Education

OUSD Consultant Lance Jackson’s Company Sued in Corruption Scandal

Published

9 years ago

May 15, 2015

The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is paying consultant Lance Jackson to head its Facilities Planning and Management Department through the district’s contract with Seville Group Inc. (SGI), while Jackson continues working as an executive of the company, whose owner, along with school board members and a superintendent of schools, pleaded guilty in a corruption scheme in a Southern California school district.

The criminal prosecutions are over, but lawsuits against Seville that came out of the case are slowly moving ahead. Sweetwater Union High School District and San Diegans for Open Government are suing Seville, along with another company, to return $26 million on the grounds that their contracts with the school district were “tainted,” by bribing public officials, and therefore invalid.

In the widely publicized case, which finally concluded last year, a school board member went to jail and a number lost their positions. The district’s superintendent went to jail and paid a fine.

According to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, “Between 2008 and 2011, the defendants frequented San Diego-area restaurants with contractors and others racking up hundreds of dollars in food and drinks at a time, in some cases reaching more than $1,000 per outing. Defendants were given Los Angeles Lakers playoff tickets, concert tickets, theater tickets, Rose Bowl tickets, Southwest Airlines tickets and trips to Pebble Beach and Napa Valley.”

The owner and president of Seville, Rene Flores cooperated and testified for the prosecution. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was on informal probation until June 20, 2014.

In addition to his interim consulting position in the school district, Jackson serves as Chief Operating Officer of Seville, part of the company’s seven-member executive leadership team.

Seville receives $30,000 a month, an equivalent of $360,000 a year, for Jackson’s services to OUSD, part of the company’s contract to provide construction management services to the district.

Jackson’s position with the company goes back to 2002, according to Bloomberg.

Seville has a nearly $11 million, three-year contract to provide project management oversight of OUSD’s construction projects. Jackson was hired by the school district as the interim replacement for Tim White, who was forced out of his $156,000-a-year position as head of Facilities Management in February after 14 years in the district.

Seville is being paid for Jackson’s work from school bond funds for what the district estimates is 75 percent of the work that Tim White was doing. As head of Facilities Planning and Management, Jackson oversees the expenditure of at least $435 million in taxpayer bond money.

The Southern California lawsuits are seeking the return of $26 million that SGI of Pasadena and Gilbane of Providence, R.I., received to oversee the Sweetwater district’s $644-million voter-approved Proposition O bond program and a part of an earlier bond program.

“It was filed to recoup some of the bond (management) fees that we paid,” said Manny Rubio, public information officer of the Sweetwater school district in an interview with the Post.

State law – Government Code 1090 – prohibits officials from entering into a contract in which they have a financial interest and nullifies contracts made in violation of that law.

“The facts really aren’t in dispute. The people that received the gifts admit receiving them. Those that gave the gifts admit giving them,” said John Moot, outside legal counsel for Sweetwater, speaking in an interview with the newspaper U-T San Diego.

Responding to the lawsuit, lawyers for the contractors, Gilbane and Seville, said the district attorney’s charges were inflated, and the gifts to public officials were constitutionally protected free speech.

“Despite the rhetoric and rampant media coverage, the meager slaps on the wrist that flowed from the prosecution utterly belie (the D.A.’s) claims and prove the criminal charges were overblown and lacked evidentiary support,” the two companies’ lawyers said in court papers.

In rejecting one of the defendants’ claims, a San Diego judge in December 2014 ruled that the meals, trips and gifts were criminal acts and not constitutionally protected free speech.

Judge Eddie Sturgeon said the law that the contractors cited did not apply if the conduct was illegal. He wrote that the gifts were clearly meant to influence the decisions of the school officials, and the guilty pleas of the contractors and officials confirmed that what they did was illegal, according to UT-San Diego.

OUSD spokesperson Troy Flint responded to the Post’s questions about the hiring of Lance Jackson and the payments to SGI in light of the ongoing Southern California lawsuits.

“When we appointed Lance to his current position, we were aware of the investigation in San Diego,” Flint said. “We reviewed the matter to the best of our ability, and we determined that Lance was not involved in any way.”

He continued: “We retain our confidence in Lance based on that review and the caliber of work he’s done for us. We won’t hold what appear to be the actions of a few bad apples against Lance.

“Our work with SGI in general, and with Lance in particular, has been above board and extremely satisfactory. What the owners of the company may or may not have done in Southern California is not reflected in the work with OUSD or in Lance’s performance.”

