![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/School-board-1.png\")
Incumbents Ka\u2019Dijah Brown (left) and Jennifer Shanoski (middle) are joined by newcomer Sandy Park (right) on the ballot for the three school board seats up for grabs this November. Reichi Lee (not pictured) announced Tuesday she is launching a write-in campaign. Credit: Rikki Ward Photography and candidates<\/p>\n
In August, when the Berkeley school board looked to fill an empty seat vacated by Ana Vasudeo, who stepped down<\/a> to serve on the Alameda County Board of Education, 23 Berkeley residents clamored to be appointed<\/a> to the position.\u00a0<\/p>\n But this November, none of these nearly two dozen candidates will be on the ballot in the school board election, though one is waging a write-in campaign. Only three candidates will be listed for the three seats up for grabs, two of them incumbents. That makes it the least competitive school board election in approximately two decades, according to district watchers.\u00a0<\/p>\n All of our coverage<\/a>:\u00a0Meet the candidates running for city council, rent board, school board and more. And learn about local ballot measures and how to vote.<\/p>\n Yet the lack of competition doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t big issues on the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n The district faces a projected $7 million deficit<\/a> over the next two years despite passing over $11 million in cuts this June. A stubborn achievement gap between white and Black students remains,<\/a> spending on special education continues to rise and hundreds of students are still waiting for aftercare<\/a>. Attendance and enrollment<\/a>, which determine how much money the district gets from the state, have ticked up in recent years but remain well below pre-pandemic levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n The district is also facing growing pressure from parents to ban artificial intelligence tech on school devices, piloting a new math curriculum at elementary schools, with plans to roll out in other grades soon, and dealing with continued reprimands from the California Department of Education over what the state says is a discriminatory environment for Jewish students<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEven though the race is not contentious, the work the board is doing is really important,\u201d said Matt Meyer, president of Berkeley Federation of Teachers and a former Berkeley High School teacher.\u00a0<\/p>\n None of the problems facing the district have easy answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some parents say the lack of competition in the race is troubling because it keeps critical issues low on the public\u2019s radar and deprives voters of an opportunity to hold the school board and district responsible for its decisions. \u201cWhen you have contested elections, you start having accountability,\u201d said Ivi Kolasi, a Berkeley parent of three children, two of whom currently attend BUSD schools. \u201cRight now, we don\u2019t have anyone doing that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A study last year looking at data from 50,000 elections<\/a> in 5,000 school districts nationwide showed that nearly half of school board races go uncontested and that incumbents are reelected more than 80% of the time when they run. The study found lower learning rates do not predict more electoral competition.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the aggregate, there is not much evidence that school board elections are particularly effective as a mechanism for creating accountability, at least for student outcomes,\u201d said Vladimir Kogan, a political science professor at Ohio State University and one of the authors of the study. \u201cThey\u2019re probably very effective for adults to fight about their own adult agendas and interests and certainly those things play an important role in school board elections.\u201d<\/p>\n To former school board president Ty Alper this year\u2019s race is simply an anomaly and not a troubling trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of people are interested in serving on the board, but running citywide is a lot, even with public financing, \u201d Alper said. \u201cThe candidates this time around are all strong. There\u2019s no cause for concern.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Scroll down to learn more about Brown<\/a>, Shanoski<\/a> and Park<\/a><\/p>\n The contenders listed on the ballot are incumbents Ka\u2019Dijah Brown, a teacher and the current school board president, and Jennifer Shanoski<\/a>, a chemistry professor at Merritt College and a former president of Peralta Federation of Teachers, along with newcomer Sandy Park<\/a>, an education consultant and parent of three children in Berkeley schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reichi Lee, who ran unsuccessfully for school board in 2022 and was a finalist for Vasudeo\u2019s seat this summer, announced on Tuesday she is waging a write-in campaign on a platform<\/a> of stronger restrictions on screen usage, pausing student-facing AI and improving math curriculum and instruction.<\/p>\n In interviews and a questionnaire sent to all candidates on the ballot, Brown, Shanoski and Park said they are committed to addressing the achievement gap, where progress in both English Language Arts and math has stagnated for Black, disabled and English Learner students over the past decade. All said they will work to reduce spending on outside contractors and focus on trimming special education costs, which have ballooned in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is endorsement from teachers\u2019 union a must in order to win?\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown, Shanoski and Park are running as a slate and have all been endorsed by the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, the powerful, 900-plus member union that can make or break a campaign. There is a pretty straight throughline between the union\u2019s endorsement and victory. In fact, in the last nine elections, only one candidate without the union\u2019s endorsement \u2014 Shirley Issel, a school board member who served from 1998 to 2010 \u2014 has ever won a seat on the school board.