Joshua Daniels joins CSBA legal team
Published: October 1, 2013
CSBA’s team of legal experts has a new member: staff attorney Joshua Daniels, J.D., formerly an attorney with Olson, Hagel & Fishburn LLP. Daniels will focus on providing internal legal advice regarding state law, pending legislation and board policies. He will also act as liaison with law firms that are litigating on behalf of CSBA and its Education Legal Alliance.
At Olson, Hagel & Fishburn, Daniels represented CSBA in the Robles-Wong v. California lawsuit and in litigation regarding statewide charter schools and Proposition 98. Before that, he was a program manager for Caldwell Flores Winters Inc., where he served as a financial adviser to school districts regarding their bond and construction programs.
After growing up in Berkeley and graduating from Berkeley public schools, Daniels earned a law degree and a master’s in public policy from UC Berkeley, as well as a master’s in mathematics from Wesleyan University.
Daniels is a good fit with CSBA for another reason: he was elected to the Board of Education for the Berkeley Unified School District in 2010 and currently serves as vice president. He coached baseball at Berkeley High School and founded an alternative school discipline program known as the Berkeley High Student Court, but he wanted to find additional ways to give back to his community—so he ran for the school board.
By 2010 the recession and state budget cuts were severely impacting school district budgets. Focusing on education finance as a practicing attorney and having been a financial adviser for school districts, Daniels felt his professional experience with school finance could benefit the board. “I felt that my personal perspective of having gone through Berkeley public schools was important to have on the board,” Daniels explained.