Attorney Cory Briggs of San Diegans for Open Government told the Post that a trial or settlement to the case may be a year-and-a-half away. “If there’s a conflict of interest, (the companies) have to repay everything they’ve been paid,” he said.

The Post requested but at press time had not received comments from OUSD Board President James Harris or other board members, Lance Jackson or Supt. Antwan Wilson. General Counsel Jacqueline Minor was contacted but was out of the office.

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WOMEN IMPACTING THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY

Published

4 hours ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Juanita Matthews

Sister Juanita Matthews

55 Years with Oakland Public School District

The Teacher, Mother, Community Outreach Champion, And Child of God

Juanita Matthews, better known as “Sister Teacher,” is a walking Bible scholar. She moved to California from the great state of Arkansas in 1971. Sister Teacher has a passion for teaching. She has been a member of Bible Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church since 1971. She followed her passion for teaching, and in 1977 became the lead teacher for Adult Class #6. Her motto still today is “Once My Student, Always My Student”.

Beyond her remarkable love for the Lord, Sister Teacher has showcased her love for teaching by working for the Oakland Unified School District for 55 years, all but four of those years spent at Emerson Elementary and Child Development School. She truly cares about her students, making sure they have the tools/supplies needed to learn either at OUSD or Bible Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.

She’s also had a “Clothes Closet Ministry” for 51 years, making sure her students have sufficient clothing for school. The Clothes Closet Ministry extends past her students, she has been clothing the community for over 50 years as well. She loves the Lord and is a servant on a mission. She is a loving mother to two beautiful children, Sandra and Andre. This is the impact this woman of God has on her church and the community.

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Bay Area

Rich Lyons, Longtime Campus Business, Innovation Leader, Will Be UC Berkeley’s Next Chancellor

Rich Lyons, an established economist, former dean of the Haas School of Business and the campus’s current leader for innovation and entrepreneurship, will become the next chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, the UC Board of Regents announced on April 10.

Published

7 hours ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Rich Lyons is the first UC Berkeley undergraduate alumnus since 1930 to become the campus's top leader. Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley.

By Jason Pohl

The board’s unanimous confirmation makes Lyons, 63, the first UC Berkeley undergraduate alumnus since 1930 to become the campus’s top leader. In an interview this week, Lyons said he credits his Berkeley roots and his campus mentors with encouraging him to ask big questions, advance institutional culture and enhance public education — all priorities of his for the years to come.

Lyons, who will be Berkeley’s 12th chancellor, will succeed Chancellor Carol Christ, who announced last year that she’d step down as chancellor on July 1.

“I am both thrilled and reassured by this excellent choice. In so many ways, Rich embodies Berkeley’s very best attributes, and his dedication to the university’s public mission and values could not be stronger,” Christ said. “I am confident he will bring to the office visionary aspirations for Berkeley’s future that are informed by, and deeply respectful of, our past.”

Rising through the Berkeley ranks

Born in 1961, Lyons grew up in Los Altos in the early days of the Silicon Valley start-up boom.

He attended Berkeley, where he graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree in business and finance. Lyons went on to earn his Ph.D. in 1987 in economics from MIT. After six years teaching at Columbia Business School, Lyons returned west, where in 1993 he joined the Berkeley faculty as a professor of economics and finance, specializing in the study of international finance and global exchange rates.

He’s remained on campus since, with one notable exception.

Starting in 2006, Lyons spent two years working at Goldman Sachs as the chief learning officer. It was a period that instilled in him an appreciation for leadership and the importance of organizational culture.

He carried those lessons with him when he returned to campus in 2008 and became the dean of the Haas School of Business.

While dean, Lyons oversaw the construction of Connie & Kevin Chou Hall, a state-of-the-art academic building that opened in 2017 and is celebrated for its sustainability. He also helped establish two new degree programs, linking the business school with both the College of Engineering and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

But it was his creation of four distinct defining leadership principles that spurred a sweeping culture initiative at the school that stands out in the minds of many. Those values — question the status quo, confidence without attitude, students always, and beyond yourself — became a creed of sorts for new students and alumni alike.

Those values are important, Lyons said, because they shape and support the cohesive structure of a strong, connected community — spanning science and technology to the arts and humanities. They also convey the story about what it means to be at Berkeley and to believe in the university’s public mission.

“When we are great as educators, it’s identity-making,” Lyons said. “We’re helping students and others see identities in themselves that they couldn’t see.”

