Opinion: The State Is Responsible for Oaklands Budget Crisis

The fight for decent education in Oakland for all the

students, not just those who are from privileged
backgrounds, stretches back for decades.

We need to look at a little history in order to put the current

Oakland schools budget crisis in perspective, see who really
bears the blame for this predicament and pose solutions that
will not make public education worse.

First of all, there were no good old days when the schools
worked for everybody.

The old boy network ran Oaklands segregated, tracked,

over-tested schools through the early 1970s.
As the Black community became larger and more organized,
African-American leaders were elected to the school board
and they began changing some of these policies.

They hired more Black and Latino teachers; organized

parents; demanded less racist curriculum; and ended the
most explicit tracking. Yet change was slow and incomplete,
partly because the worst policies were generalized
throughout the state and defended by state institutions.

Soon after Oakland elected a majority non-white Board of

Education in the mid-1980s, various state and local
politicians started trying to get the district taken over by the
state.

They had many motivations; a major one was the desire to

control Oaklands multi-million dollar budget. They used
racism to paint Oaklands people and leaders as ignorant
and corrupt, harking back to the stereotypes used in the
South to undermine Reconstruction leaders.

Unlike any other district in the country, Oakland was able to

fight off state control for 15 years. This is one of the least
known but most significant victories for Oaklands
oppositional political culture.

The most important reason for this success was the

leadership of then school board president Sylvester Hodges
who insisted that the district maintain a well-balanced
budget.
 Kitty Kelly Epstein
He believed that take-over by the state would be the worst
thing that could happen to Oakland, a position which was
born out by later events in Compton, Camden, Chicago, and
a dozen other mostly-minority school districts that were
taken.

The take-over of school districts is essentially a form of racial

voter suppression.

Hodges retired from the school board, and the relentless

pressure for take-over continued with State Senator Don
Perata and former Mayor Jerry Brown playing a major role.
They pushed out the budget-conscious Superintendent
Carole Quan and brought in Dennis Chaconas Though a good
educator in some ways, he did not keep the budget
balanced, giving Perata and Brown he excuse they needed
for state take-over.

I attended the Sacramento hearings and watched

Democratic legislators dismiss the pleas of Oaklands diverse
residents with absolute disdain.

Peratas resolution, passed by the State Legislature, forced

the district to take a $100 million dollar loan, more than
 double the districts actual debt.

The only stated reason for the take-over was financial crisis,
which meant that the State Administrators main job was to
reduce the deficit. In fact, the State Administration did
massive district reorganization, abolished the power of the
elected school board, began opening charter schools, fired
experienced local minority administrators, closed schools
and ran up an even larger debt than the original deficit.

In 2006, newly elected Mayor Ron Dellums went to

Sacramento and told the state school superintendent that
Oakland wanted its schools back. Assemblyman Sandre
Swanson introduced a bill to return local control.

These actions combined with the many protests by residents

and board members against State Supt. OConnell led to his
announcement that local control would be returned.

But local control was returned with a number of stipulations:

-Oakland had to pay off the inflated loan with interest

-A state trustee was appointed with the power to veto
any aspect of the superintendents budget that was deemed
to be overspending. The district was required to pay for the
trustee, but the state hired the person. The only job of this
this official, who currently earns $117,600 a year, is to make
certain that Oaklands budget stayed balanced.
-The school board was forced to undergo training about
its duties, which should not, according to the training,
involve asking questions or disagreeing with the
Superintendent in public. Board decisions on all major
questions were supposed to be unanimous.
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Given these constraints, major responsibility lies with the
State of California, which forced the original loan, only
returned limited control; and forced Oakland to pay for a
trustee appointed by the state who did not do the budget-
watching job for which she was being paid.