- School board member Gray Harris maintained that Mia Bonta, who was the top vote-getter in the Nov. 6 election and is the spouse of state Assemblymember Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, is better qualified for the job of board president.
When the Alameda school board convenes for its first meeting of 2019 this week, it may once again be wracked with tension over allegations of racism. At its last meeting on Dec. 13, the board changed its bylaws in order to elect new Alameda school member Mia Bonta as board president, bypassing African-American board member Ardella Dailey for the position even though, as vice president, Dailey was next in line for the post. The decision by the board majority drew outrage and raised serious questions about whether the board will be able to work cooperatively this year.
Since fall 2015, the presidency of the school board had rotated in a succession from board clerk, vice president, to president. Under those rules, Bonta would have been appointed as clerk and automatically become president in 2021. But following the results of the November election, the new board majority changed its rules at the Dec. 13 meeting, preempting trustee Dailey from becoming president and clearing the way for Bonta.
A dozen supporters of Dailey — who, in 2016, became the first African-American woman elected to the Alameda school board — strongly criticized the bylaw change and accused school board members Gray Harris, then board president, and Gary Lym, former president, of being hypocritical and motivated by power and race. But Harris maintained that Bonta, who was the top vote-getter in the Nov. 6 election and is the spouse of state Assemblymember Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, is better qualified for the job and raised concerns about Dailey’s support for charter schools and other issues.
The move by the new board majority also highlighted key family connections and alliances that influence the Island’s school board — and city — politics.
The rule change drew the ire of Vickie Smith and Espinola Johnson, two longtime Island residents and retirees of the school district who recalled past experiences of racism in Alameda.
“We’ve been fighting for civil rights for many years,” said Smith, who protested with other Black Student Union members for Black Studies classes and to hire teachers of color at Encinal High School. Smith worked with Dailey and others to challenge racism in the school district in the 1990s. “It’s Ardella’s turn to be school board president. No one should try to take that away from her. We should not have to fight a lifetime of inequality just because we are Black.” Johnson’s mother was Elector Littlejohn, a civil rights activist for whom Littlejohn Park was renamed in 1993. Dailey was AUSD’s first Black superintendent from 2005-2008.
Other Dailey supporters included former AUSD administrator Carole Robie, who questioned the timing and the rationale for the rule change, noting that both Lym and Harris had benefited from the rotation policy: Harris was president in 2018 and Lym was president the year before. Changing the policy before a “qualified African-American woman” takes office “will amount to blatant racism against a Black woman,” Robie said.
Another Dailey supporter noted that the school district is predominantly white and Asian, 29 and 23 percent respectively. Harris is white and Lym is Asian. Alameda is 45 percent white and 31 percent Asian, according to the 2010 census.
Another parent, Cheryl Taylor, criticized “the tactics of changing rules when Black people are going to take leadership” and encouraged the board to change them after the next two board members cycled through the rotation. She added that, for Black women, “We have to be three or four times as good for the same position.”
Harris denied the bylaw revision was racially motivated and expressed concerns…