Lyons in January 2020 became Berkeley’s first-ever chief officer of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Building on his research exploring how leaders drive innovation and set behavioral norms and culture, Lyons worked to expand and champion Berkeley’s rich portfolio of innovation and entrepreneurship activities for the benefit of students, faculty, staff, startups and external partners.

It was a major commitment to thinking outside the box, he said. One need only look to the Berkeley Changemaker program that he helped launch in 2020 to see innovation and entrepreneurship in action.

The campuswide program with some 30 courses tells the story of what Berkeley is — the story that members of the Berkeley community can tell long into the future. Berkeley Changemaker started as an idea and its courses quickly became among the most popular academic offerings on campus.

“Over 500 students showed up,” he said. “Why? Because it’s a narrative. It’s not just a name. It’s not just a curriculum. It’s not just a course. It’s a way of living, and it’s a way of living that Berkeley has occupied forever. This idea that there’s got to be a better way to do this, question the status quo.”

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Community

AG Bonta Says Oakland School Leaders Should Comply with State Laws to Avoid ‘Disparate Harm’ When Closing or Merging Schools

California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter this week to the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Board of Education saying the district has a duty to comply with state education and civil rights laws to protect students and families from “disparate harm,” such as segregation and discrimination, if the district goes ahead with school closures, mergers or consolidations in 2025-2026.

Published

1 day ago

April 16, 2024

Oakland Post

Teachers and students protest the closing of schools in Oakland. Photo courtesy of PBS.

AG Bonta said DOJ investigation of 2022 closure decisions would have negatively impacted Black and low-income families.

By Post Staff

The letter and an accompanying media release announced the findings of the California Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation into the OUSD Board’s Feb. 8, 2022, decision to close Parker Elementary, Brookfield Elementary, Carl B. Munck Elementary, Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy, Grass Valley Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary, and Community Day School and eliminate grades 6-8 of Hillcrest Elementary and La Escuelita Elementary.

“All school districts and their leadership have a legal obligation to protect vulnerable children and their communities from disparate harm when making school closure decisions,” said Attorney General Bonta.

“The bottom line is that discrimination in any form will not be tolerated,” he said. “I am committed to working with OUSD’s leadership to achieve successful outcomes for students.

“My office will continue to monitor OUSD’s processes and decision-making as it moves forward with the required community engagement, equity impact analysis, and planning to implement any future closures, mergers, or consolidations” to ensure compliance with California’s Constitution, AB 1912, and anti-discrimination laws.

By press time, the school district did not respond to a request for comment from OUSD.

The DOJ’s findings showed that the February 2022 decision, later partially rescinded, would have disproportionately impacted Black and low-income elementary students, as well as high-need students with disabilities, according to the media release.

The Attorney General outlined concerns about criteria OUSD has announced that it may rely on to determine future closures, mergers, and consolidations and provided recommendations to ensure OUSD does not violate state law, including prohibitions against closure decisions that reinforce school segregation or disproportionately impact any student group as required by the State Constitution, AB 1912, and anti-discrimination laws.

According to AB 1912, passed in September 2022, financially distressed school districts contemplating school closures, mergers, or consolidations must engage the community before closing schools; conduct an equity impact assessment; and provide the public with the set of criteria the district plans to utilize to make decisions.

In the letter, DOJ identified a “problematic” approach to planning for closing schools in 2025-2026 and “strongly recommends” steps OUSD should take going forward.

“Take affirmative steps to ensure that its enrollment and attendance boundary and school closure decisions alleviate school segregation and do not create disproportionate transportation burdens for protected subgroups.”
Don’t solely utilize criteria such as school facilities’ conditions, school operating costs, and school capacity without also including an assessment of past and present inequities in resources “due to educational segregation or other causes.”
Some of OUSD’s proposed guidelines “may improperly penalize schools serving students with disabilities and students who have high needs.”
The district’s decisions should also include “environmental factors, student demographics and feeder attendance patterns, transportation needs, and special programs.”
Avoid overreliance on test scores and other quantitative data without also looking at “how each school is serving the needs of its specific student body, especially as it relates to historically marginalized communities.”
“Engage an independent expert to facilitate community input and equity impact.”

The letter also emphasized that DOJ is willing to provide “feedback and consultation at any time during the process to ensure that OUSD’s process and outcomes are legally compliant and serve the best interests of the school community and all of its students.”