Why I'm Running For The Emery School Board

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

Right?

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.

Undemocratically Minded School Board Member Seeks Position in Local Democratic Party

Emery School Board Member Chagolla Running For Delegate to Democratic Party Committee

Accountability and Transparency Should be First & Foremost

Chagolla Doesn't Deliver on Either

Opinion

By March 5th, Democratic Party members in Emeryville, Oakland and Alameda have a chance to weigh in on Emeryville resident / Emery School Board member Regina Chagolla's bid to be an assembly district 18 voting member of the local Democratic party known as the Democratic Central Committee.   One of a slate of eight candidates for the Central Committee, Ms Chagolla has been endorsed by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta and Emeryville Mayor Courtney Welch.  

But despite the high level endorsements, believers in good government would be wise to not vote for Ms Chagolla. 

Emery School Board member Regina Chagolla
Anti-Democratic
Not accountable to parents with
children enrolled at Emery, she has
a patrician's view of democracy.

The Democratic Central Committee delegates represent their specific district serving the people and their State Assembly member.  As such, the Central Committee (DCC) delegates help promote the Democratic Party agenda, endorse candidates for statewide, legislative and congressional office, and vote to endorse resolutions and ballot measures among other things.  The last election in 2023, saw Council member Kalimah Priforce elected to the District 18 DCC delegation over objections from Assemblywoman Bonta who had selected a slate of candidates that included Ms Welch.  

Ms Bonta, recognized by many East Bay progressives as a 'corporate Democrat' owing to her campaign donor list of gazillionaires and mega-corporations, had the misfortune of having her entire slate, save one, defeated by the voters last time.  Now Ms Chagolla has joined a new slate of DCC Bonta candidates for another bite at the apple.  

Looking at Regina Chagolla’s impressive resume, one might be tempted to vote for her, regardless of her being part of the corporatist United Voices For Democracy slate as they call themselves.  Besides sitting on the Emery School Board, Ms Chagolla has been a 3rd grade teacher at Berkeley Unified School District for the last six years and she’s lived in Emeryville for 10 years.  But Democratic voters should be advised, Ms Chagolla’s tenure on the Emery School Board has been marked by a wholesale failure to govern from even the most basic of democratic norms.

Ms Chagolla is not available to the public.  Following in the footsteps of Council member John Bauters, School Board member Chagolla has adopted a hyper-partisan philosophy on governing to such an extent, certain members of the Emeryville public, the press and even parents with children enrolled at Emery, are not afforded the courtesy of having a single question answered.  Ms Chagolla will not entertain constituent’s questions at School Board meetings nor will she set up times for answering questions off campus, not in person, via email, text or not via the phone.  This is an extremely undemocratic vision of governance from a public servant who calls herself a Democrat.  

While running for re-election to the Emery School Board in 2022, Board member Chagolla joined with her two colleagues also seeking re-election, telling voters about what a great job they had done for the children at Emery.  "Keep Emery on track” is what they said, presumably because they were doing such a fantastic job.  What Ms Chagolla and her slate mates didn’t tell voters is that, academically, Emery slid to last place among all school districts in Alameda County on her watch.  This kind of incompetence and lack of transparency should not be rewarded with a Democrat’s vote.

You know a politician is pulling a scam when they transform themselves from lovers of democracy and accountability before they’re elected into haters as soon as they are elected.  Such is the case with Regina Chagolla.  Before she was elected to the Emery School Board, she told the community she loved the Emeryville Tattler.  In 2015, then an Emery teacher, she even wrote a letter to the editor praising how informative and democratic the Tattler is.  In her letter, Ms Chagolla thanked the Tattler, “for informing the public about the big discussions that are being made in this small city” and for informing her specifically as a teacher about what is going on at the school district.  She said the Tattler inspired her enough to start her attending School Board meetings. 

Assemblywoman Mia Bonta's Delegate Slate
The 'United Voices for Democracy' Slate
The corporate business community and their
sycophants wants you to vote for these people.

That was then.  Now as an elected official in power and under the critical eye of the Emeryville Tattler, now Board member Chagolla wants nothing to do whatsoever with the Tattler, the same news site that inspired her as a mere teacher.  Now the disdain for accountability from Board member Chagolla is so pervasive, she steadfastly refuses to answer our questions and she even joined with her Board colleagues running for re-election to freeze out the the public from accountability by refusing the Tattler’s election questionnaire (given to all Emeryville candidates for public office).  As elected officials in Emeryville, Ms Chagolla and her Board colleagues boycotted public accountability for the first time in the Tattler’s 14 year history.  Her reason?  She does not believe the public has a right to know about her governing philosophy.  She still wants their votes however.  

For these reasons, Democrats, even the corporate ones, should not use their votes to reward a person who cavalierly subverts the Party’s values with such aplomb.  We don’t know what kinds of political calculations Assembly member Mia Bonta has made endorsing Regina Chagolla as delegate for the Democratic Central Committee but we don’t think it’s in the interest of the people of the 18th District.

School Board Employs Catch and Kill Tactic to Quash Transgender Recognition

 Another Pride Month Passes With No Action:

Steve Dain Field Turns Into a Field of Dreams For Seekers of Social Justice

School Board Says NO to Naming Athletic Field for Fired 

Transgender Teacher

The Emery Unified School District Board of Trustees, desiring to stop a growing community movement to name the athletic field at the Center of Community Life school campus for its deceased transgender teacher, Steve Dain, engaged in a ‘catch and kill’ program to neutralize the community's action the Tattler has learned.  The community quest to posthumously honor the teacher the district fired for “immorality” in the 1970s, was siloed by the Board via use of a bogus committee set up ostensibly by the Board to “investigate” naming the field after Mr Dain.  The so called Naming Committee has not met even once since its chartering in April 2021 and the Board refuses to say if it will ever meet.

