Hajela succeeds Hamilton as CSBA’s legal counsel
Published: August 1, 2011
Abe Hajela—a familiar face from years of service to CSBA—has returned to the association as general counsel and director of the Education Legal Alliance. He replaces Richard Hamilton, who recently retired.
Hajela was on CSBA’s legal and legislative staffs in the mid-1990s, and he frequently supported the association’s goals even as he followed other career paths. He has served CSBA as special counsel in several cases of statewide importance—including Robles-Wong v. California, the case filed by the Alliance and a broad coalition of parents and students, school districts and statewide education organizations to challenge the constitutionality of California’s school finance system. That case is now in an Alameda County trial court.
Hajela’s focus on reforming the state’s school finance system began long before that lawsuit, however. He represented school boards’ interests on behalf of CSBA when the Alliance became a party in the class action lawsuit Eliezer Williams v. State of California in 2000. As the Williams case progressed, many of the parties acknowledged that the litigation’s goal of better and more equitable educational opportunities for students could not be achieved without addressing the role of the state in funding public education.
“I’m looking forward to focusing our efforts as much as possible—particularly through the Education Legal Alliance—on fighting to give all districts the authority and resources they need to improve educational outcomes for their students. For me, that means not just litigation,” he explained. “It means also focusing attention on legislation that impacts districts and kids and having the legal side work collaboratively with our Governmental Relations Department to ensure we promote bills that help our schools and defeat bills that don’t.
“Most of the things we need to do to improve the school system don’t involve litigation,” Hajela added. “Most of them require sound policy, strong advocacy, and support from the public and the Legislature. When we focus exclusively on litigation we sometimes don’t pay enough attention to those things.”
Previously, Hajela was legal counsel for the San Francisco Unified School District, a litigation attorney for the Sacramento firm of Olson, Hagel & Fishburn, and chief counsel for the School Innovations & Advocacy consulting and legislative affairs firm. He earned his juris doctorate at the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco in 1994.