Sinai was voted in unanimously by the four sitting board members from a pool of 10 candidates. Sinai will fill the seat vacated by former board president Leah Wilson, who stepped down in March after being appointed court executive officer for the Alameda County Superior Court. Wilson resigned citing concerns about a conflict of interest.

Current board president Karen Hemphill said that despite a strong applicant pool, Sinai had qualities that showed the board she was the most suitable person for the job.

“I felt that the Board needed someone who was already familiar with the District and was involved in public education and Julie met all of these attributes,” Hemphill said in an email.  “She has been a long-time public school activist, used to work for the District and in her current work at the university, it’s all about partnerships and collaboration.”

Before working at UC Berkeley, Sinai was also chief of staff to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. Sinai said she hopes to apply her previous community and university experience to the school district and help the board with its current challenges, which include a new superintendent, increased efforts to improve academic achievement and heated negotiations with teachers’ unions.

“My future plans are to become familiar with the issues that the board has to tackle and look how to move our equity work forward,” Sinai said. “I will also help with looking at the physical status of a student district and do whatever I can do to reach an agreement with the unions.”

Michelle Moskowitz, director of advocacy and institutional relations at UC Berkeley, works with Sinai and congratulated her appointment, saying she believes Sinai will exceed expectations on the board.

“I think Julie will be an amazing asset to the board, as she has many years of experience working for the city of Berkeley,” Moskowitz said. “They could not have made a better choice. All of her colleagues at the Government and Community Relations Office congratulate her.”

Hemphill said she is glad to be working with Sinai and believes that the board will benefit from working with her.

“I expect that Julie will be a great asset in building partnerships with our community, the County and of course the University,” Hemphill said in an email.  “She also will be great in furthering our work to advance overall academic achievement and Julie’s up close knowledge of what a governing body does and how an effective elected body works together through her work as the Mayor’s Chief of Staff will be very useful.”

Sinai will serve the remainder of Wilson’s term until the seat comes up for re-election in November 2014.

Contact Seif Abdelghaffar at sabdelghaffar@dailycal.org.

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On Wednesday, the board will release and then vote on the names of finalists for the position, which was vacated by Leah Wilson, former board president. Wilson resigned on March 31 after taking a position with the Alameda County Superior Court, the first time a school board member has resigned since 1909.

The applicants include two campus professors, the campus director of local government and community relations, and a scientist and former deputy director of the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, among others.

The candidates are Ty Alper, Peter Bloomsburgh, Michael Bolgatz, Meleah Hall, Spencer Klein, Dan Lindheim, Satish Rao, Margit Roos-Collins, Julie Sinai and Mark Zoidis.

Because the new board member will serve a partial term — until Nov. 30, 2014 — he or she needs to be able to “hit the ground running” and “immediately be an integral and contributing member of the board,” said board president Karen Hemphill.

In the coming months, the board will be learning to work with a new superintendent, “all while focusing on bridging the opportunity gap that exists along racial lines in our district,” Hemphill said in an email, referencing the city’s 2020 Vision program, which aims to close the city’s achievement gap by the year 2020.

Alper, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, has seen this gap himself, as both he and his wife went through Berkeley public schools as children.

“I know firsthand how important it is for all children in this city to get the educational opportunities that will enable them to thrive,” Alper said, echoing many of the sentiments of his fellow candidates.

Many candidates who come from analytical backgrounds, such as computer science and financial advising, plan to bring their analytical minds to the job to address the numbers of the achievement gap in Berkeley public schools as well as those of the district’s budget.

Other applicants stressed the importance of maintaining solid and open relationships with the community.

“We need to be meeting the needs of our kids and families in relation to a positive education outcome,” Sinai, campus director of local government and community relations, said. “We as a community need to come together to provide coordinated support.”

The board has 60 days from the time Wilson’s resignation was submitted to fill the vacancy, according to the Berkeley city charter. It plans to fill the seat nine days before the deadline at its May 8 board meeting at the latest.

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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A local association called the Piedmont/Parker Neighborhood Watch launched what they are calling a Quiet Campaign on Friday in an attempt to quell student noise and drunken disorderliness by putting up posters and raising community awareness.

The project is part of the group’s Happy Neighbors Project, a larger effort to deal with disruptive student behavior near the Clark Kerr Campus and surrounding area. The project works in partnership with PartySafe@Cal, a campaign run through the campus’s University Health Services that aims to reduce alcohol-related risks for the campus community by promoting safe partying practices.

“There are people really binge drinking, especially underage,” said Phil Bokovoy, block captain for the Piedmont/Parker Neighborhood Watch. “People relieve themselves in the driveways and gardens. There’s a lot of vandalism. A couple weeks ago, I had to call the police to come and transport a kid to the hospital.”

The pilot project will continue into late fall and will incentivize students with Pet Hugs and People Treats — an event filled with opportunities to play with pets and receive ice cream rewards — while also reiterating the benefits of creating a more harmonious community, Bokovoy said.