Emery School Board Member
John Van Geffen
Not fond of 'Steve Dain Field'
or Steve Dain anything for that
matter, he says there's no reason
for the Naming Committee to meet.
His Board colleagues agree.

Transgender community members and their allies, having been placated by the Board's sanctimoniously claimed interest in naming the field for Steve Dain, have since wound down and dispersed, satisfied with the promise of non-biased decision making by the Board's new committee.  The community was unaware but the dispersion and tamping down of their passion was likely the Board's whole idea of the pushing the Steve Dain Field concept into the wilderness.

The Board was caught off guard in 2019 amid a rising community groundswell to name the gym at the school campus after Mr Dain who was a popular PE teacher at Emery before he was fired for transitioning to a man in 1976.  All but one Board member, the president, were against Steve Dain Gymnasium and countering the groundswell, the Board threw the decision over to parents at Emery who refused to name the gym after a transgender person, naming it instead after a non-trans retired PE teacher.  The parents gave the Board cover to anoint the 'Elio Abrami Gym' instead of Steve Dain Gym.  

The cynicism of that Board move may have gotten them out of the publicly uncomfortable position of having to go on record as having voted NO to Steve Dain Gym but it came at a cost.  Board president Barbara Inch, the only supporter of Mr Dain on the Board, resigned from the Board in protest.  Watching from the sidelines and alarmed by the Board's Abrami gambit, the City Council responded by renaming 47th Street, the street address of the School District, 'Steve Dain Drive' in March 2021 by fiat.

The result of the first use of catch and kill by the
Board (to stop the Steve Dain Gym movement).

‘Catch and kill’ is a term used by right wing media to stop stories they don’t like.  Readers may remember how David Pecker, the CEO of the National Inquirer, a strong supporter of candidate Donald Trump in 2016, paid Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal $150,000 for exclusive publishing rights to her story about her affair with Trump.  After getting her assurance she would not tell her story to any other media before the 2016 election, the National Inquirer then refused to post the story they paid for, thereby killing it to help Trump's election chances.  It was a tactic useful to Donald Trump then and to the School Board at Emery now.

In 2021, the Board said its new Naming Committee would meet on a strictly ad hoc basis, meaning only when there’s a ‘need’ to meet.  Not seeing a need to meet after assuring the social justice seeking community the issue would be taken up by the Committee, the community’s Steve Dain Field request has been quietly erased by the Board.

Board member John Van Geffen, whom the Board appointed as the Naming Committee Chair, was contacted for this story but he refused to comment.  

Steve Dain Field (except for anti-trans bigotry at Emery)
Community members who want to see the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice will
have to wait longer for the School Board at Emery Unified School District to imagine equality.
 

School District Made Up of Abnormal People

 Why Can't Emery School District Attract 

Normal People to its Administration?

Stark Differences Between the School District and the Community

Community Wants to Help the Poor & Downtrodden Among Us, the District Doesn't

News Analysis

The people that run the Emery Unified School District are bizarre.  By ‘bizarre’  we mean not normal.  What else are we to believe when we have a local government agency in a democracy that demonstrably represents the polar opposite of the values of the community in which they exist?  Not to put too fine a point on it but the opposite of normal is expressly, not normal.

Here in Emeryville, we have a community that wants to help the working poor among us.  They want to help build a more equitable community that empowers all in the community.  We know this by the results of many votes taken over the years.  Yet our school district is here working to highjack these values, despite all their propaganda to the contrary. 

Consider what it is that Emeryville residents want: we want to increase the wages of the poorest among us.  We know this from votes taken in 2015 and 2019 and the election of each of the pro-minimum wage ordinance City Council members.  Our School District however, wants to keep wages low.  We know this from their actions and their statements.  Also, we want to hold ourselves accountable for past bigotry.  Our School District however wants to change the subject, run away from accountability.  We want to help our teachers thrive in our community.  Our School District wants to fire teachers.  On matters of existential importance like this, the community and the School District are opposites.  It’s all very curious. 

 

Emeryville’s record on raising the hourly wage of the working poor is impressive; we easily passed 2005’s Measure C, the ‘living wage for hotel workers’ when 54% of voters said hotel workers should make at least $9 per hour.  The school district on the other hand, was 100% against it.  Unsolicited, every single school board member signed a letter urging Emeryville voters to say NO to the wage increase.   In 2015, the City Council voted to increase the minimum wage in town to $14.03 with cost of living increases baked in.  Later when three Council members voted for a wage roll back at the behest of business owners, the residents of Emeryville fought to keep the progressive minimum wage by petition with the threat of an election.  The Council backed down because they could see the writing on the wall: Emeryville people support living wages. 

Increasing the wages of the poorest workers in our community is very popular with the whole community (except at the Emery Unified School District).  Current school board member and former City Council wannabe John Van Geffin pledged to voters in 2016 he would try to kill the Minimum Wage Ordinance at every single City Council meeting if voters would only elect him to that body.  Voters resolutely said NO to Mr Van Geffin for City Council.  So off he went to where he is more welcome: the Emery School Board.

In addition to keeping worker’s pay low, Emery Unified has sought to stop affordable housing for families in town.  In 2018, only two school board members were willing to endorse Measure C, Emeryville's affordable family housing bond then on the ballot for Emeryville voters to decide (the same Measure C name but distinct from the 2005 hotel workers measure).  A majority of board members said NO to the Measure and as a result, the District failed to endorse it.  A full 72% of Emeryville voters passed the Measure C affordable housing bonds.  Again, very compelling and illuminating numbers; almost three quarters of residents supported the housing bond but the school board couldn't even get a majority to support it.

72% of Emeryville voters were in favor of the
Measure C  affordable family housing bond.

