Why My Kids Go to Public School in Oakland

I arrived early to the OUSD school board meeting last Wednesday night, and an older, kind man with a real salt-of-the-earth look about him sat next to me. He introduced himself as Julio, a worker at OUSD for 31 years. I had never met him before and don't know exactly what job he has (there was a language barrier and my Spanish is terrible), but it became clear that he was trying to figure out if he was about to be laid off. I went through a printed list of positions, almost unreadably small, that were being reduced or eliminated in that night's vote. He pointed to a few of them and shrugged, and asked me if there were any names yet, that his union hadn't reached out to him about it. It was my turn to shrug at that point, but we talked for a while about what was happening, and it dawned on me that I was about to get up and tell the board that they needed to approve the layoffs, that **I was actually in support of them**. As anyone reading this knows, the layoffs were passed, and by March 15th **over 400 OUSD workers will be notified that their tenure at the district will end with the 25–26 school year**. It was surreal watching this vote, dreading both passage and rejection at the same time, and hearing most of the community members boo and scream as we watched this all becoming a reality drove home the point that **this is an all time low point for public education in Oakland**. The anger and resentment felt by those present and the community at large **is completely warranted**; the lack of transparency and engagement during this time only exacerbates the pain and confusion of everyone who is going to be affected by these layoffs. Because **real information has been so late to arrive** and accompanied by a lack of details, most folks can't be expected to accept that all of this is necessary. My goal here is to paint as clear a picture as possible in support of the following statement: **This didn't have to happen this way, but it did have to happen.** ## The Useless and Irresponsible Catastrophe Narrative I think that the hardest part about everything I'm trying to tell folks about what's going on in OUSD is that **I first have to convince myself** that most of the assumed narratives around what's going on here are sensationalist and totally wrong. **That isn't easy!** Many news stories about OUSD for years have been driven mainly by how simple it is to get a few quotes about how bad things are, and how hard it is to see anything but chaos and catastrophe in what's going on right now. Once again, **it's hard to blame anyone for adopting this perspective**. To most people, especially most families in OUSD, they see a perennial cycle of strikes, cuts, crisis management, strikes, etc. **None of it looks like progress because for many years, no progress was made**; the Board kept kicking hard decisions down the road, the district failed to make necessary structural changes, and we all adhered to the **very noble but unsustainable goal** of providing all the things to all the students. That is an oversimplified summary of why this all is happening at once. *(It didn't have to happen this way.)* The reality is that by trying to have everything, this district has instead provided **uneven, substandard levels of support for some of its highest-need students**. Despite the amount of money we allocate on a per-student basis (among the highest in the nation), only **a third of the students are currently able to read at or above their grade level** district wide. The question of why this is has been answered many times from lots of people with different experiences, backgrounds and motivations: **Corruption! Mismanagement! Conspiracies and lies! Evil labor unions! Shady racist billionaires!** It's like people got bored with "Who shot JFK?" and have now settled into "Who bankrupted OUSD?" I mean, it's a big district with a lot of money flowing through it, and **Oakland is no stranger to corruption, mismanagement and shady everything**, but after months of sipping from the various kool-aids to see how they taste, I have an opinion to express: **None of this is the problem**, and the catastrophe narrative isn't useful at all. Let's hit that one point hard. I have heard personally from certain parents, teachers, administrators, reporters and lots of others that, in their mind, OUSD is **a dysfunctional dumpster fire**, governed only by chaos on **a perennial road to certain catastrophe**. For many years, there have been few if any examples to counter that narrative, and as a new parent to the district just after covid I was seeing things through that lens with **absolutely no doubt in my mind** that they were right. So once again, I cannot blame *anyone* for actually believing that. But what I've come to believe in the last six months or so is this: **the catastrophe already happened,** and it happened over 20 years ago. It was caused by **fiscal insolvency and loss of local oversight**, and it made all of the structural problems we see today an order of magnitude worse than they would probably have been otherwise. To add insult to injury, over all that time our district **never solved the problems that led to the insolvency** in the first place. OUSD is certainly staring another catastrophe in the face, but **I don't think it's inevitable**. The excruciating vote by the school board was probably the **only responsible choice** to try and stave that catastrophe off while more structural changes are put into motion. Cutting the jobs of educators and services to students is never going to be popular or easy, but **this was the only way at this late date to make payroll in the fall**. *(It did have to happen.)