Thousands of dollars pour into Trustee campaigns each election.
Who are this year’s major donors?
Union PACs and other supporters have spent tens of thousands of dollars on one candidate; other candidates reported receiving no financial contributions.
Ivan Saravia, Investigative Reporter
October 30, 2026
An Alameda County ballot box located at Merritt College in Oakland, CA on Oct. 30, 2026. The Area 5 Board of Trustees race is the only contested seat and will be decided by Oakland voters on Nov. 3.
The race for the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees Area 5 seat will be decided by Alameda County voters during the Nov. 3 general election. The Area 5 race is the only contested trustee seat.
While Trustee candidates usually receive small donations from private individuals, some have received tens of thousands of dollars in monetary contributions from political action committees (PACs) of well known figures and organizations connected to Peralta and across California politics.
According to an analysis by The Citizen, union PACs make the largest donations to trustee candidates. Since 2024, Peralta’s largest unions, The Peralta Federation of Teachers (PFT) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, have spent at least $71,021 between two sitting board members and this year’s Area 5 challenger Sandra Weese.
Each incumbent candidate reported receiving no monetary contributions, with the Area 3 and Area 7 candidates running unopposed.
The Board of Trustees are elected officials that oversee the chancellor and all spending at the Peralta district. Trustees are separated into seven areas between Alameda, Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, Piedmont and Emeryville.
Each candidate that runs for an elected office in California must file financial disclosure documents to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), reporting what monetary contributions, gifts and loans they’ve made and received for their campaigns.
According to Area 3 Trustee and current Board President, Louis Quindlen, there is no official limit on how much a Trustee candidate can receive from donors.
Weese, a retired union organizer, received $30,721 in monetary contributions, some coming from several high profile donors, according to her campaign filings. One filing shows that she received a $20,000 donation from the Peralta Federation of Teachers Committee on Political Education (COPE) in March.
PFT president and former COPE chair, Jeff Sanceri, told The Citizen that the political action committee makes donations to trustees and, on rare occasions, to other local government candidates and ballot measures with volunteered funds by union members.
Both the PFT and SEIU Local 1021 have made public endorsements of Weese. SEIU donated $1,021 to her campaign in August.
Sanceri said that the PFT’s “longstanding relationship” with the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and Weese’s advocacy work with the PFT over the years helped inform their decision to endorse her. Weese told The Citizen she was the CFT’s Organizing Director for over 20 years.
The CFT made a $1,500 donation to Weese in August.
Sanceri told The Citizen, “There’s going to be a time, if she gets elected, that she may not agree with our faculty positions on things. But I know without question that she’ll always listen.”
Sanceri said that COPE members will generally look to endorse candidates that are able to balance “big picture” responsibilities while “keeping an open ear and open eyes to student and faculty concerns.” He added that the committee might decide how much a candidate receives in political donations based on the unions familiarity with them.
Merritt College faculty member and COPE Chair, Jennifer Shanoski, was listed as an assistant treasurer for Weese’s campaign between January and March. Shanoski told The Citizen that she is no longer involved in Weese’s campaign, her position was unpaid and that COPE members make donations through a democratic process.
Shanoski said that she helped recruit Weese to run for trustee, something that she said she’s done with other candidates before. She added, “As COPE Chair, of course, I’m gonna work to get our endorsed candidates elected. Whatever that means.” When asked to clarify her statement, she wrote in a message to The Citizen, “normally that means organizing faculty to knock on doors, call voters, etc. All the work that one does on a campaign.”
Weese said that Shanoski has not been a member of her campaign since she made her initial filing to run for office and that her campaign treasurer, Sarah Givens, handles all monetary contributions.
Weese also received a $2,500 donation from Assemblymember Liz Ortega’s PAC in May. Weese said that she used to work with Ortega for SEIU 250 (which later merged into Union-United Healthcare Workers West).
As of publication, Weese has reportedly spent $15,791.65 between campaign services from Artos Consulting, a political strategies firm based out of Oakland, and the website hosting service NationBuilder.
Lead collaborator at Artos Consulting, Carlos Uribe, was the campaign director for Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas, One of Weese’s highest profile endorsers, and Oakland Mayor Barbra Lee.
Weese told The Citizen that she also uses her campaign funds to pay for outreach systems like phone banks.
Three incumbent candidates reported no monetary contributions
Cindi Napoli-Abella Reiss, who has been the Area 5 Trustee since 2018, reported zero monetary contributions for her campaign. She wrote in an email to The Citizen that she has “not fundraised at all nor accepted any money, intentionally.”
Reiss told The Citizen that she closed her Fair Political Practices Committee PAC account earlier this year. She said she originally did not want to run for reelection but later changed her mind.
Reiss said that she is not fundraising because she found the experience in previous years to be “very transactional.” She said that her main “form of campaigning” for this year’s election is by attending dinners, fundraisers for community based organizations and having conversations with individual people.
Reiss told The Citizen that she took down the donation link on her campaign website because it no longer worked. The page now reads “I have chosen to NOT take any donations for my 2026 campaign.”
She said that she has not received any donations to the PO Box listed on her campaign website during this campaign period.
The most recent payments reported by Reiss were to her campaign treasurer, Susan Reyes, in 2025. Reyes is listed as the treasurer for Oakland City Councilmember Charlene Wang’s 2026 reelection campaign. Reyes received $526.44 from Reiss in January 2025.
Reiss said that she pays less than $50 per month for her campaign website.
Area 7 Trustee Sheweet Yohannes reported having no economic conflicts of interest according to her most recent form 700 filing.
Yohannes’ campaign website features a link to a donations page where supporters can send contributions via Paypal or Venmo. Donors are given the option of making one time or periodically scheduled contributions and to make their donations anonymous or “on behalf of a company.”
The Citizen reached out to Yohannes for an interview but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Area 3 Trustee Louis Quindlen told The Citizen that he did not make any campaign filings because he is running unopposed. He said that he was offered funds from several unions this year, but declined to accept those donations.
When asked if the district should consider adding limits to how much trustees receive in donations, Quindlen said “it would be a discussion you’d want to have,” but that trustees have to consider the cost of running a campaign with fewer people “willing to contribute.”
“Part of the problem is you are running in areas that are fairly costly and there’s not that many people that are involved in something like the Peralta elections,” Quindlen said.
Quindlen believes that Peralta elections have a relatively small reach to the district’s core demographics compared to K-12 districts or other local elections, in part, because of a large number of students that come from outside the district’s voting areas. According to a 2023-2024 Quick Facts report, 29% of all Peralta students lived outside the district’s election areas.
Quindlen also believes that the $480 monthly payment trustees receive for the amount of work that goes into the job usually doesn’t “entice” members of the public to run for the position.
Do you need help finding which of the seven Board of Trustees areas you’re in? Follow The Citizen’s 2024 look up guide in the attached link.
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About the Contributor
Ivan Saravia, Investigative reporter
Ivan Saravia is an East Bay native and senior member of The Citizen. Ivan was The Citizens news editor during the Fall 2025 semester and Co-Editor in Chief for the Spring 2026 semester. Ivan has covered a wide variety of topics for The Citizen including local government reporting, crime, district finances, and security. He covered the fatal shooting of Laney’s former athletic director, John Beam, including an investigation of the Peralta districts and Oakland Police Departments immediate response to the shooting. Ivan also investigated the districts spending on guest speakers. You can reach him at saraviaivan2005@gmail.com.