In the 1970s, our school district fired a teacher for being a transgender person.  By 2020, a groundswell of citizens in the community sought to make amends for the District’s role in that anti-transgender bigotry.  The grass roots action was seen by our school district as something to put down.  And so they moved in and disallowed naming the school gymnasium after the teacher they had fired so many years ago.  The bigotry continues at Emery Unified.  The community is now trying to name the athletic field at the school site after the fired transgender teacher but again, our School District is actively pushing down this new community effort against bigotry and for accountability (see upcoming Tattler story on this).

In 2014, the board hired a new superintendent of the schools, John Rubio.  Mr Rubio used his office in a multi year radical effort to wholesale fire veteran teachers putatively to drive up test scores at Emery.  The effort placed Emery in the unenviable position as the worst school district in the entire Bay Area for teacher retention, a well known benchmark for assessing a school district’s success.  After a couple of years at it, Superintendent Rubio was firing new teachers he himself had hired.  Emery’s test scores fell every year Mr Rubio was at Emery, a point lost on the school board who continued to support him as he drove Emery down to the bottom, becoming the worst school district in the East Bay.  More important than raising test scores was the board's bizarre need to fire teachers.

60% of School Board members were against
the Measure C  affordable family housing bond.

In a scathing rebuke, nine teachers testified against Superintendent Rubio at a now legendary school board meeting.  The board, working for Mr Rubio,  gave individual fired teachers only three minutes to speak their piece on their way out the door.  Some of these teachers had worked for the District for over a decade.  Afterward, the school board, in a whitewashing response, refused to faithfully record the event in the official minutes as they are required to do.

Another former Emery Superintendent testified in federal court against teacher unions.  Superintendent Debra Lindo, a very popular superintendent with the school board, used her time at Emery to try to take down the teacher’s union, netting a ‘teachers resolution’ countering Ms Lindo and signed by 93% of teachers.  Later, little Emery Unified was featured in the notorious 2014 Vergara v. California, a case with national implications.  Our superintendent supplied the billionaire tech titan plaintiff, David Welch, with a legal declaration in which she said teachers unions must be destroyed 'for the sake of the children'.  

What are the odds that in a fair world, the values of the democratic government would so nearly be completely at odds with the governed?  Take the minimum wage issue: how many people are in favor of increasing the minimum wage in Emeryville?  We know by the 2005 plebiscite that number is 54% (and that’s with a massive campaign spending imbalance in favor of the NO side).  One would expect at least half of a school board who presumably would want to help poor families in our town, to be on the same side as the majority of residents.  And yet 100% of our elected school board members, inextricably people culled from our community, were against it.

This long standing record of Emery employees shows us what this public agency stands for.  And what they stand for is what the people of Emeryville stand against.  The Emery Unified School District is an alien presence in our community.  These are not normal people.   But why should abnormal people be ensconced in a democratic agency?  Shouldn’t our values be reflected in an agency that’s answerable to the people?  One would think so but the fact this is not the case tells us political ideologues are in charge at Emery.  

This school district is and has been steadfastly and demonstrably against the working poor in our community.  They are anti-union.  They are anti-transgender.   There is a culture at Emery School District that works against the people they are paid to work for. 

We don’t know why this district attracts people so wholly against working poor families like this but such a paradigm should be inherently unstable in a community such as ours.   The only way it can endure is in darkness.  Emeryville residents should shine some light in there.  

School Board Member John Van Geffen
He's really not fond of the working poor.
As a City Council candidate in 2016, he said if elected 
 he would try to overturn Emeryville's Minimum Wage
Ordinance at every single Council meeting over
his entire four year term if needs be.

Breaking News: School Board Issues Apology For Firing Transgender Teacher

BREAKING:

Tonight, the Emery Unified Board of Trustees voted to apologize to parents for the 1976 firing of Steve Dain, a transgender teacher employed by the District, for “immorality” after he had completed gender confirmation surgery.   The unanimous apology comes after two years of rancor, the District sidelining a bid to acknowledge the fired teacher by naming the remodeled gym after him in 2019 and then for more than a year, refusing to draft the resolution they finally did here tonight.   

Steve Dain, a popular 7-12th grade PE teacher at Emery, had won a teacher of the year award from the School Board the semester before he transitioned however, upon returning from summer break and surgery, Mr Dain was promptly sacked.  The Board fired  him at the behest of then Superintendent Lewis Stommel, who also directed that the teacher’s final paycheck be withheld.  Mr Dain hired an attorney and was awarded $19,000 for the termination and his back pay. 

Former Emery Teacher of the Year
Dr Steven Dain
1939-2007

After voting to name the school's gym for a different PE teacher, School Board president Bynnda Collins railed against naming the gym for Steve Dain, chastising advocates for transgender equality, calling the gym naming plan "political".  Council member Christian Patz responding, said Emery's failure amounts to anti-trans "bigotry".  

Talking with a reporter shortly after he was fired by Emery, Mr Dain said his passion in life was cultivating young people and that he “missed teaching more than anything”.   Lamenting about losing his chosen career,  he was thinking of his students, “I miss my kids in Emeryville” he said.

He died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 68. 

After the District received a lot of bad press from the Tattler and the Bay Area Reporter following the gym naming failure in 2020, Board member Susan Donaldson proposed to her colleagues that the District issue an apology but that also proved to be a non starter.  The City, sensing a lack of commitment from Emery Unified, moved to rename 47th Street, the address of the high school where he taught, Steve Dain Drive.  The City’s renaming efforts have brought praise from the press but also a new round of ire against Emery Unified for their recalcitrance.  Tonight that finally gets put to rest.