Much of the project’s activity is funded by a $7,500 grant from the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund awarded last year and is one of the first efforts of its kind, said Julie Sinai, director of local government and community affairs at UC Berkeley.

If the pilot project is successful, it might be expanded to reach more neighborhoods, Sinai said.

Clark Kerr resident and freshman Alma Pastor, however, said she has not noticed the issue of drunken behavior at Clark Kerr being that serious.

“There certainly are a lot of people walking around, but it’s not like that big of a deal,” Pastor said.

But according to Sinai, the noise and drunkenness issue is not a new problem for the Berkeley community.

“It’s an issue that has been a problem for an eternity on campus, and the neighbors are really taking a kind of proactive and good neighbor strategy to build bridges,” Sinai said.

Though the Happy Neighbors Project is an initiative led by the Piedmont/Parker Neighborhood Watch Group, it was a student-oriented effort in its origins, said coordinator for PartySafe@Cal Karen Hughes.

UC Berkeley students created the Happy Neighbors Project in 2009, though the initiative died after those students graduated. When the Piedmont/Parker Neighborhood Watch Group showed interest in creating a program to tackle student disorderliness, they then decided to take on this name and have continued cooperating with students, Hughes said.

“In an event on Friday, there were several RAs and there were University Health Services health workers and PartySafe interns,” Hughes said. “These are students who are helping with all aspects and who are continuing with peer-to-peer messaging.”

Jaehak Yu covers local government. Contact him at jyu@dailycal.org.

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“That has been one of the problems with the chancellor — getting him to fit into and recognize the strength of the city to see what it can do to aid campus,” Bates said.

Because of its urban setting, the UC Berkeley campus is closely tied to the city of Berkeley — a  city in which students and permanent residents interact closely, and the local government constantly feels the impact of the campus.

The relationship between the campus and the surrounding community, commonly referred to as “town-gown,” relies heavily on the chancellor, who oversees campus operations.

So beyond its impact on the UC Berkeley campus, the impending resignation of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau also marks the end of a significant, and sometimes contentious, relationship between the campus and the city.

Bates said relations between the chancellor and the city started off badly because of the 2020 Long Range Development Plan, a 15-year plan that would expand 2.2 million square feet of campus infrastructure and affect the area surrounding the campus. The plan eventually resulted in a lawsuit in which the university agreed to pay the city $1.2 million annually until 2020 in order to mitigate the costs of expansion.

Bates said that since then, Birgeneau and the city have forged a solid working relationship that has included a number of community partnerships.

Jim Hynes, assistant to the city manager, said he appreciated the chancellor’s interest in the community and campus impact on neighbors, especially given the chancellor’s community grant program and an eventual legal settlement over the 2020 development plan.

“He’s contributed funds to offset students moving out, which hadn’t happened before,” Hynes said. “That clearly indicates his interest to maintain quality of life for surrounding neighborhoods of campus.”

Still, a major point of controversy arose between the campus and city over the renovation of Memorial Stadium — an issue that the city sued the university over in 2006.

The city eventually decided not to appeal after an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled in 2008 to allow the campus to continue renovation plans, ruling that the university had brought the renovation plans up to earthquake safety standards and environmental quality laws, which had been the point of contention that originally led the city to sue the campus.

Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he thinks Birgeneau should have spent more time working on collaboration between the city and campus.

“Even though I represent the central campus, I’ve been refused the chance to have meetings with the chancellor on an occasional basis,” Worthington said.

He also said the next chancellor should be more like former UC Berkeley chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, whose administration Worthington said led fundraising collaboration with the city without sacrificing campus or community ideals.

“(Tien) was able to spend time fundraising but also negotiate with unions respectfully and network with the broader community,” Worthington said.

But according to Julie Sinai, UC Berkeley’s director of local government and community relations, there is no reason to believe that the partnership between the campus and the city will be impacted or changed now that Birgeneau is scheduled to leave.

“We are moving along a path that has been enhanced over the past few years, and I have no intention of putting anything on hold,” Sinai said.

Anjuli Sastry covers city government.

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Sinai announced her decision to leave city hall for the campus position in November and  is replacing former director Caleb Dardick, who left the post earlier last year.

According to Sinai, she and a graduate student collaborate within the Office of Community and Government Relations on finding ways to establish relationships between the campus and the immediate and extended communities in the Bay Area. This includes fostering partnerships with K-12 schools, California State University campuses and state community colleges, Sinai said.

“Personally and professionally, I was feeling ready for a change,” Sinai said. “With all of education really under attack right now, especially in California’s unraveling system of public education … I wanted to return to my background and help fight for education.”

During her nine years in the mayor’s office, Sinai also assisted in projects with workforce and homelessness efforts, and was involved in developing the East Bay Green Corridor — a collaboration between UC Berkeley and various East Bay cities and educational institutions that promotes the expansion of clean technology in the area.

“We’re really looking at what teams we can set up on campus working in various efforts,” Sinai said. “How do you garner the expertise which sits on this campus — which is huge — and use it to help?”

Adelyn Baxter is the lead city government reporter.

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