By Post Staff

A recent show on radio station KPFA 94.1 featured a discussion about the racialized threats to less affluent urban public school districts as state authorities pressure school leaders to take out bailout loans to resolve budget shortfalls. These loans come with draconian terms that eliminate the authority of voter-selected school boards and impose extreme austerity measures, including the closure of many schools in poorer neighborhoods.

A dozen mostly minority school districts have been forced under state control in the past 20 years, including the Oakland Unified School District. At present, Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), an ethnically and racially diverse district of about 42,000 students, is the target, but the district’s school board and the community are fighting back.

Speaking on the July 15 show, “Education Today,” hosted by education professor Kitty Kelly Epstein, Taylor Kayatta, a certificated public accountant (CPA) who serves as the first vice president of SCUSD, spoke about the ongoing struggle of their board and community to keep SCUSD from being taken over.

“There’s been pressure on my school district for over a decade now; there’s a feeling (from the state) that we’re intrinsically broken, that we cannot manage our finances,” said Kayatta, who has two elementary students in SCUSD.

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“It reached a fever pitch a couple of years ago before COVID; I really felt it as a parent in the community that they were coming for us,” he said.

“Within the past year, they’re back at it again,” he said. “The pressure right now to accept a state loan is something I am not sure I could even describe.”

He said that the outside authorities would not even allow the board to hire its own financial adviser to help find solutions; the state takeover is the only option they want.

“We have a county superintendent in Sacramento County (who) has been on the job for decades. It’s been his mission, in my opinion, that something is wrong with Sac City Unified, that we are the problem child; we need outside control, (and) we shouldn’t be running ourselves,” said Kayatta.

In a district where enrollment is slightly declining, and many students have complex educational needs, SCUSD does face financial difficulties, he continued.

“There’s going to be challenges with the budget in the long term, but I think we need to address that in a way that is community-driven, with the community understanding what it means rather than accepting some blanket (imposed) ‘best practice’ that often involves making dramatic, harsh cuts, things like closing schools without plans.

“If you need to make cuts, make them in a way that makes sense rather than just trying to save a dollar this school year,” he said.

For example, closing a school may save a little money in the short run but almost always means loss of student enrollment as families move out of the district, which ends up costing a district more than it saves and can lead to a cycle of decline and demoralization.

Closely allied with the County Superintendent is the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), “which has been at the heels of this district as long as I’ve lived in the district,” he said.

FCMAT is a state-funded nonprofit based in Bakersfield that has been granted sweeping authority under state law to pressure school districts to adopt fiscal austerity.

In theory, something like FCMAT would be a good thing, an agency that would help districts that face some financial difficulties, he said. “But my experience and the experience of people in Sacramento is that they’re an outside agency that has its own motivations.”

“They are not about helping you save your budget and helping you get through temporary (issues). They’re more about taking control over a district that they think shouldn’t be running itself.”

A school board is democratically elected and exists as “the people’s voice,” Kayatta said. Local schools need leadership that understands the problems and issues the community faces, “not an outside appointed group of people from Bakerfield who don’t really understand what Sacramento needs,” he said.

Show host Kitty Kelly Epstein, who actively opposed the state takeover of Oakland schools two decades ago, discussed its impact, which formally lasted until OUSD’s bailout loan was repaid in June 2025.

“When a district is taken over by the state, that means the school board loses all their power, which means that the electors, that’s the residents, lose all their power because they don’t get to elect anybody. There’s somebody put in charge, and they make all the decisions.”

“In the case of Oakland, Oakland’s debt could have been solved internally. That was not allowed by the state senator at the time, Don Perata,” she said.

“The actual amount that the district needed was about $37 million, and they were not allowed to use their own money to cover the debt. The loan that was imposed without the will of the people of Oakland was a $100 million. They fired the superintendent, brought in a state receiver, and spent the $100 million on whatever they wanted because there was no participation by people in Oakland,” she said.

“I know it sounds shocking. It was shocking, and Oakland was not the only district. There were others: Inglewood, Vallejo, Compton, said Kelly Epstein.

“The people who often have the least amount of input anyway, because of inequalities and racism in our system, get the little bit of participation that they have in schools, which is to elect a school board, taken away from them.”

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Dr. Tonja L. Ringgold, an educator and Life Member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated® (AKA), was installed as North Atlantic Regional Director during the organization’s 72nd Biennial International Convention on July 23 in Las Vegas.

Dr. Ringgold will serve a two-year term overseeing one of the Sorority’s largest and most historic regions. With more than 17,000 members, the Notable North Atlantic is the birthplace of the sorority, which was established on Jan. 15, 1908, at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

“I am excited and humbled by the faith placed in me to lead,” said Dr. Ringgold. “I welcome the opportunity to give back to this illustrious Sisterhood that has poured so much into me.”