Here is the text of the Resolution passed tonight: 

The Emery Unified School District Board of Trustees would like to apologize for the employment termination of teacher Steve Dain.  Mr. Dain was terminated after returning from gender confirmation surgery in 1975.  As a district, we understand the personal hardships, needless expense and over arching injustice Mr. Dain incurred fighting the unjust decision preventing him from returning to Emery High.  We regret the harmful actions taken by the district at that time.  Mr. Dain was right to expect to return to his job.  In no uncertain terms, the current school board would never support the termination of a person due to their gender and/or sexual orientation just as we would not support any negative action based on bias.  To ensure that such discrimination does not take place in the future, Board Policies and Regulation now expressly reflect that no student, teacher or staff person may be subjected to discrimination, harassment or bullying based on sex, gender, or sexual orientation (among other protected categories).  (See Board Policies and Regulations 0415, 1312.3, 4030, 4031, 4119.1, 4119.11, 4219.1, 4219.11, 4319.1, 4319.11, 5131.2, 5137, 5145.3, 5145.31, 5145.7, 5145.9, https://emeryusd.k12.ca.us/policies.html].  

Additionally, inspired by past and ongoing events affecting our communities, students and staff, we have formed an Equity Committee of board members, staff and students to examine our history as a district, pursue inclusion and celebrate our diverse community.  This committee shall henceforth be known as the Equity and Inclusion Committee.  We also see this as an opportunity to include the Curriculum Committee in plans for incorporating LGBTQ and gender inclusive professional development training and resources specifically designed for educators and youth-serving professionals.  

In closing, we understand that it is important to face and acknowledge past injustice to move our community forward towards a brighter and more inclusive future.  Thank you for entrusting us with your children's education and safety.  We do not take the task lightly and we will continue to strive towards excellence and inclusion for all. 

March 5th, 47th Street to Transition to Steve Dain Drive

 City Honors Fired Transgender Teacher After Emery School District Balks 

Introducing Steve Dain Drive

School Board Digs In Its Heels Against Honoring Its Fired Teacher

The City of Emeryville has announced it will officially change the name of 47th Street to Steve Dain Drive on March 5th when employees from the public works department add the new signs to the existing street sign posts.  Both the old street name and the new name will be posted for a period of 18 months the City reports but they will start calling the street by its new name in March.  Only the portion of 47th Street West of San Pablo Avenue will get the name change.  

In an announcement made last May, the City took on the task of honoring the late Steve Dain, a teacher at Emery Unified School District who was fired by the district in 1976 after he surgically transitioned from a woman to a man.  City Council members expressed anguish that Emery School Board members had stopped a grassroots drive last year to honor the teacher the district had fired for “immorality” and it was suggested the City could act on its own by renaming the street, correcting the historic wrong. 

The district’s high school is located on the future Steve Dain Drive, the same school where Mr Dain taught 45 years ago.  The AC Transit bus yard is the only other entity that will have a Steve Dain Drive address.

School Board President
Brynnda Collins
Refuses to comment regarding
the district's role in the
firing of its transgender teacher
for "immorality".

The City Council took over the job of acknowledging Mr Dain after the School Board reversed themselves upon having made an initial move towards naming their newly remodeled gym for the fired teacher.  Since then the Board has reneged on a plan to pass an official resolution apologizing for firing the teacher who had once been awarded the title of teacher of the year at Emery.  Notably, the Board’s refusal to acknowledge the wrong done against Mr Dain by the district comes at the same time they have been honing their public message of "inclusionary equity".

The City has not announced plans for any official March celebration associated with the name change but there is talk of a street closing block party perhaps in the fall of 2021, depending on the status of the COVID pandemic by then.

Both AC Transit and Emery Unified School District have been notified of the impending renaming of the street City officials said.

School Board president Brynnda Collins and Superintendent of the Schools Quiauna Scott were both contacted to comment on the refusal of the district to account for the firing of Steve Dain and its failure to apologize but both leaders refused to respond.  

School Board Looks at Raising Administrators' Pay After Promising Voters They Wouldn't

Board Considers Raising Admin Pay After Passage of Measure K 

Emeryville Measure K Parcel Tax Passed Last Spring Promised No Money to Admin

The Emery Unified School District is pondering raising the salaries of non-teacher administration employees after assuring Emeryville citizens considering Measure K, a school parcel tax passed by voters last March, they would not.  Despite strong ballot language guaranteeing that there would be no increase in administration salaries from the March 3rd election, the School Board has hired a consulting firm to look into increasing administration salaries, just as taxpayer money from Measure K is beginning to flow into the District's coffers.  

The Board took up the item at their meeting last Wednesday with a power point presentation from School Services of California, a Sacramento based consulting firm paid by the District.  After reporting that Emery administrators' compensation is "significantly below" teacher pay, the consulting firm suggested the District should first raise administration compensation before increasing teacher pay.

Board Member
Lauren Salazar
We cannot commit to honor
our pledge to not raise
admin salaries at this time.

Concerned Letter From the Mayor

The Board's agendized discussion/action item was enough to prompt an October 28th letter from former School Board Trustee and current Emeryville mayor, Christian Patz who challenged the Board to not raise administrator's salaries until new revenue sources could be secured to pay for it.  Mayor Patz, noting the fungible nature of money, raised the idea that the District could tap the pot of Measure K money, expressly not for administration compensation, to pay for administrator pay increases nonetheless.  The Mayor challenged the Board directly, "Commit to not adjusting administrators' salaries until you identify new revenues to pay for those increases.  This means not just shifting teacher salaries to the parcel tax income but actual new income." 

The Mayor's letter was not well received.  Board members universally expressed their displeasure, especially President  Brynnda Collins who chastised Mr Patz for his questioning of the Board's promise to not misuse Measure K money, "I find it hard to believe leadership [on the City Council] can't be on Team Emery" she said.  She called the letter "sad".  Outgoing Board member Cruz Vargas was even less circumspect, bringing up Mr Patz's lack of support for Measure K last March, "People who could have supported us [during the Measure K campaign] didn't.... and it's not worth our time to respond to them now" he said, adding anything that's done with Measure K funds would be done "for the kids". 

Board member Lauren Salazar put it most succinctly stating she has faith in the process.  Responding to Mayor Patz's request for a Board commitment to not violate Measure K funding promises made to the voters, Ms Salazar spoke for the Board indicating all options would be retained, saying "Making any commitments now is inappropriate."  