* ## Process, Progress With all the vitriol and distrust going around, it's **very uncomfortable for me to defend anyone engaged in this process**. Folks are going to believe what they believe, but I want to start with these maybe-obvious statements: - The Superintendent (currently Dr. Denise Saddler) **reports to, and is directed to implement policies by**, the Oakland Board of Education. - Any direction or strategy involving massive budget adjustments **needs to originate from the Board**. - The board majority (elected by the people of Oakland) has said that **they are opposed to closing schools**, both while campaigning and in office. - The Superintendent was not presented with a directive from the Board to plan out these cuts **until September of 2025**. - Contrary to the narrative that the board majority has completely ruled out school closures, they passed a resolution **that actually left the door open to closures and mergers, as long as it was a community-led effort**. I'm certainly not going to say that September was the right time to start this process. Public statements from the county and many others were calling this an impending problem **at least five or six years ago**, so foresight wasn't even needed to do this better. That infuriating insight doesn't change the simple fact that **the district has been given about five months (speaking generously)** to come up with a plan to make the district fiscally solvent. This is an entity with a **$100 million deficit that is structural**, and that structure just happens to serve 34,000 students with a budget of around $1 billion each year. I'm not an accountant or anything, but **that sounds impossible to do at all**, much less do equitably and with proper time to judge the impact. The board did direct the Superintendent, in certain terms, to attempt to create a scenario for cuts that would **focus on restructuring the central administration of OUSD, maintain local control, and not close schools**. Seeing as how there were around seven months to actually accomplish this, I think closing schools in any proper fashion was impossible in that time, and so I personally find that to be a reasonable provision. The resolution **did not say** "never close schools ever under any circumstances," though **that seems to be how many folks have read it**. I'd like to point out the obvious here: Dr. Saddler has, over the last few months, done **exactly what the board asked for, in addition to avoiding a teachers strike** that pretty much everyone believed was inevitable. I've had serious problems with the closed-off, opaque nature of the process as she's done this, and **have said as much in public** as a Lead Delegate of the Parent and Student Advisory Committee (PSAC) both at school board meetings and **directly to Dr. Saddler**. I've also said that the district's messaging, particularly around the $50 million reduction to the deficit, has been confusing and misleading, and is not helping their cause. **I still believe that to be true!** All the same, the district is moving forward with massive layoffs, and (I believe directly because those layoffs were approved by the board) gave a huge raise to OEA members, which for the first time in a very long time will allow OUSD to offer competitive wages to teachers — **those who work the most with our students every day** and who are **the linchpin of a strong and healthy public school system**. The board and district, vilified for many years for inaction and ineptitude, **actually did something**. It was deeply unpopular, and very difficult to accomplish, and it may not be enough, but if you ask me, **it's progress**. ## Are You Still With Me? If so, I want to acknowledge that I haven't addressed the title of this document yet. The answer to that statement — why my kids go to public school in Oakland — is going to likely make your eyes roll, but I swear there's something behind it: **My kids go to public school here because I love Oakland, and because I believe that a city like ours can only be truly great to its citizens if its public education systems are strong.** This ends up being a very complicated justification, but I want to be clear: when my family moved to Oakland we had two very young kids and **real concerns about the schools here**. Still, Oakland is an amazing place to live, and also happens to be a place where we could support positive change not just for our family but for others both now and in the future. It's tough to keep that idea in front of us with all the budget stuff as a backdrop. In fact, I truly wish that Dr. Saddler and the board members that support her would say one thing out loud, knowing full well they won't say it: **"We actually don't know what is going to happen next."** Folks who say there is no plan **are correct**. Anyone who believes that district staff has been doing all of this in a rushed fashion under duress **is correct**. I see a lot of folks making a good faith effort to undo decades of harm here, and I believe **I am also correct**. When it comes to schools, **I don't think anyone can make significant or meaningful changes from outside the system**, and in fact that's usually where the worst ideas come from. Instead, **my family is part of this**, inside this system, and yours probably is too, and I'm asking anyone who wants to make these positive changes to accept that the improvements that we want to see **may well benefit other people's kids** after we're somewhere else. I'm putting forth an effort now, as a PSAC Lead and concerned parent, to build **a unified approach to what comes next**. We can continue to bemoan that there is no plan, **or we can work with the Board and district to actually create one**. I've had good conversations with numerous board members and can tell you that those I've talked to all agree on the need for unity and responsible leadership, with **community engagement at the absolute center** of any actions to come.