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COMMENTARY: Valarie Bachelor and Jennfier Brouhard are Excellent School Board Members and Deserve to Be Reelected
The Oakland Unified School District recently achieved a major milestone by escaping 22 years of state control and opening the school year with a teacher in every classroom. Incumbents Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor are seeking reelection to the school board after overseeing balanced budgets, averting labor strikes, and reversing previous decisions to close local elementary schools. While the board now focuses on student-centered programs and school-based health facilities, a new wave of opposition candidates backed by wealthy tech donors has emerged. Read more about the shifting dynamics in this local election.
The Oakland schools have excellent leadership right now. I know it’s hard to believe – because there is so much wrong with the national education picture. But sometimes good things do happen locally.
This school year:
- The Oakland Unified School District escaped from state control after 22 years.
- Every classroom had a teacher at the beginning of the year, unlike past years when many classes started the year with day-to-day substitute teachers.
- Dr. Denise Saddler, an African American woman, is leading the district as superintendent now. She was an excellent choice with vast understanding of Oakland, of schools, and of educational systems locally and nationally.
- The school board and teachers managed to avert a teachers’ strike by some strategizing, listening and compromising.
- The school board does not plan to close more schools. For the first time in decades, those in charge of the district were not discussing closures.
The two women leading the school board are excellent educators themselves.
Board President Jennifer Brouhard (District 2) served as an Oakland teacher and was awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching and the U.C. Berkeley Social Science Project Teacher of the Year Award.
When Brouhard joined the board four years ago, she voted to reverse the decision of the previous board which had planned to close Brookfield, Carl B. Munck, Grass Valley, Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy and Horace Mann elementary. Half the students at Carl Munck and at least a third of the students at several others were African American.
In refusing to close schools, she pointed out that in Oakland and other districts it has been Black and Brown students who have been most affected and that closing schools does not save money.
Then, she focused funding on classrooms rather than paying outside consultants. For that, she and her colleagues have incurred the wrath of real estate developers and school privatizers who want to get their hands on public property.
Board Vice President Valerie Bachelor (District 6) has worked on important facilities projects. She helped to set up the first school-based dental project at Frick United Academy of Language, an Oakland middle school. She championed the Melrose Leadership Academy groundbreaking and the Skyline dining facilities.
Bachelor facilitated a balanced budget, which was pivotal in helping the district finally end state control. She also worked to direct funding toward student-centered programs like the Black Thriving Community Schools Program, instead of spending money on the never-ending. highly paid outside consultants.
The people financing the opposition candidates are Ryan Graciano, co-founder of Credit Karma, which made $ 2.7 billion last year; and Gagan Biyani, who says he became a millionaire at age 25.
The literature produced on behalf of the opposition supports closing schools, which harms students, and advocates expenditures that would put OUSD back under state control.
To read more, go to Education Week, “The Harm of School Closures Can Last a Lifetime, New Research Shows” (2024), www.edweek.org/leadership/the-harm-of-school-closures-can-last-a-lifetime-new-research-shows/2024/06
Dr. Kitty Kelly is a Professor of Education and Urban Studies. Dr. Kimberly Mayfield is Dean at Kalmanovitz School of Education, Saint Mary’s College of California.