Asked to clarify, Board President Collins later told the Tattler any notion that the Board is considering raising administration salaries in any incorrect way is "full of shit".

Mayor Patz however made it very clear he doesn't trust the Board will honor their pledge to the voters.  He told them, "This past spring, you put forth and passed a parcel tax with the promise 'no funds for administrator salaries.'   That is a direct quote from the ballot language you put to the voters.  At the time, I said the Board could not be trusted with the voters' money and was not being honest about how they would use the funds.  Now that the funds are available, the groundwork is being laid to prove me right."

After hearing the consultation presentation from School Services of California, the Board voted to push the issue of raising salaries, administrators' and/or teachers', off to a future meeting.

Measure K levies 12 cents per square foot of residential and commercial building area, taking in an additional $1.8 million per year for Emery Unified.  That amount represents a 37% increase in cost for an average home from $405 to $555 annually according to the San Jose Mercury News who urged Emeryville voters to reject the measure in the run up to the March 3rd election.   

A previous iteration of Measure K, also a school parcel tax passed by voters in 2014 was supplanted by the new 2020 Measure K.  The Tattler reported in February that Emery Unified had deceived voters in the 2014 election after it was found that the District had increased administrators' salaries after also promising they wouldn't. 

No Apology From School District for Unjust Transgender Firing

District Refusing to Apologize for its Roll in Anti-Transgender Bigotry

More Than a Year Passes After Proclamation Proposal 

The Emery School District’s Board of Trustees this week is remaining steadfast in their disapproval to acknowledge the District’s past bigotry against its former employee, Steve Dain, a Teacher of the Year fired for being a transgender man in the 1970s.  The Board President failed to forward a proposal for the Trustees to vote on Wednesday, a public apology, proclaiming the District unjustly fired the former Emery gym teacher, a proposal brought by Board member Susan Donaldson back in May.  Instead, President Brynnda Collins, feeling no urgency, has bumped the issue down to a sub committee to ruminate on for an indefinite amount of time.  The District, more than a year ago indicated in the abstract it would make an acknowledgment that the firing of Mr Dain was wrong but there has not been a majority of Board members interested in actually following through despite Ms Donaldson’s proposal.

The Board majority has not felt impelled to make amends for the District's firing of Mr Dain, however, they did feel a sense of urgency about the Dain issue in June of 2019 when then President Barbara Inch proposed her colleagues name the newly remodeled gym at the high school, Steve Dain Gymnasium by fiat, to acknowledge the fired Emery gym teacher.  Board members Collins and Cruz Vargas moved quickly and led a successful drive to stop the Steve Dain Gym proposal, settling on a different, non-transgender former gym teacher to name the gym after.  Ms Inch resigned the Board in protest shortly after the Vargas/Collins caper.  Board member Susan Donaldson, who joined with President Inch in voting to name the gym after Mr Dain,  consequently asked for and received assurances from the entire Board (including Collins and Vargas) they would make some other gesture to acknowledge the District’s culpability in the bigoted firing, an idea that has languished now for more than a year.  Wednesday’s Board meeting was to be the vote to apologize by official proclamation.

Emery Teacher of the Year
Steve Dain
After his surgery, Emery trespassed him off 
school property and then fired him
for being who he was.

The City Council, exasperated by the District’s failure to acknowledge its mistake and take responsibility for correcting the hurt the firing inflicted on Mr Dain and the community, took the issue on for itself when they announced they will officially change the name of 47th Street to Steve Dain Drive.  In a turn of karmic restitution, the same gymnasium where Mr Dain worked won’t be named after him but it will have a Steve Dain Drive address.  

Steve Dain, who died in 2007, never received an apology from Emery Unified School District after they fired him following his surgical transformation to a man in 1977.  The official reason for Mr Dain's termination was given as "immoral conduct", a charge that stands today in the absence of an official apology from the District.  

Mr Dain has living relatives still residing in the Bay Area. 

 Board President Brynnda Collins, who helped the Board sink the vote to name the gym after Mr Dain, has called the proposal for acknowledging Mr Dain, "political".  She did not return calls for this story.

'Vargas Era' Ends: School Board Member Cruz Vargas Announces He's Leaving Emeryville

 Pet Issue, Police in Schools, Likely Dies With Vargas' Departure

Leaving Emery
School Board Member Cruz Vargas

Emery School District School Board incumbent Cruz Vargas announced this week he is moving out of Emeryville and will not seek another term on the Board, marking the end of a pugnacious career for the school board firebrand and his style of imprudent politics that has emblematized the last few years at Emery.  The vacating Cruz Vargas likely puts to an end his signature albeit disputatious policy idea for Emery; putting Emeryville police officers in the schools. 

 The announcement by Mr Vargas surprised veteran school board watchers who noted the quixotic and brash former Board President had been riding what seemed to be a recent comeback after a public drubbing when his colleagues stripped him of his presidency in 2018.  

Board member Vargas had been arguing that there is a systemic discipline problem and a lack of order among children in Emery schools that only the stationing of police officers can quell.  Such officers, controversial but used in some school districts, are referred to as School Resources Officers (SRO).  There have been studies linking school districts with SROs to greater expulsions and even imprisonment of students.

Mr Vargas made his mark battling the City Council, leading the charge to sever ties between Emery and City Hall after several dust ups between the ‘Vargas faction’ on the Board and the Council members.  The two governmental agencies are contractually bound in their running of the Emeryville Center of Community Life, the joint schools/community center campus completed in 2017.  The two bodies formed a collegial bond in the City/School Committee charged with running the ECCL, that became a battleground subsequent to Mr Vargas’ election to the Board.  The open rancor came to a head when Mr Vargas took on Council member John Bauters over the ‘police in the schools’ idea.  After Mr Bauters delivered arguably the most impassioned and forceful speech ever delivered by an Emeryville pol, Mr Vargas retreated, swearing to go around the Council and take his police idea directly to the people.

