Berkeley School Board: Beatriz Leyva-Cutler and Judy Appel

Beatriz Leyva-Cutler is the incumbent running for re-election (I also endorsed her in 2008, and she was the highest vote-getter for the School Board in that election). She has a strong and good vision for how Berkeley schools should work. She is a crucial representative of Latino families in the Berkeley schools, running the stupendous Bahia non-profit that provides bilingual education & child care. She's got backing from teachers, lots of Berkeley elected officials. I don't see any reason not to re-elect her.
Judy Appel has a similarly strong vision for the schools, informed by years of experience both as a parent and as a consultant working with Berkeley and other school districts on how to create safe learning environments. I like that one of her top Priorities is to "Spend Wisely," and I believe she'll follow it well. She also has backing from teachers, most of the other School Board members, and an extremely impressive list of other endorsers. I also happen to know several folks in her circle of friends, and I trust their judgment too.

Tracy Hollander is the third candidate and clearly has a lot of experience in schools. But I don't see as much in in her presentation of her priorities for the School Board as I see in Judy Appel and Beatriz Leyva-Cutler. She has many endorsements as well, but they are also thinner than those of Appel or Leyva-Cutler.

I don't know why the fourth candidate, Norma Jean Harrison, keeps running. I feel like I've seen her on most of the ballots since I moved to Berkeley. She sounds like a caricature of herself. Her ballot statements remind me of the pieces George Orwell cited in his classic 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language", as the bad examples of stale writing that indicate stale thinking.