Click on right here for a whole checklist of our election suggestions.
Most individuals in Contra Costa are conversant in their native college boards, which oversee the Okay-12 training of their communities.
Much less seen is the county Board of Schooling, an elected physique of 5 individuals with key obligations. Its members undertake the programs of examine for county-run colleges for incarcerated juveniles. They approve the price range of the county Workplace of Schooling, which is in any other case run independently by the individually elected county superintendent of faculties.
And the board hears appeals of pupil expulsions, inter-district transfers and constitution college functions. It’s that final position that drives the politics of campaigns for the board as a result of labor unions usually goal constitution colleges and search for methods to dam their approvals.
Proper now, the Contra Costa Board of Schooling is managed by a slender majority of union-backed trustees. The difficulty for voters within the Nov. 8 election is whether or not they need board members who will work effectively with others and provides constitution colleges an even-handed evaluate.
In the event that they do, they need to elect Rupy Krishnan in Space 2, Mike Maxwell in Space 4, and Annette Lewis in Space 5.
Space 2 – Rupy Krishnan
Krishnan, a dad or mum of three, is the founder and former chairwoman of the Variety, Fairness and Inclusion Committee at Acalanes Excessive College in Lafayette, a member of the Lafayette library basis board and a former monetary analyst.
She helps constitution colleges as an academic choice to underperforming conventional public colleges and for offering specialised training to college students with centered passions. And she or he needs to present a voice to college students who've been marginalized.
The incumbent is Sarah Butler, a former Orinda college board trustee. When we backed her 4 years in the past for the county board, she was the higher of two dangerous candidates. Throughout Butler’s 4 years on the Orinda board, she so irritated her colleagues that even her allies backed her opponents when she ran, unsuccessfully, for reelection in 2016.
Sadly, her efficiency on the Contra Costa board has not been a lot better. Most not too long ago, there was her failed try final month to create a faculty security committee with out first speaking with the superintendent, who runs the faculties that any new insurance policies would have an effect on. And we stay amazed by her cringingly embarrassing repeatedbutchering of the Pledge of Allegiance when she leads the board conferences.
The opposite candidate within the race is Lisa Disbrow, a retired kindergarten instructor who has adopted conservative speaking factors about essential race principle and objects to colleges which have indicators saying their campuses are “no place for hate.” That, Disbrow says, locations lecturers within the place of being “ethical authorities.”
Space 4 – Mike Maxwell
In his eight years on the county board, Maxwell has introduced a balanced method to constitution colleges, recognizing the advantages and the financial challenges they current to conventional public colleges. He sees himself as an advocate for lecturers, college students and households.
Maxwell is the previous statewide director of the YMCA’s mannequin legislature program for highschool college students and is at present vp for an aging-in-place campus in Nice Hill, the place he's main the event of an 80-unit mission for low-income aged residents.
His opponents are Cheri Calcagno, who missed her scheduled digital interview, and Anaite Letona, the teacher-union-backed candidate who's an elementary and center college instructor. Letona says board members ought to “resist and interrupt the systemic racism” however was exhausting to pin down on what she noticed as the issues with the incumbent or the county-run colleges.
Space 5 – Annette Lewis
Lewis got here to the county Board of Schooling 4 years in the past with a stable training background, as a dad or mum, a substitute instructor and longtime PTA activist who had served on the statewide board.
Since becoming a member of the board, she has supplied a measured method to constitution colleges and a want to extend monitoring of their successes and failures. She additionally has a transparent understanding of the position of county college board members and the boundaries to their authority.
Her opponents are Derek Carson II, who didn’t reply to a number of makes an attempt to succeed in him, and Justin Brown, who manages his dad and mom’ investments and moonlights as a tv producer. Aside from being a dad or mum, Brown, who calls himself a group activist, has no training coverage background.
After submitting to run for the seat, he participated in a protest with lecturers of the county Workplace of Schooling, who had been in negotiations with the superintendent, as a result of, he mentioned, he needed to get his identify on the market. He mentioned he would do it once more if he had been elected to the board.
Lewis doesn’t think about that applicable as a result of “it's not the place of a county board member to be publicly difficult the superintendent,” who's accountable for negotiating with the lecturers within the county-run colleges. We agree.
Those that need the board to signify the group fairly than only one particular curiosity ought to elect Krishnan, Maxwell and Lewis.