With the Oakland school board election last November, the teachers’ union effectively took control of the district.
The chaos that has ensued threatens the district’s fiscal stability just as it’s about to emerge this summer from 22 years of receivership after paying off a record $100 million state bailout loan.
What should be a moment of celebration for the Oakland Unified School District has morphed in the past two months into one of the worst periods of uncertainty in years for the already dysfunctional organization, leaving troubling questions about its future.
This is what can happen when unions take over public agency boards.
The district’s well-regarded superintendent was forced out early. A plan to close a $95 million budget gap for next school year was upended. Essential planning for school consolidations has stalled. And costly promises were made to teachers to head off a one-day strike.
The district’s problems are not due to lack of money. Oakland’s per-pupil spending of $25,491 in 2023 was tops among California’s 50 largest school districts.
But the district has failed to adjust to a loss of almost 40% of its student enrollment since the late 1990s. Consequently, it has the most schools relative to its student population of any district in the state. Keeping small schools creates wasteful administrative and maintenance costs, siphoning money that could be better used in classrooms.
As the Oakland district prepares to pay off what was, and is, the largest such state bailout loan in state history, it’s at risk of going right back into receivership. Alysse Castro, Alameda County’s superintendent of schools, warned district trustees last month that bankruptcy remains a possibility.
“While the internal fiscal system and controls are much stronger today than they were 20 years ago, many of OUSD’s long standing, structural issues that led to financial instability remain,” wrote Castro, who is legally responsible for reviewing district finances.
‘Grown people’
Her warning came after the union-led board majority in March pushed through an alternative to the previously agreed budget cuts. The changes were so “haphazard” that the state-mandated trustee overseeing the receivership, in an April 8 confidential memo, scolded the board’s behavior.
“Governance is serious work for serious people,” wrote Trustee Luz T. Cázares, who holds veto authority over board actions until the state intervention officially ends. “Exiting receivership requires grown people to be grown.”
But as Cázares’ memo was landing, the school board majority was launching plans to push out district Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammel, who had navigated the district through the COVID pandemic and implemented the fiscal controls that were key to ending state oversight. Her eight-year tenure makes her Oakland’s longest-serving superintendent since 1970.
Under a contract approved by the board last year, Johnson-Trammel was to stay until June 30, 2027. But starting Sept. 1, 2025, she was to work on special projects assigned by the board and prepare for a transition to her successor.
The new board majority wanted her out sooner. Under a new separation agreement, Johnson-Trammel will step down as superintendent July 1 to work on special projects until Jan. 15, 2026. After that, she will receive the equivalent of an additional nine months’ salary and benefits.
On April 29, the same day Johnson-Trammel’s separation agreement was finalized, the school board, despite warnings that Oakland still faces very difficult financial choices, agreed to $2.4 million of teacher union demands to stave off a threatened one-day strike.
‘Unlikely to meet obligations’
The chaos comes from the votes of four union-backed trustees on Oakland’s seven-member board: Valerie Bachelor, who worked as lead organizer of the California Federation of Teachers; VanCedric Williams, a member of the California Teachers Association Board of Directors; Jennifer Brouhard, who retired after teaching in Oakland schools for 27 years; and Rachel Latta, a nurse midwife with three children.
Latta is the newcomer, having just won election in November and providing the swing vote for labor’s lock on the board. The other three have been union-loyal board members who during the 2022 Oakland teachers’ walkout called a press conference to publicly side with the strikers.
All four, in endorsement interviews with the teachers’ Oakland Education Association, pledged unequivocally or conditionally to oppose school closures. Opposition to school closures has become a political litmus test for candidates seeking the union’s endorsement, even though savings from closures could be redirected to keeping teacher jobs and bolstering salaries.
Closing and consolidating small schools are an essential part of a broader cost-cutting plan. If the board does not act, the district will face a $153 million deficit three years from now, according to a new fiscal systems audit of the district conducted by EideBailly, a certified public accounting and business advisory firm.
Failure to act would lead to state financial intervention, throwing the district right back into state oversight. “It is unclear whether the district can or will take sufficient action to avert additional outside intervention,” according to the EideBailly audit. “For that reason, our firm foresees that the district is unlikely to meet its obligations within the next 12 to 24 months.”
To be sure, this is not the first time that union-backed board members have held a majority of board seats. Nor are the dire fiscal warnings or the need for school closures new. But in the past, there was a willingness to listen to the advice of professional staff.
This year seems different. There’s a new militancy and willingness to run roughshod over that advice. In the past couple of months — with the early dismissal of the superintendent, the fiscally irresponsible strike-avoidance payoff to teachers and haphazard financial planning — the new majority has signaled it plans to do things its way.
For the Oakland school district, a new era of uncertainty has begun.
Reach Editorial Page Editor Daniel Borenstein at [email protected].
