As new school board members go, Oakland Unified’s Gary Yee brings unusual depth of experience

As new school board members across California prepare to take the seats they won in the election earlier in November, Oakland Unified’s only newly elected board member Gary Yee knows there will be no honeymoon. In January, he will join a board whose first challenge is finding $30 million in spending cuts in next year’s budget to stem the district’s deficit spending. Failing to do that could result in the county or state intervening.

Decisions about those cuts must be made by February by the seven-member board, which will also include incumbents Aimee Eng and Shanthi Gonzales, who both ran unopposed in their districts and were re-elected on Nov. 6 to four-year terms.