The Oakland Post Community Assembly held a Post Salon last weekend on the role of the nearly. 20-year reign of the Oakland school district’s state overseers and their devastating impact the education of  students and families 

Frankie Ramos, doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley and OUSD parent, hosted the meeting, laying out the goals of looking at who the state-imposed trustee and the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team are and what can be done to get rid of them.

“One of the challenges we are facing is trying to understand who really is in control, who really has power in our school district; there are forces behind the scenes that are definitely exerting power,” she said, and our communities need a “plan for getting out of their control so we can get back on track so Oakland students can thrive.”

Dr. Nirali Jani, professor at Holy Names University and a former Oakland teacher, said efforts to seize control of the school district began in 1988, a year after the first Black majority school board was elected in Oakland. The takeover was not accomplished until 2003, stripping the school board of its power and replacing the superintendent with a state receiver

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“State takeover is a targeted attempt for corporate penetration and privatization of public land,” she said, and is  part of a “business plan” utilized to take over schools and other public institutions across the country.

In Oakland, the state gave billionaire Eli Broad and his Broad Foundation free hand to implement corporate strategies in the school district. 

Post Publisher Paul Cobb was a school board member at the time of the takeover. He said the state was supposedly coming in to help the district achieve financial stability.

But state control was marked by “unbalanced budgets” and “no audits” of how they spent district money, he said. “OUSD partially emerged from state receivership  in 2009, but it was $89 million in debt, much more than the original $37 million (in 2003).”

He said the state overseers, are pushing a “replacement strategy” to close schools. “We are witnessing the removal of Black and Brown populations from the schools” and the city, he said.

He said the community should call on Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is facing a recall and “is available to be pressured by all of us” to audit FCMAT.

The community can make similar demands of Rob Bonta when he becomes state attorney general and also ask candidates for Bonta’s soon to be vacated Assembly seat to step up and fight for the independence of the local school district, he said. 

Pecolia Manigo, OUSD parent, executive director of the Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN) and an organizer for the Justice for Oakland Students coalition, explained that the coalition has been working for several years for “Reparations for Black Students” to  reduce and end the harm OUSD has caused Black students for generations.

The coalition won 15 of its 16 demands, but the school board backed down when threatened by state Trustee Chris Learned, dropping the demand to stop closing mostly Black schools. 

“One of the biggest demands was ensuring that majority Black schools were not targeted for closure,” she said. “This is a board that chose not to take a courageous stand, (instead) choosing to put (Black schools) on the chopping block to balance the budget.”

“We will not give up on the demand to protect majority Black schools from closures or on the demand that school closures is not a justified action at all for this board to be taking.” 

School Board Member VanCedric Williams said, “We have  to challenge the status quo. The status quo is just not acceptable anymore…we must force the district to pivot toward racial and social justice. We are a social justice city, and we have to call on our elected leaders” to join with us.

Jackie Goldberg, member of the Los Angeles school board and a formerly in the state Assembly, said  state takeover districts are targeted racially and  “an entirely undemocratic method of solving a problem,” putting people in charge who nobody elected and “nobody decided should here.”

She said, “These people are not committed to the districts, they are not from the districts, they don’t care about the district, they are getting paid very large amounts of money, and they are political appointees.” 

“This is a political issue, not a fiscal issue. It will be framed by the state  as an economic fight but it is not.”

She suggested Oakland could start a statewide coalition to demand an end to FCMAT and state trusteeship as a way to solve districts’ financial problems. 

School Board Member Mike Hutchinson said the district is under state control because of the terms of 2003 state loan and of AB 1840, a recent law that gives the district some money but with strings attached 

“We are actively working on that plan to pay off the loan early” and can refuse to take the AB1840 money. “We can be free of (both)  AB1840 and the state loan in the next four to six months,” he said.

Ken Epstein

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