Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Berkeley School Board: Daniels, Hemphill, and Wilson

Josh Daniels is a whip-sharp guy who knows school finance well. In his day job, Josh Daniels is a school finance attorney who has worked with school districts to secure funding for them. And he's not just a green eyeshade guy -- he started the Student Court at the high school.

I like Karen Hemphill and have endorsed her before. My neighbor Deb Gray knew her as a parent at Washington, called her the "voice of reason" who was "forceful but rational and commanded the respect of parents and staff alike."

I like Leah Wilson's perspective promoting excellence and addressing the achievement gap. A friend who was a parent with her at Arts Magnet raved about her, saying she was "smart, efficient and wanted to implement ideas" on the Site Governance Council there.

Of the other candidates: Definitely not Norma Harrison -- pretty incoherent. Priscilla Myrick's list of endorsements includes lots of people who are "former" school rep's, but very few who are currently involved; and I hear from a couple sources that she's difficult to work with. I'd say Julie Holcomb is 4th, but I only get to give three votes.

BTW -- it turns out the Berkeley Federation of Teachers endorses the same three as me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, the most difficult part of my task is enabling people to move beyond the chains of this system to imagine comfort, which school, job, war our lives in general are the opposite of. The nice things are definitely nice. If we didn't make compromises with the constraints on us as we serve our Owners, we'd all be nuts. As it is, humans create survival - if they're not being bombed or starved by our vicious Owners. So people accept the discomforts. A most glaring example is adults sitting around chatting, getting to the topic such that their repeated and insistent assurance is that their parent beat them because they love/d them.
...like wife abuse ... hard to cut loose to pleasure, to that we ALL deserve all the pleasure Earth can -or will have been able - to allow us.

Anonymous said...

...and the same horrors keep repeating in the schools regardless the dedication of teachers, especially, the school board, parents, students the most - because the structure requires discomfort - and people don't get it.
It's like church - trying to enable understanding of our oppression, ...of our path to liberation, which largely has to do with elimination of capitalism upon us. So I preach...