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Sunol voters have recalled school board President Ryan Jergensen and Trustee Linda Hurley, with county officials’ certification Friday of the July 2 special election results representing an end of the political drama that consumed the small-town district for the better part of a year.
According to the outcome confirmed by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office, 277 Sunol residents voted in favor of recalling Jergensen – 52.07% of participating voters – while 274 people cast ballots for removing Hurley (51.50%). The margin of each recall was just 22 votes for Jergensen and 16 votes for Hurley.
“I am thankful that enough voters in Sunol recognized that a change in leadership on our school board was needed,” Erin Choin, a Sunol resident and Sunol Glen School parent, said in a Friday press release from United for Sunol Glen. “Our victory is tempered with the knowledge that the past year has sown a lot of division and now we have to figure out how to move forward as a community.”
Neither Hurley nor Jergensen responded to requests for comments regarding the certified results as of Saturday morning.
The election certification sets the stage for the Sunol Glen Unified School District to soon have the majority of its three-member governing board appointed by the Alameda County Board of Education through the general election in November.
United for Sunol Glen formed as a grassroots recall effort organization led by parents, teachers, former trustees and other community members in the wake of a firestorm of controversy largely sparked by the contentious flag resolution adopted by Jergensen and Hurley that many saw as targeting the LGBTQ+ Pride flag after it flew briefly on the flagpole of the district’s lone school the prior summer – an allegation both trustees publicly denied.
For nearly a year, the organization has been gathering signatures, petitioning and organizing in order to get a recall election on the ballot and supported by voters. It ran a campaign calling for Jergensen and Hurley to resign because of bad governance and bad decisions.
The anti-recall campaign, One Sunol, backed Jergensen and Hurley during the lead-up to the election, saying the ouster effort was politically driven by voices outside of Sunol to railroad two trustees who have just been acting in the best interests of the community.
That back-and-forth culminated on July 2 when the special election was held. Intermittent results released by county officials since Election Night showed the recall side narrowly ahead in both cases, a pair of outcomes that were ultimately confirmed when the final tallies were certified on Friday afternoon.
In the end, 533 Sunol voters participated in the off-schedule election – or 64.37% turnout, from the 828 registered voters living within the SGUSD boundaries.
Kelly Goldsmith, a Sunol commuter parent from Fremont who is on the United for Sunol Glen recall committee, told the Pleasanton Weekly that while she had a strong feeling they were going to get both trustees recalled and was glad the results were in their favor, she said nobody in the pro-recall was overly ecstatic about the whole situation.
She said she was proud of all the work the community has done to come together and get to this point but she also said that nobody wanted to be at this point of having to recall their trustees in the first place.
“It’s a bittersweet win because none of us wanted to be doing this,” Goldsmith said.
She said she wished the trustees would have worked more with the community following the chaos that followed the flag resolution meeting last September, but that she is glad the majority of Sunolians voted in favor of good governance, which is what others in the community said as well.
“Parents, local community members, and teachers came together as our Sunol Glen school board veered away from their core mission of supporting our school and students,” Chris Wheeler, Sunol Glen School teacher and president of the Sunol teachers union, stated in a July 8 press release from the California Federation-Teachers organization. “These concerned residents fought to return our school board to being one that is solely focused on our school and a world class education for our students.”
The two Sunol trustees have been in the public eye for most of the term they were elected to in November 2022, but tensions in the community came to a boiling point during the infamous flag resolution that Hurley and Jergensen approved last September.
The resolution stated the district and its lone school could only fly the U.S. and state flag on the school’s flagpole, which both Hurley and Jergensen argued was a way for the district to avoid potential lawsuits from people who wanted to fly their own flags, while others said it was a move to make members of the LBGTQ+ community feel unwelcome.
“The Sunol Glen School Board had lost its way, with actions that unmistakably aimed to reduce support for vulnerable students, including LGBTQ+ kids,” Castro Valley Pride President Austin Bruckner Carrillo stated in a July 17 press release from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
Critics also called out Jergensen and Hurley for poorly conducting meetings, shutting down civil discourse, costing the school over $100,000 in legal fees this past year and disrespecting staff and teachers — 84% of the Sunol teachers and support staff union members adopted separate votes of no confidence resolutions earlier this year.
