By Thomas Ultican 6/4/2025
It is always interesting in Oakland. A new school board with an education aligned majority was accused of firing the popular superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell. There was some reality underlining the unfounded claim but she was not fired. One of the culprits responsible for the claim was my friend and long time Oakland activist, Mike Hutchinson. On this issue, he has aligned himself with the corporatist board faction which is a bad look for his brand.
Siding with Mike on this issue were board members Patrice Berry and Clifford Thomson. Some people might have a problem with labeling Berry and Thomson the corporatist faction however that is exactly how they appear. Empower Oakland and Families in Action supported both of these board members in the recent election. Left Coast Right Watch wrote about the two main leaders of Empower Oakland:
“The digital leadership consists of two people: Gagan Biyani, a tech CEO, and Reze Wong, a venture capitalist. Empower Oakland has deep ties to the crypto community, receiving contributions from Jesse Pollak, the founder of Coinbase, and Ilya Sukhar, a venture capitalist.”
Oaklanside, a local Oakland digital news source, wrote of Families in Action:
“Families in Action previously had a political action committee called the Families in Action for Justice Fund, which evolved out of a group called Power2Families that launched in 2020 to support charter-friendly candidates. That year, the committee received money from individuals like Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, Stacy Schusterman, an oil heiress and philanthropist, and Arthur Rock, a Silicon Valley investor.”
Patrice Berry is the chief impact officer at End Poverty in California, a nonprofit that advocates for a more equitable economy. Berry obviously has some good instincts. However, she was an advisor to the notoriously anti-public schools Oakland mayor, Libby Schaaf.
In his first run for the board (2020), Clifford Thomson received contributions from charter schools like Latitude 37.8 High School and Bay Tech Charter. He also was financially supported by the billionaire funded Educate78 as well as leaders from the Rogers Foundation and leaders at the corporate supported Partners In School Innovation.
Creating Chaos and Disunity
At the 2017 Network for Public Education conference in Oakland, I attended a presentation by a group of women who founded Educators for Democratic Schools (EDS). The group was made up of recently retired Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) educators fighting school privatization. Periodically they send me things they publish. Their May 26 report was called “Debunking False Narratives about the Oakland School Board.”
April 10th, Mike Hutchinson defied California rules for school board executive sessions and stated, “The board just voted today to force the superintendent out at the end of the year…” Board President Jennifer Brouhard interrupted him and said he was violating California law. She also tersely stated “The board took no final action.”
Following Hutchinson’s further statements and media coverage, Brouhard clarified:
“There is premature information in the media regarding the OUSD Superintendent transition. If there’s a vote in closed session to end the contract of the superintendent, it must be reported in open session immediately after. As reported out in open session, the board took no final action on the public employment item in closed session.”
Some members of the Oakland community have concluded that Hutchinson has become a toxic board member. Breach of confidentiality is one of the traits of a toxic board member cited by OnBoard.
Hutchinson was not wrong that the board wanted to end the relationship with Johnson-Trammell by the end of the year but calling it forcing her out is misleading.
The previous board worried that when Johnson-Trammell’s contract ended June 30, 2025, that they would be unable to agree on a new superintendent and asked her to stay two more years while they conducted a hunt for her replacement. To incentivize the request, they raise her salary to $640,000 and gave her the option to work on outside-the-district paid jobs. This contract was signed in August, 2024.
EDS reported:
“This year’s new Board majority, which took office in January 2025, had several reservations about the August 2024 contract:
“It required large expenditures in a time of fiscal constraints.
“Some Board members felt the selection of interim leadership was their prerogative.
“The contract gave Superintendent Johnson-Trammell authority but no daily responsibility, while those performing “routine leadership tasks” would have responsibility but no authority.
“Some Board members were concerned that transition planning by a lame-duck superintendent would discourage new applicants for the position.”
Evidently productive negotiations between the board and Johnson-Trammell occurred. On July 1, 2025, Denise Sadler will become interim superintendent. Johnson-Trammell will remain as superintendent emeritus until January 1, 2026. Sadler has for several years served in many administrative roles. She is liked and respected and in the early 1990s, she was president of the Oakland Educators Association.
The Good, Bad and Ugly
Kyla Johnson-Trammell is both revered and despised. In 2003, the state of California forced OUSD to accept a $100 million loan and took over the district. In 2009, the elected school board was reinstated but all budgets had to be pre-approved. Kyla became superintendent in 2017. Under her watch, the big loan has been slowly paid off and this June the final payment will be made which will end extra state and county oversight. In some circles, she is given great credit for this but not so much in others.
One long time pro-public education activist strongly expressed to me how much she admires and respects Kyla.
I, on the other hand, got a jaundiced view of Kyla when shortly after becoming superintendent she was listed as a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. Throughout her tenure, she pushed to close schools and promoted education technology. Closing schools would bring a very small reduction in costs but remove local public school options from communities that have long been targeted by the billionaire financed charter school industry.
Even in her outgoing remarks, she touted AI as a way to individualize student learning.
In 2021 Jan Malvin PhD, one of the EDS members, took a close look at the strategic plan update for early literacy. She shared the following graphic from the Kyla’s presentation.
Malvin observed:
“After the Superintendent presented her Strategic Plan Update for Early literacy in 2021, I looked up the 18 organizations on this slide. Of the 18, 13 appear to have a pro-charter schools bias, 1 has a pro-public schools bias (Oakland Public Library); and I was unable to determine any bias for 4 organizations.”
It is good news that billionaire spending on elections and charter schools has receded. Just before November’s election, Ashley McBride reported,
“Oakland school board races draw less spending by political groups this year – In past elections, billionaires, charter school groups, and unions spent heavy supporting and opposing candidates. While the union is still active, other groups are spending less.”
It is also healthy to observe that the relentless charter school growth in Oakland has reversed. The following chart using state attendance data shows the percentage of charter school students in Oakland has been declining since 2019.
There are big problems with this year’s budget that the school board will have to address. School districts throughout California are dealing with declining enrollment which is creating deficits. In Oakland, that decline is almost 5,600 students since 2017 leaving an estimated deficit of $75 million.
I am confident this board majority will put students and staff first when dealing with today’s financial issues.
Congratulations Oakland for getting out from under state control!!!
tultican 
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