Councilman John Bauters
wearing his 'schools not prisons' T shirt, 
volunteering at an ECAP event. 
Foil to Board Member Vargas.

The retiring of Cruz Vargas leaves current Board President, Brynnda Collins as the sole supporter on a five member board of the Vargas police in Emery schools idea.

In the wake of the nation wide paradigm shift following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, it would seem Board member Vargas’ police in the schools idea is on the wrong side of history.  Many, Mr Bauters among them, have noted how police in schools especially those with large populations of black and brown children like Emery, tend to criminalize normal children's behavior.  It’s been widely criticized as part of the so called ‘schools to prison pipeline’ for minority children.

The withdraw by Mr Vargas incidentally leaves the three seat school board race without an incumbent and automatically adds another week for would be applicants to submit their paperwork says the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.

Emery School Board Continues Undemocratic Tradition of Appointing Its Members

Yet Another Appointment to Emery School Board
After Another Elected Trustee Resigns

Emeryville, Meet Your Newest Board Member- 

John Van Geffen; Advocate for Business Interests 

& Foe of the Working Poor 

News Analysis
In his third attempt, local attorney and former City Council candidate John Van Geffen was finally successful this week in securing an appointment to the position of Trustee on the Emery School Board, a governing body that is supposed to be elected by the people of Emeryville.  However due to recurring resignations among Board members, executive appointments to this legislative body here are often the norm.  Also common is the appointing of community members to the Board that have been previously rejected by the voters of Emeryville.  Or in the case of Mr Van Geffen, a candidate that had been previously rejected by the voters AND (twice by) the School Board.  He now takes over the position of former Trustee Sarah Nguyen who resigned earlier in the year.

This week's continuation of Emery's Board of Trustees tradition, manifested by the elevating of Mr Van Geffen, comes after his 2016 City Council bid when he came in last place in a field of six candidates.  The deeply unpopular John Van Geffen was bested by current Board member, appointee Brynnda Collins, who also lost her Council bid in 2016, coming in 5th place in the six candidate field.  Unlike Mr Van Geffen however, Ms Collins actually won a subsequent (2018) School Board bid put to the voters.
Political office aspirants facing voters is the norm in a functioning democracy except here at the Emery Unified School District where Board members commonly resign before their terms are finished.

Third Time's a Charm-
Newly Appointed School Board Member
John Van Geffen
He lost a City Council bid and two previous
attempts to get appointed to the Board.

Newly minted School Board member Van Geffen was a controversial pick for the existing four Board members with his conspicuous ‘limited government’ conservative philosophy and open hostility to Emeryville's popular and progressive minimum wage and 'fair work week' ordinances in his failed City Council bid (see the League of Woman Voters video below).  Whereas Emeryville voters (and previous iterations of the School Board) soundly rejected Mr Van Geffen's attacks on the working poor in the community in 2016, the newest iteration of the Board now see a simpatico fellow traveler they can work with.

The appointment of Mr Van Geffen to the Board of Trustees adds to two existing other appointees currently on the Board.  Not including Board member Collins who was appointed and finally elected,  the Emery Unified School Board now is comprised of only three members whom voters have elected and three that have not been either rejected at the ballot box or appointed to their Board position.  A spare majority of three were selected by the people of the City of Emeryville, a tenuous majoritarian condition given Emery's historic inability to hold onto Board members for their full terms.

Readers may wish to review Mr Van Geffen's presentation in the League of Woman Voters' 2016 City Council candidates' forum in the video below and the Tattler 2016 City Council candidates' questionnaire, in four installments:
#1 HERE
#2 HERE
#3 HERE
#4 HERE

School District Moves to Deregulate Themselves Ahead of Parcel Tax Election

Oversight Committee Prepares to Decouple From Regulation;

Brown Act, Conflict of Interest Rules

Tomorrow night at the Emery school bond oversight committee meeting, the School District has prepared a suite of regulatory rollbacks to vote on that, up until now, has constrained the District including: laws governing conflicts of interest, the Brown Act open meetings law, reductions of the number of auditors for parcel taxes and bonds, and other burdensome regulations from their bond oversight committee.  The audacious deregulation gambit runs afoul of California law in some cases and begs the question of timing: With the Measure K parcel tax March 3rd plebiscite looming, why would the District be seeking this high visibility power grab disempowering ordinary citizens now? 

All told, the proposed deregulation promises to make it easier for District decision-makers to profit from their decisions, for developers to profit and to keep the public in the dark.
Those proposed changes can be seen in red here: http://emeryusd.k12.ca.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Packet_2.11.2020-1.pdf

Compendium of District Proposed Deregulation
On page 15 (of the entire committee pdf packet), the District is proposing removing the existing two-year moratorium on oversight committee members profiting from Emery school bonds.  Given that there is currently one member who is a developer (Josh Simon, more on him later) and another is a contractor, the roll back would permit them to approve a project, resign from the committee, then bid on the project.
The District thinks it’s better to allow the overseers to immediately move into bidding on projects and working for the District upon vacating their positions, a classic ‘good old boy’ network the two year moratorium rule is meant to stop.

On page 12, the District excludes the committee from the Brown Act.  While the removal of the Brown Act from the bylaws does not exempt the committee from the Act, as all government committees are beholden to the Brown Act, striking it from the bylaws does not make Emery Unified look good.

The District might be trying to exempt the committee by reducing the number of members needed for a quorum as they do on page 12.  The new rules propose that two members represent a quorum.  Under the Brown Act, anytime two members of the committee discussed the bonds, it would be a violation of the Act if not done at a public meeting.  It also allows a single member to decide issues during a meeting because of the abstention voting rules.

ECCL Citizen's Oversight Committee
Member Josh Simon
Formerly of Emeryville, Mr Simon
would benefit by the deregulation
proposal.  His development company
could bid on projects without
constraint from existing
conflict of interest rules.

