| Alysse Castro To Speak at Tonight’s Board Meeting |
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Tonight at 6:00 pm when we reconvene for open session, Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Alysse Castro will address our Board of Education to outline the five steps we need to take by Nov. 8 to address our deficit, before she will agree to approve our 2024-25 budget. The situation Oakland Unified confronts is similar to the fiscal cliff many school districts and public agencies are confronting right now: the pandemic relief funds have dried up, but the long-term social impacts of the pandemic are still with us—for the schools, it’s declining enrollment, while for cities, it’s the difficulty of bringing down crime and getting people back in downtown. The City of Oakland found a clever solution—the County had already sold a 50% share of the Coliseum to the A’s, so the City sold the other 50% to the AASEG (which then bought the original 50% back from the A’s, generating a quick $40M profit for the dastardly John Fisher as he takes his team out of town). However, the school district doesn’t have any Coliseums lying around to sell. So we will have to act quickly to pare back our budget before we eat up all of our remaining reserves. |
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With Supt. Alysse Castro and our Chief of Talent, Tara Gard, at last year’s Alameda County Teacher of the Year awards in Castro Valley
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The good news is that Oakland Unified’s CBO Lisa Grant-Dawson, who has been with the District now for over four years, runs a tight ship. In her letter to our Board, Supt. Castro appreciates that under Ms. Grant-Dawson, we have not seen the wild swings in budget reports that used to be normal in OUSD: "A highlight of effective high-level budgeting practices in OUSD is that $81.2M in reserves was originally projected in the June 2023 Adopted Budget and $81.0M in reserves is where OUSD ended in September 2024 as part of the Unaudited Actuals. "This level of accuracy is commendable and shows a praiseworthy improvement over budget planning, however it further emphasizes that the fiscal solvency of the district will be dependent on the actions, or inactions, OUSD takes in 2024-25 to address the $87M deficit next year." These days, the issue is not our budget staff, but whether our Board will continue to kick cans down roads, or buckle down and do what we need to do. Alysse continues: "Inaction to implement the budget solutions for 2025-26 is not an option. Inaction would eventually result in the District’s inability to meet payroll obligations, compelling intervention in the form of designating OUSD as a lack of going concern or, worse, running the risk of requiring an emergency State loan – erasing all of the growth and progress made to be more fiscally independent over the past two decades. "Staff and Board actions over the next six months will determine whether the District can fully exit State receivership and Trustee oversight or alternatively revert back to full Administrator control as was experienced in 2003." The County Superintendent’s letter, which you can read in full here, provides a comprehensive list of seven bullet points that our Board and District senior staff must address over the next three months. This is the first time that Supt. Castro has come to our Board meeting. It’s on us to make sure that she does not need to come back a second time with a more drastic message. The situation that we face is serious, but this time we have the leadership and systems in place to address it. This is not 2003, when the district suddenly discovered it wouldn’t be able to make payroll, and the state took over. Nor is this 2017, when then-newly-hired Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell was forced to make mid-year cuts to avert disaster, and CBO Vernon Hal left under a cloud to be replaced by a revolving door of several different CBOs over the following three years, many of whom seemed unable to give clear answers on the state of the books. This time, Kyla has just renewed her contract for a record-setting total term of 10 years as superintendent, and Ms. Grant-Dawson has established strong systems. Last week, the two of them sent out a clear-eyed assessment of our finances to families and staff. This time, our Board needs to take action before we reach a moment of crisis, acting timely to plan for the future and to set up our next Superintendent for success as we prepare for the transition that Kyla is already planning for in 2026-27. We’ve made tremendous progress as a school district, and I’m not about to let us throw it all away by not addressing the concerns raised by the County Superintendent. 2026 is also when Oakland Unified is planning to leave receivership, so as another famous daughter of Oakland likes to say—it’s time to turn the page because we are not going back. Capitalism is not a forgiving system, and until the very wealthy pay their true fair share in taxes in this country, and the state gives Oakland and other urban districts what we truly deserve as the central cogs of our economy and geography—we are going to continue to face these stark decisions. When those in Sacramento can point the finger at Oakland and call us irresponsible, it weakens rather than bolsters our argument that we and other urban districts are not getting our fair share. Instead, when these moments of decision come, we as responsible leaders cannot pass the buck or point at somebody else. I am willing to take the heat for making the decisions that need to be made this fall. Tune in at 6:00 tonight to hear Supt. Castro’s comments and our response. The Zoom link is: https://ousd.zoom.us/j/89634602995. |
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Last month we celebrated Northeastern University following through on their commitment to give full scholarships every year to several graduates from Oakland public schools, including Angela and Nyari pictured here, both proud Oakland Tech grads! |
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Charter School Renewal Hearings Proceed |
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Since Gov. Newsom and the legislature in their wisdom automatically extended all charter terms by three years during the pandemic, this is the first time I have participated in the charter renewal process in my four years on the Board. There are nine schools applying for renewal this year, and each has an initial hearing and a decision hearing. On Monday we completed three more of the 18 hearings, with 10 left to go by the end of the year. Each hearing lasts about 45-60 minutes, with the charter school presenting all the reasons they should be renewed, and families, staff and students speaking and loudly cheering during public comment. Some people may love charter schools, while others may detest them, and there are many excellent reasons to approve or deny each school. However, none of that is what really matters here, because the process is governed by state charter law, which outlines a very clear process for the renewals. Each school is rated low, medium, or high depending on their performance on the state dashboard. It’s presumed that low-tier schools will be denied, and that high-tier schools will be renewed unless there are serious concerns that persist despite them having been given notice. Medium-tier schools must be renewed unless certain findings are made that the school did not meet standards, with greater weight placed on academic performance measurements. I have heard some charter opponents say, ‘the board should just deny all charter schools.’ While I am a strong critic of the disparities that have been created by the charter movement, I also recognize that there are some excellent charter schools in Oakland that are deeply rooted in our community. As a Board, we need to be careful to follow the law during this charter renewal season, and only deny those charter schools where there is strong basis in both the law and in the public interest to do so. |
