on Oakland's Pill Hill.