Other changes throughout the update make it easier for quick opaque decisions.  Things like updating the bylaws become easier by removing the two-thirds requirement putting into the hands of any two members, or a quarter of the members.  The update removes the requirement for parents or seniors to be members. It leaves in “people with knowledge of facilities,” code for developers (page 11).

It should be noted that former School Board member and regional developer Josh Simon has been the consistent member of the oversight committee since he moved out of Emeryville.   He is about to be term-limited out because of state law.  It is an interesting coincidence that Mr Simon, the same person that pushed for the ECCL single school site, campaigned for the $95 million bond measure that built it, and has been on the oversight committee that fought against an audit, is now about to be set free for his company to bid on projects or surplus land from the District.  Some might say this sort of conflict is exactly what lawmakers had in mind when the rules constraining this were written.

The Superintendent of the Schools was called to comment on this deregulation vote tomorrow night, but she didn’t return calls.

Election Season Deceptive Flyer From School District

School District Falsely Claims Low Funding,
 Admin Salaries

The deceptive mailer was signed by the
Superintendent of the Schools

In anticipation of the March 3rd election and the Measure K school parcel tax proposal, the Emery Unified School District late last week released a four page public mailer deceptively claiming Emery to be “One of the lowest funded districts in California” despite being funded 4% above average of State funding and over nine times the average district in local funding according to the California Department of Education.  Additionally, Emery is asserting that “No [Measure K] money can be spent on administrators' salaries” but this is the same language that was used for the last Emery parcel tax (also called Measure K, in 2014) and the District subsequently increased the number of administrators while keeping teachers’ salaries low.  Spending on administrative salaries increased by 45% while teachers' salaries went up 8% three years after passage of the parcel tax.
The 2014 parcel tax language, like this year's, claimed to bolster teacher salaries while not increasing administration costs.

The year before the existing parcel tax (2013-14), Emery spent $3,374,743 on teachers’ salaries.  In 2017-18, the most recent year reported on Ed-Data.org, the district spent $3,631,650, an increase of $256,907.  Administrative salaries went from $622,780 to $903,052 an increase of $280,272.  That means administrative salaries increased by $23,365 more than fifty teachers’ salaries increased over the same period of time.
Past and present Emery parcel tax claims of 'no administration salary increases' appears to be a deceptive shell game that discounts the fungible quality of money, an argument of sophistry.

Usually, this kind of exaggerated rhetoric if not outright falsehoods can be found in election campaign literature but for a government agency to partake of it is untoward.  Noteworthy is the fact that the flyer contains no sources or accreditation for any of the information it contains.

Emery is highest in the East Bay in Per Pupil Spending
Emery spends $18,472 per student versus
California statewide all districts average of $12,714
Source: CA Dept of Ed

Government agencies including Emery Unified, are expressly not allowed to campaign for parcel taxes they place on the ballot as Emery has with the current iteration of Measure K.  They have to rely on citizen led election committees registered with the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) to do such campaigning.  The Registrar of Voters provides that government agencies, including school districts, can only produce factual, objective information disseminated to voters, not campaign material. 
Emery Unified is claiming this flyer they produced and mailed to each voter in town is such a mailer; factual and objective.  As such, the District has charged Emeryville taxpayers for the cost to produce and mail the flyer.   If this mailer were produced as part of a campaign, the costs associated with it would have to be paid by private donations. 

The president of the School Board and the Superintendent of the Schools were invited to clarify or explain their statements in the mailer but they declined to.  The Tattler will report again on this story before the election and it is hoped the District will engage with the citizens on how they got this erroneous information of Measure K low Emery funding and no admin costs they sent out to voters last week.

Administration salaries went up disproportionally over teacher salaries after passage of the last
Measure K parcel tax despite claims to the contrary.
Source: Ca Dept of Ed

School Board Shake Up: New Factionalism Rises

Protesters on School Board Attempt to Stop 

New President 

Go Down to Defeat: 2-3 

News Analysis
Emeryville voters will go to the polls in March to decide on Measure K, a new $1.8 million per year parcel tax meant to shore up a structural deficit at Emery Unified School District; a prospect now potentially undermined by ongoing and growing discord among the School Board members.  It’s a situation none of the members would likely have chosen.  Nonetheless, a shake up at the Emery Unified School District is revealing a new factionalism at the School Board after Board Trustee Brynnda Collins was elected President in a contentious 3-2 vote at their December 18th meeting.

The vote itself helped illuminate the players and the dimensions of the two new factions, coming as it did with the two dissenters aware that Ms Collins had locked up the presidency.  The two, Cruz Vargas and Sarah Nguyen voted NO to Ms Collins’ bid, even though by the time their votes were entered, the roll call voting procedure had already showed Ms Collins as the victor; a move that in a divided Board is commonly reserved to show enmity and displeasure.  A classic protest vote.

Emery School Board Member Sarah Nguyen
She followed member Cruz Vargas in a protest vote
against newly elected president Brynnda Collins.

The newly revealed factionalism seems to be indicative of a general lack of cohesion on the Board rather than a clashing of policy visions as was indicated by the previous iteration of the Board.  However whereas before, Mr Vargas stood mostly alone in his dissenting position, the joining of Board member Nguyen as indicated by the new December 18th vote, would suggest a more broad base of dissent against the majority faction, now represented by President Collins. 
Tattler readers will recall, Mr Vargas was stripped of his Board presidency by a unanimous vote of his colleagues in June 2018.  Mr Vargas, tilting at windmills, went on to engage in retaliatory personal attacks against his replacement, President Barbara Inch, calling into question her trustworthiness around children in December of that year.