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Director Bachelor and I, along with Oakland Unified staff, recently toured educator housing built on vacant school district land in Daly City
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Building Affordable & Workforce Housing on Vacant District Real Estate |
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Recently Director Bachelor (chair of our Facilities Committee) and I joined senior Oakland Unified staff to visit a housing development in Jefferson Union High School District (JUHSD), located in Daly City. We saw a lovely apartment building, on one quadrant of a site that was formerly a vacant high school, where the District collaborated with their labor unions and a developer to create housing dedicated to educators who work in their district. The other three quadrants of the large lot will be used for additional apartment buildings that will be market-rate, bringing in much-needed revenue to their district. This mix of workforce and market-rate housing allowed them to address the shortage of affordable apartments for their employees in a way that ‘pencils out,’ as the housing folks like to say. JUHSD often struggles to attract educators, since it does not have the resources that neighboring districts on the Peninsula have, so the new building has already had a big impact on teacher recruitment and retention. Oakland Unified has hired a real estate firm to advise us on how we can put our currently vacant properties to better use, focusing on our stated priorities as a Board for more affordable and workforce housing. For example, our Facilities Committee just voted to recommend moving forward with a Transition-Aged Youth (TAY) housing and services hub at our former administration building at 1025 Second Avenue. That proposal will be coming to our full Board for consideration in October. |
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Thanks to State Supt. Tony Thurmond and Sen. Becker who joined Director Bachelor and I at a press conference under our new solar panels at Lockwood STEAM Academy, urging Gov. Newsom to sign SB 1374 to make school solar projects feasible again after last year's wrong-headed PUC decision. |
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Water Quality Meeting with City of Oakland |
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You may have seen the headlines about issues with lead contamination discovered in some faucets and water fountains in several Oakland schools. I want to emphasize that while we are taking this very seriously and replacing all of the contaminated plumbing fixtures, the majority of water sources at every school where testing was done were found to be safe. This kind of contamination can be found in many buildings that are more than 50 years old in the USA—it’s just that most institutions are not being responsible enough to do the testing that Oakland Unified just did. At the same time, our children deserve and must have access to the very purest of water. We have had one water purification station at every school for several years, but that’s not enough—the District just bought 60 more which are being installed as I write this, prioritizing larger schools and those where water quality has been an issue. We would like to buy and install another 90 of these water purifier stations—some of our high schools are large, and the water purification stations occasionally break down, so we need 2 or 3 stations at every school. This would cost an additional $1 million and resources are tight, but we know that the City and County received a settlement of $14M recently to address lead abatement across Oakland. My colleagues on the Board and I have been reaching out to our City Council counterparts to ask them to use a small part of that fund to give all of our students access to pure water. I invite you to reach out to your City Council representative or candidate as well, to ask them for their position on this urgent question. Next Monday, September 30, we will be formally requesting that the Education Partnership Committee of the City Council and Board of Education support this ask. I will be chairing the meeting, which starts at 4:00 in the City Council chambers at 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, and invite you to join us in person or on Zoom. |
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Congrats to Oakland Unified Director of Transportation Kim Raney, who partnered with Zum to get infrastructure dollars from the Biden and Newsom administrations towards 74 electric school buses, shown here charging at their brand new facility in East Oakland!
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I’m so excited that 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to vote for my replacement, as well as in Districts 3, 5, and 7 this fall, as the Registrar of Voters implements Youth Vote, approved in 2020 by Measure QQ!
Voters can register after their 16th birthday at registertovote.ca.gov by selecting the Pre-Register option. If they don’t have a driver’s license yet, they may need to print out and mail in the form, or they can fill out a standard Alameda County voter registration form to be found at some DMVs and libraries.
Then they should each receive a school-board-only ballot in the mail to send back by November 5th—but due to limitations in the process, they should not assume that they will be able to vote in person on Election Day. |
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Congrats to the 2024 Oakland Teachers of the Year Sarah Ben-Israel, Claudia Hung-Haas and Jazmine Njissang! |
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Limiting Cell Phones in Schools
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On Monday, Gov. Newsom signed AB 3216, requiring school boards (including charter schools) to adopt policies limiting cell phone use in schools by July 1, 2026. Our attorneys are waiting for details on how we must implement this bill, but our middle schools have already instituted policies banning use of phones from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. As we know, schools have many rules which may or may not be fully enforced, and I encourage families and staff to work together to implement this ban so that our middle school students, who are developmentally not ready for the addictive features that software companies have baked into social media, can focus on academics while on campus. I have heard that West Oakland Middle School has had success enforcing the ban, which has won deep appreciation at that school from teachers and families alike. As a dad, I also know that high school students need to develop their own ability to regulate their use of social media, so that they are able to independently limit their use of it by the time they are ready to leave home. Anyone who has raised a teenager knows the radical difference between a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old. So we need to make sure that at the high school level, we help students learn to self-regulate their use of technology. I wish my successor the best of luck in writing this important policy to implement the new law! |
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At the Oakland Pride Breakfast with future Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (who spoke at the national Democratic convention!) and Chief Assistant City Attorney Ryan Richardson |
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samdavisforoaklandschools.org is paid for by Davis for Oakland School Board 2024, FPPC #1464418. It is not sponsored by or hosted by the Oakland Unified School District. |
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