Longtime SGUSD Superintendent-Principal Molleen Barnes, who at times found her recommendations at odds with this board majority, also stepped down at the end of this academic year. Pleasanton administrator Shay Galletti was brought in as the new superintendent-principal starting this month.
“My experience with the Sunol Glen Teachers and Staff is that they are top-notch, care deeply about their students and are passionate about education,” Andrew Turnbull, editor of the Inform Sunol newsletter and longtime Sunol resident, told the Weekly. “When the teachers and staff voted no-confidence in Jergensen and Hurley, that was all it took for me to sign the petition and publicly support the recall.”
Turnbull also said that if people knew about the roughly $90,000 more in legal spending and had more information on everything that has been happening at the school board during these past 11 months, the margin of voters would have been more in favor of supporting the recall.
Goldsmith added to that point saying that she didn’t expect the recall to be successful by a landslide because she said statistics show that people who aren’t as informed on elections like a recall tend to vote no.
But because many Sunolians told Turnbull they didn’t want to be publicly involved in the school board drama, it didn’t mean their values weren’t aligned to what’s best for the town. He said they just needed to be more informed.
“I strongly believe that Sunol voters are not nearly as divided as the slim margin of the recall,” Turnbull said. “If all Sunol voters had perfect information, seen what was happening in the meetings, and had been fully engaged, I would have expected the recall margin to be closer to 66% to 33% based on the political and personal values of my fellow Sunolians.”
“Especially if all voters understood the overwhelming and frankly outrageous amount of legal fees spent by the school board during the recent academic year,” he added.
The two trustees were also recently under the public eye again after the United For Sunol Glen group posted on its website that a group of people had been visiting houses on behalf of the two trustees to “question the eligibility of voters to cast a ballot in the July 2 recall special election”.
According to the pro-recall organization, the group had been identifying themselves as a “voter integrity check team”.
“Directly questioning the integrity of Sunol voters and inquiring about their qualifications to cast a ballot is voter harassment and it is not OK,” the pro-recall group stated on its website.
Jergensen told the Weekly earlier on Friday that he does not have any association or knowledge of those harassment claims other than what was posted by the recall group. He said he does not condone harassment of voters or community members and that he is looking into these claims.
“That is not associated with me or my campaign at all,” Jergensen said.
“There are, unfortunately, some in this community that continue to make claims and attacks against me in this way,” he added. “They try to falsely claim these actions and people are tied to me. Personal character attacks without evidence or inquiry is dangerous. I don’t participate in those personal character attacks, and invite the recall team to also call on their group to bring things back to civility.”
So what comes next now that both trustees have been officially recalled?
As of now, Trustee Peter (Ted) Romo is the only acting Sunol school board member, but that does not mean he has any power, Goldsmith said.
Cheryl Cook-Kallio, now president of the Alameda County Board of Education, also confirmed that Romo wouldn’t be the only one on the board upon a successful recall in a letter to Inform Sunol on June 18.
Goldsmith explained that the county board president will appoint two of its board members to temporarily serve in Sunol — they would be able to take any immediate actions related to the board. That temporary board made up of Romo and two county board members will then cast a wide net for applicants in Sunol to serve as trustees temporarily until the town elects its two new permanent trustees during this November election.
Goldsmith said that the silver lining in all of this is that at least for this next election, the community will be more keen on who they elect to serve on the board and not make the same mistake it made with Jergensen and Hurley.
She also said, like Turnbull, that Sunol will be able to move past this divisive period and will hopefully be able to get to a point where everyone can be neighbors who only care for what’s best for the school and its students.
“Most of us share 80%-90% of basic principles and values, yet the other 10-20% can cause significant tension and conflict. That’s not going away anytime soon, nationally or in Alameda County,” Turnbull said. “Regardless, I have confidence that most Sunolians will return quickly to looking for common ground and continue to work together, especially when we unite on community issues that we agree on and deeply care about.”
Editor’s note: Embarcadero Media Foundation East Bay editorial director Jeremy Walsh contributed to this story.
