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

 

Why I'm Running For The Emery School Board

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

Right?

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

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.