Five candidates are vying for three seats on the Emery Unified Board of Education in the election on November 3, according to Emeryville Today, which reported on the race on October 31, 2026. The candidates are Christopher Keith Allen, Regina Chagolla, Brian Donahue, David Ridlehuber, and Kimberly Solis. With three seats at stake and five names on the ballot, voters in Emeryville will have a genuine choice, and the outcome will reshape a board that is already losing two of its current members.
The race is taking place in a small district facing large questions. According to the same reporting, the district’s challenges include student enrollment, academic performance, and special education services. Those three issues touch nearly every family with a child in Emery Unified schools, and they touch the district’s finances as well, because enrollment helps determine funding and because special education services require sustained staffing and resources. How the new board approaches those questions will matter for years, not just for the next school year.
One candidate has also put a far-reaching idea on the table: whether Emery Unified should explore merging with Berkeley Unified, one of the East Bay’s highest-performing districts. That proposal, advanced by Brian Donahue, forces voters to consider not only who should govern the district today, but whether its future should look fundamentally different.
Five Candidates in the Emery Unified School Board Election
The field of five candidates for three seats means that at least two candidates will not win a seat, and that voters must rank, in effect, their preferences among a crowded field. The candidates, as listed by Emeryville Today, are Christopher Keith Allen, Regina Chagolla, Brian Donahue, David Ridlehuber, and Kimberly Solis. All five are competing in the same at-large contest for the three available seats, rather than in separate district-by-district races.
That structure matters: a voter does not choose a single winner but helps determine the composition of the board as a whole. The three candidates who receive the most votes will join the board together, and the balance among them will shape how it governs.
The reporting available for this race does not give equal detail on every candidate. Some candidates’ backgrounds and positions are described in depth, while others are named without a detailed account of their platforms. This article reports what the published reporting says, and where it does not detail a candidate’s platform, it says so plainly rather than filling the gap with speculation.
Two Open Seats as Incumbents Step Aside
Two current board members are not seeking reelection, which guarantees substantial change on the board regardless of the outcome. Incumbents Brynnda Collins and Susan Donaldson are not seeking reelection, according to Emeryville Today. Their departures create open seats and mean that at least two of the three seats will be filled by people who are not currently on the board.
The departure of two incumbents changes the dynamics of the race. When incumbents step aside, the contest becomes more open, and voters must judge newcomers largely on their backgrounds and stated priorities rather than on a voting record on the current board. That openness is one reason Regina Chagolla’s candidacy carries particular weight: she is seeking reelection after six years on the board, and is the one candidate who can point to a record of service on the Emery Unified board itself.
Regina Chagolla Seeks Reelection After Six Years
Regina Chagolla is an elementary school teacher and the vice president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, according to Emeryville Today. She is seeking reelection after six years on the Emery Unified board, a tenure that gives her both classroom experience and direct experience of the district’s governance.
That combination is significant. As an elementary school teacher, Chagolla brings firsthand knowledge of classroom conditions. As vice president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, she brings experience of labour representation and of the broader East Bay education landscape. As a sitting board member of six years, she brings institutional knowledge of Emery Unified’s budgets, contracts, and past decisions.
The reporting summarised here does not set out a detailed new platform statement from Chagolla beyond her candidacy for reelection and her background. Voters can weigh her six-year record alongside her professional background. Her candidacy offers continuity at a moment when two other seats are guaranteed to change hands, and that continuity itself is a choice voters must weigh against the case for a fresh direction.
Brian Donahue and the Case for Dissent and a Merger Debate
Brian Donahue is the candidate whose positions are described in the greatest detail in the Emeryville Today reporting, and his candidacy is distinctive in several respects. Donahue writes the Emeryville Tattler blog, and he has run for the school board twice before. He says he is running to force a contested election and to bring new ideas to a board he believes lacks dissent. In an unusual statement for a candidate, he says he does not want voters to elect him.
According to the reporting, his aim is to ensure that the election is contested and that ideas which might otherwise go unexamined are debated in public. He believes the board lacks dissent, and he presents his candidacy as a way to introduce challenge into a governing body he sees as too uniform in its views.
Donahue’s most consequential proposal is that Emery Unified should explore a merger with Berkeley Unified, described in the reporting as one of the East Bay’s highest-performing districts. A merger would be a major structural change, affecting governance, staffing, curriculum, facilities, and the identity of Emeryville’s schools. Exploring a merger is not the same as completing one: such a process would involve extensive study, negotiation, community consultation, and formal approval. But even raising the idea changes the debate, because it asks whether a small district facing enrollment and performance challenges might be better served within a larger, higher-performing system.