The North Atlantic Region, one of the sorority’s 10 regions in the United States and abroad, comprises undergraduate and graduate chapters in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, eastern New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

As the 36th Regional Director, Dr. Ringgold will serve on the Alpha Kappa Alpha  18-member Board of Directors and will assist in the implementation of policies and programs under the leadership of International President and Chief Executive Officer Charletta Wilson Jacks.

Her previous sorority leadership includes serving as the North Atlantic Regional Representative to the International Program Committee and as North Atlantic Region Program Chairman. She also served as president of Epsilon Omega Chapter in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Dr. Ringgold represents four generations of Alpha Kappa Alpha women, all initiated into the Alpha Delta Chapter at Morgan State University. She was initiated in 1982, following in the footsteps of her cousin and Alpha Delta Charter member, Mary Anita Short Wheatley, and her mother, Mary Jane Briscoe Short, a life member of the Sorority with 67 years of service. Her daughter Ashley R. Davy was initiated into the Alpha Delta Chapter in 2011.

A nationally recognized educator, Dr. Ringgold has spent more than three decades in higher education. She is a retired Vice President of Academic Affairs within the Community College system and is a faculty member in the Morgan State University’s Community College Leadership Doctoral Program. She also serves as president and CEO of En-Sight Educational and Management Consultants.

She holds a doctorate degree in education, master’s degrees in Applied Psychology, Management, Business Administration, and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology.

In addition to her Alpha Kappa Alpha service, Dr. Ringgold is president of the Baltimore County Chapter of The Pierians, Incorporated; a member of the National Council on Black American Affairs; and a member of the Coalition of 100 Black Women.

She resides in Parkville, Maryland.

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With just over three months before the midterm elections, the NAACP at its 117th annual convention in Chicago announced an unprecedented $20 million voter registration campaign ahead of the midterm elections.

The announcement kicked off the NAACP’s national convention at McCormick Place where thousands of visitors and delegates participated in workshops and seminars that stressed the organization’s theme of “We the People” and purpose of educating Blacks about their constitutional rights.

Throughout the week-long convention, vendors sold merchandise, media organizations held onsite interviews in “The HUB,” and visitors signed a massive “We the People” mural.

Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson were among the dignitaries who reinforced the NAACP’s message during the convention’s opening plenary.

Black voting rights have been under attack in the last several months when Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida gutted historic Black congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such districts were unconstitutional and were no longer needed in modern times despite protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, is concerned those decisions will roll back political and economic gains Blacks have made in the last six decades.

NAACP Board Chairman Leon Russell told the opening session that the NAACP would undertake a $20 million voter registration and mobilization drive “to motivate six million to 10 million voters” who did not cast ballots in the last two elections to do so.

As part of the campaign, the NAACP plans to recruit “tens of thousands of volunteers to join the crusade to turn out millions of us this November.”

The plan will target voters in 14 states and 33 congressional districts, with the full list expected to be disclosed later.

“We must move 60 percent or more of all eligible voters to the polls,” Russell said.

The NAACP has a history of leading voter registration drives in Black neighborhoods across America.

In his speech, Pritzker said, “In Washington and across the country, extremists holding high office are working to erase Black history rather than learn from it, to take away voting rights instead of strengthening them, to divide us rather than unite us,” he said.

He added, “These are not simply disagreements over policy. These are challenges to the very idea that democracy belongs to all of us. Challenges to the very idea that we are all created equal.”

Pritzker said the phrase “We the People” reflects America’s ongoing effort to expand equality, noting that the nation’s founding ideals initially excluded enslaved people, women and other groups.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said, “For 117 years this incredible organization has helped bend the arc of history towards justice. And not because progress was inevitable, but because ordinary people made the extraordinary decision to organize, advocate and refuse to accept injustice as the reigning form of governance. That work has never been easy, and today it remains as urgent as it has ever been.

“Across this country we are witnessing wicked efforts to undermine fundamental rights, weaken Democratic institutions, and to turn neighbors against one another.

“We see attempts to silence the truth and erase our history and convince people that somehow division is stronger than solidarity. But history has taught us something very different. Every time people have been told to accept injustice, they have risen together to reject it. “

During Trump’s second term in office, the NAACP has filed more than 70 lawsuits to stop his grasping and often unconstitutional moves to grab total power.

Pritzker said “Illinois has been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and equality” ever since Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a non-white, was the first permanent resident of what is now Chicago, Pritzker noted.

Pritzker also said Illinois also gave the nation the crusading African American journalist Ida B. Wells, and it elected more African American members of Congress than any other state. He said Illinois gave the nation the late civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and “a young community organizer” who eventually went from Chicago to the White House, Barack Obama.

“But such progress is not inevitable,” the governor warned. “It requires people willing to sacrifice. None of this is by accident. It is because Black America shows up, reminding us of the painful part of our history while giving us hope for the future.”

Based on reporting by Gary Crusader.

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