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lee says she didn\u2019t initially mount a campaign for the board because her experience four years ago convinced her that it would be impossible to win without the support of the teachers union. When she ran for school board in 2022, she lost despite raising more than any of the three winning candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat structure gives a significant advantage to people with already established political networks and major endorsements, and here in Berkeley, that\u2019s the teachers union,\u201d said Lee.<\/p>\n Scott Hofmeister, a BUSD parent and, like Lee, a member of Berkeley Unplugged, a group that has pushed the district to restrict the use of technology in classrooms, was also interested in a seat on the board. But after learning that BFT had already endorsed three candidates, Hofmeister decided to not run.\u00a0<\/p>\n Others who had expressed interest in Vasudeo\u2019s seat say they didn\u2019t run in the general election due to personal or professional commitments.<\/p>\n Meyer said that it shouldn\u2019t be a surprise that the teachers union plays a big role in the election.<\/p>\n \u201cOur educators care deeply about education and our students,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cThey know the schools and the issues inside and out. That\u2019s why they knock on doors, volunteer on campaigns and their voice is pretty important to the conversation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Do district-wide elections discourage potential candidates from running?<\/p>\n Some parents have suggested that Berkeley\u2019s \u201cat large\u201d school board elections, where all Berkeley voters weigh in on every candidate, raise the barrier to entry for potential candidates and introduce structural inequities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The school board has in the past considered<\/a> moving to district elections to avoid potential lawsuits.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the benefits and drawbacks are mixed. In Vallejo, for example, school board elections became less competitive<\/a> after adopting district-wide elections. An LAist analysis of 79 California cities<\/a> showed switching to district elections brought little to no change in minority representation.<\/p>\n Alper defended at-large school board elections because, unlike many other nearby cities, Berkeley schools are not zoned by neighborhoods, to make them more diverse. \u201cWe don\u2019t have neighborhood schools and that\u2019s why our schools are diverse and have parity and we\u2019re proud of it,\u201d Alper said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re on the school board, you represent the whole city, so it\u2019s appropriate that the elections be citywide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a closer look at the candidates on the ballot and where they stand on the issues:<\/p>\n Ka\u2019Dijah Brown<\/p>\n Brown, 35, is the current board president and has served on the board since 2018. She works as a middle school math, coding and science teacher.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike the other candidates, she did not answer Berkeleyside\u2019s questionnaire, but in an interview, she said her top priorities are closing the district\u2019s achievement gap, focusing on the budget in light of insufficient state funding and improving the district\u2019s Multi-Tier Support System (MTSS), a framework that schools use to identify students who need extra help and provide the right level of academic, behavioral or social-emotional support.<\/p>\n Brown celebrated recent academic improvements among special education, Black and English Language Learner students, but said it was important to stay the course. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen improvements but we need to continue to support programs and initiatives that champion closing those opportunity gaps,\u201d she said. \u201cNow is not the time to stop because we\u2019ve seen a little bit of success.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking about the district\u2019s budget crisis, Brown said that it\u2019s important to understand that the situation was not the result of budgeting or bad decisions, but a persistent structural deficit as a result of rising costs that outpace state funding. \u201cWe\u2019re in one of the most difficult financial situations we\u2019ve seen for schools in a number of years and it\u2019s plaguing all schools in California,\u201d Brown said.\u00a0<\/p>\n She has pledged to continue advocating at the state level for additional funding for BUSD so that schools can maintain mental health services, equity programs and smaller classroom sizes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown said that while BUSD\u2019s full-inclusion model for special education worked well for many years and has been copied by many other schools, the district was now at a crossroads.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re at a place where there\u2019s room for growth and evolution of the full inclusion model \u2026 and have an opportunity to reenvision and revamp it based on the needs of our current students,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s campaign had not raised any money as of the end of September, according to campaign finance documents.<\/p>\n Sandy Park<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_3921.jpg\")
Ka\u2019Dijah Brown. Courtesy of the candidate<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SP4B-1-Berkeleyside-hi-res-2-2560x1440.jpeg\")
Sandy Park. Credit: Rikki Ward Photography<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Jennifer-Shanoski.png\")
Jennifer Shanoski. Courtesy of the candidate<\/p>\n