Any hopes for a more unified School Board this last December 18th were dashed when member Vargas reminded his colleagues that members should not forget the “roles” each need to play on the Board and that only those with “strength” should be president before he joined with Ms Nguyen in voting NO to Brynnda Collins for president.  As it turned out, the didactic arguments presented against Ms Collins by Mr Vargas this time were nearly identical to the arguments he offered against the prospects of a Barbara Inch presidency in his 'Not Every School Board Member Should Be President' speech he gave back in December 2018.

As the Board turns towards the business at hand moving into 2020, the infighting may upset their plans.  Struggling to present a unified face to voters deciding on the proposed Emery School District parcel tax increase in March, a newly factionalized Board may have trouble getting taxpayers to trust them with another increase in tax proceeds.

Board Member Cruz Vargas
Leading a drive against his colleague
Brynnda Collins, he said she should
follow her "role".
Then he joined with fellow protester
Sarah Nguyen, voting NO to
Ms Collins' Board President bid.

Discord Returns to School District: Emery School Board President Calls It Quits

Emery Board "Not Invested in Much Needed Change" Says Departing President

Citing an intractable culture resistant to change, Barbara Inch, formerly of the Emery School Board,  announced Friday in a letter to the Superintendent of the Schools, she has resigned from her position as Board Trustee, effective immediately.  The resignation comes after a difficult three year tenure for Ms Inch who has served as President of the Board over the last seven months.
The dramatic departure represents the culmination of a progressive drive for transformation at the beleaguered little school district and heralds a return to Emery politics as usual before Ms Inch led a would be progressive majority in a Board takeover in 2018.

Former School Board member Inch, who was elected in a 2016 landslide election having garnered more votes than any elected official in Emeryville history, later helped shepherd the progressive majority into office with the subsequent election of Susan Donaldson, Sarah Nguyen and Brynnda Collins to the Board in 2018.  Ms Inch soon ran into trouble however after Brynnda Collins and Sarah Nguyen dropped out of the coalition, showing by their accumulated votes they are not the progressives they claimed to be.  As such, those defections seem to have been the death knell for the progressive agenda at Emery Unified, the ensuing resignation of Ms Inch only serving to solidify that prognosis. 

Former Emery School Board President Barbara Inch
She was elected by more voters than
any elected official in Emeryville history.
But seeking the change for Emery she promised voters,
she couldn't get cooperation from her colleagues.

Notably, the Friday resignation letter sent to the Superintendent came on the heels of a Wednesday night Board rejection of an issue forwarded by Ms Inch; the naming of Emery’s gymnasium.  Ms Inch and community supporters called for naming the gym after former Emery PE coach Steve Dain who was fired in 1977 for transitioning from a woman to a man.  By attempting to name the gym in honor of Mr Dain, who was once voted Emery Teacher of the Year and is now deceased, Ms Inch had been using the bully pulpit as Board President to correct Emery’s 1970’s error and help serve as an inspirational signal that the District has changed and is a tolerant place welcoming to everyone.  The conservative Board majority rallied in reaction however and immediately began searching for a different person to name the gym after, eventually settling on a different past coach who was not a Transgender person and consequently not fired for being a Transgender person.
The Steve Dain issue seems to have served as a final straw for Ms Inch, “After Wednesday, it became clear to me that the majority of the Board was not invested in the much needed change this district so desperately needs.” the former Board member told the Tattler.

The four remaining Board members will appoint a replacement of their choice to take Barbara Inch’s seat until the next election in 2020.

City Council Moves to Overturn Family Housing Rules

Council Says Family Housing Rules From 2015  Are Too Onerous

Big Developers to be Helped With Regulatory Rollback

The City Council voted Tuesday night to move forward with a plan to roll back existing family housing regulations for large developments in Emeryville citing claims that developers can't make their projects "pencil out" if they are required to provide such housing in their unit mix.  While the Council made no secret the rollback is primarily meant to benefit the developer of the 58 story Onni project proposed for Christie Avenue, they expressed hopes their proposed deregulation for big developers could spur a flurry of tower building similar to Onni for Emeryville.

Ignoring the pleas of three attending School Board members hoping to safeguard the family housing 'unit mix' rules enacted in 2015, the Council also voted to move to rollback regulatory impediments that dictate how close towers can be to each other, Emeryville's so called 'tower separation' rules meant to stop the manhattanization of our town.  The case was made that the tower separation rules and the unit mix rules were stifling skyscraper tower construction and that the City had blundered in 2015 when they mistakenly enacted the regulations.
Councilman John Bauters lead the charge against the family housing unit mix rules stating that high rise towers are more expensive to build than low rise buildings and that makes the rules too onerous for the developers of those buildings.
Emeryville's unit mix rules for family housing for small developers will remain unchanged by the proposed rollback.

Two Proposed Apartment Buildings
Two Tier Law
The one on the right must provide family
units, while the one on the left gets a pass.

Mr Bauters told the assembled crowd Tuesday the City did not develop the two tier law it now proposes back in 2015 when the regulations were crafted because no one at the City at the time was aware how much more expensive buildings over 100 feet tall are to build and that large developers need the extra help.  Besides, he said, reducing the requirements for large projects like the 700 foot tall Onni tower to supply three bedroom units would result in more families moving to Emeryville.  Board President Barbara Inch dissented, stating "Three bedroom units may not benefit the developers but they do benefit the community."  Her colleague, Board member Susan Collins said the existing unit mix rules should stand and deregulating as the Council proposes will hurt the community, Emery schools and the City's investment in the ECCL, "The community has signed on to the Emeryville Center of Community Life" she said.

With the exception of Councilman Christian Patz who argued to save the existing unit mix regulations stating "If we want families in town we have to do it", the City Council was united and undeterred by his and the School Board member's pleas when they moved to bring on the regulation rollback after another study session planned for the near future.  The biggest fan of regulation rollback on Tuesday however, Councilwoman Dianne Martinez, was clearly agitated over the vote to hold one more study session on the subject.  Warning her fellow Council members that the Onni tower developer needs their help now, Ms Martinez was definitive, "No more study sessions should delay this" she said.