Ask Albany families why they're here or why they came here and you'll hear the same answer I'd give you: the schools. Nearly one in five Albany residents is an Albany Unified student. Our schools are the reason many of us stretched to get here and the reason we stay.
I come to this issue the long way around. I was a classroom teacher. I worked for a teaching organization. I served on the Albany Education Foundation board of directors, where I saw up close how much of their own time and money our teachers pour into their classrooms. And I'm the parent of a kid who went all the way through Albany schools, kindergarten to graduation. I see nearly every city decision through a filter I earned in the classroom: what does this mean for students, for teachers, for the families holding it all together?
So let me be honest about the boundary, because honesty is the foundation of a good partnership: the elected school board and the district run our schools. A city councilmember doesn't, and shouldn't pretend to. But the city has real responsibilities of its own: getting kids to school and home safely, sharing facilities, and backing the district where it counts. That's the job I'm asking for.
Start with the walk to school. The crossing guard at the corner is funded by the city through the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax Albany voters passed in 2016, which also pays for student bike-safety education and youth swim programs. City streets are the routes our kids walk and bike every morning; the safe-routes near every school site belong to the city. The gyms and fields our kids use on evenings and weekends work because the city and district share facilities. None of this is glamorous, but it's what makes Albany more than a place with good schools. It's a town that actually shows up for its kids.
And right now there's a bigger item on the city side of the ledger. If Golden Gate Fields transfers to a tax-exempt public agency as planned, Albany Unified stands to lose about $700,000 a year. That's real money in a small district's budget, and a loss the school board cannot fix alone, because the path to replacing it runs through the city's advocacy in Sacramento. As Albany fights to be made whole in this transition, I will insist that made whole means the schools too. Every letter, every meeting, every conversation with the state: the district's $700,000 goes in the ask, period.
Beyond the urgent, there's the habitual: city infrastructure planning and district facilities planning too often meet late, after positions have hardened. With the district's Measure L bond projects getting underway, the two agencies should be trading timelines and maps at the start, not the end. Relationships do that work, and relationships are built before you need them. I've spent many years building them in this town, through the schools, the Education Foundation, and the Community Foundation, and I'll put them to use.
What I won't do is blur the lines or borrow the school board's job for a campaign. Albany is lucky to have dedicated school board trustees. A councilmember who respects that boundary, and works the city's side of it hard, is worth more to our schools than one who grandstands across it. That's the councilmember our schools will get in me.