Donahue also criticises the board for not pressing the City Council on family housing, which he says makes it hard to attract students. If families cannot find suitable housing in Emeryville, the argument runs, they cannot enrol their children in Emery Unified schools, and enrollment will remain constrained no matter what the school board does on its own. He argues the board should advocate more forcefully with the city government that controls housing policy.
Allen, Ridlehuber and Solis: What the Reporting Does and Does Not Say
Christopher Keith Allen, David Ridlehuber, and Kimberly Solis are all candidates for the three seats, and their names appear in the Emeryville Today listing of the field. However, the reporting summarised for this article does not detail their platforms, backgrounds, or policy positions in the way it details Chagolla’s background and Donahue’s positions. This article therefore does not attribute specific positions to Allen, Ridlehuber, or Solis, because to do so would be to invent material that the reporting does not provide.
That gap is worth stating plainly. In a five-candidate race for three seats, voters need information on every candidate, not only on the most vocal contenders. The absence of detailed platform reporting for three candidates does not mean those candidates lack positions or qualifications; it means the published reporting consulted for this article does not supply them. Voters considering Allen, Ridlehuber, or Solis should seek out their campaign statements, candidate forums, voter guides, and interviews.
It would be misleading to present this contest as a two-person debate between Chagolla and Donahue when three other candidates are also seeking seats and will, if elected, help govern the district. Each of the three winners will have an equal vote on the board’s decisions, whatever the balance of press coverage during the campaign.
Enrollment, Academic Performance and Special Education
Beyond the individual candidates, the reporting identifies three district challenges that frame the election: student enrollment, academic performance, and special education services. Progress on one does not automatically guarantee progress on the others.
Enrollment is the foundation of much else in a school district. The number of students enrolled affects funding, staffing levels, class sizes, and the range of programmes a district can offer. The housing argument advanced by Donahue suggests that enrollment in Emeryville cannot be understood in isolation from the city’s housing market: families need homes before they can enrol children.
Academic performance is the measure by which many parents judge a district most directly, encompassing student achievement, graduation outcomes, and readiness for further education or work. The reference to Berkeley Unified as one of the East Bay’s highest-performing districts implicitly invites a comparison, and the merger proposal can be read, in part, as a response to a performance gap: should Emery Unified seek to join a higher-performing district rather than trying to close the gap alone? Comparisons between districts of different sizes and demographics are complex, and a merger would bring both benefits and trade-offs.
Special education services present a distinct set of obligations. Districts are legally required to provide appropriate services to students with disabilities, requiring specialised staff, individualised planning, and sustained funding. For families whose children rely on special education, the quality and reliability of those services are often the most important issue in a school board election, outweighing broader debates about structure or governance.
School Board Elections Across the Country on November 3
The Emery Unified race is one small part of a very large national picture. According to Ballotpedia News, reporting on October 30, school board elections are taking place in 30 states plus the District of Columbia on November 3. Ballotpedia covers approximately 8,000 seats across more than 2,700 districts in this cycle.
Ballotpedia’s historical data also provides context for how often incumbents win. School board incumbents have won reelection 82.5 percent of the time since 2018, according to Ballotpedia News. That figure masks variation: the high point was 89 percent in 2019, while the low point was 78 percent in 2022. On average, incumbents won about 56 percent of the seats up for election. Incumbency confers a real advantage, but not an insurmountable one.
One of the largest contests illustrates the range of elections taking place on the same day. Chicago Public Schools, the fourth-largest school district in the United States, elects all 21 of its board members on November 3, with 46 candidates competing, according to Ballotpedia News. The contrast with Emery Unified shows the diversity of the school board landscape, from a system serving hundreds of thousands of students to a small district serving a single community.
What Happens on November 3
The Emery Unified election takes place on Tuesday, November 3, alongside the many other school board contests and the wider midterm elections across California and the United States. Emeryville voters will cast ballots for three of the five candidates, and the three candidates with the most votes will take seats on the Board of Education.
The result will determine whether the board gains a strong voice for continuity through Chagolla’s reelection, whether it gains a dissenting voice through Donahue or another newcomer, and how the two open seats left by Collins and Donaldson are filled. It will also determine, indirectly, whether the merger debate Donahue has raised moves from campaign discussion to formal exploration, or whether the new board sets that idea aside in favour of other approaches to enrollment, performance, and special education.
For voters, the practical task is straightforward but important: to learn as much as possible about all five candidates, including those whose platforms are less extensively reported, before casting a ballot. School board decisions affect classrooms, budgets, and services for years, and the board elected on November 3 will inherit the enrollment, performance, and special education challenges that frame this race.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Emeryville Today, Ballotpedia News and Ballotpedia News.