Tag Archives: Mike Hutchinson

Big Changes and Controversy in Oakland

4 Jun

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!!!

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Schools Closings Creating Community Uproar in Oakland

1 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/1/2022

Alameda County has designated Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) with a “lack of going concern” label. Translation: They are going broke and must follow orders to save their district. However, many Oakland citizens are not ready to genuflect; leaving school board members in a trap. Twenty years of billionaires financing attacks on Oakland’s public school system has created a toxic political environment.

In October 2021, the OUSD board voted to end its policy of permanently closing schools every year. On November 8th – less than 2 weeks later – Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) Superintendent L. Karen Monroe sent a memo approving the OUSD 2021-22 budget but included a “lack of going concern” designation. The memo also demanded school closures resume and $90 million dollars in budget cuts be made by January 31. Monroe also assigned the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to direct fiscal management, noting “the school district shall follow the recommendations of the team.”

The county claimed seven financial issues: (1) decline in enrollment not budgeted; (2) unrecorded health care liabilities; (3) structural deficits; (4) multiyear projection not reliable; (5) one time funding use not sustainable; (6) past board did not make necessary budget adjustments; and (7) forgoing $10 million in AB 1480 funding.

OUSD refuted all of these charges noting: (1) the district’s COVID enrollment declines were less than most districts; (2) health care liabilities were a onetime charge and not significant; (3) the structural deficits cited are quite small and the board agrees all one time funded positions will need to be ended; (4) acknowledges the need to address the positions funded by one-time sources; (5) November 3, 2021 the board explicitly voted that all positions funded with one-time funds will not carry over to the following fiscal year; (6) this is a new board confronted with a clear, manageable challenge it agrees to resolve and (7) the choice to forgo $10 million instead of closing schools was accounted for in the district’s budget.

The District leadership believes not one of these claims by the county can legitimately be considered a basis for the “lack of going concern” designation.  OUSD district-5 Director Mike Hutchinson asserts, “Karen Monroe for five years has had oversight over every budget, and she approved the budgets.” Hutchinson also claims that the district has been working closely with the county and is in better fiscal shape than it has been in years. He asks, “What is new, besides the district’s decision not to close more schools?”

Twenty years ago, the state took over OUSD claiming a financial crisis which has led directly to OUSD becoming the most privatized public school system in California. Then like now, the Bakersfield non-profit FCMAT was brought in to supervise. The state went on to appoint a series of administrators to run the district. The new administrators welcomed charter schools and closed public schools. Concern that this could happen again might explain why three board members have changed their positions on closing schools and are placating Karen Monroe.

Schools proposed to be closed or merged between 2022 and 2024: Prescott, Brookfield, Carl Munck, Parker (K-5), Parker (6-8), Grass Valley, Horace Mann, Korematsu, RISE, Manzanita Community, Westlake, La Escuelita grades 6-8, Ralph J. Bunche, Dewey Academy, Community Day School, Manzanita Community School, Hillcrest grades 6-8.

The Billionaire Created Conundrum

The map of charter schools in Oakland and proposed school closings shows that both are all in the minority dominated flats (the low lying area between the bay and the hills). With all of these closings, residents in the flats may no longer have a traditional public school serving their community.    

Much of this can be laid at the door step of the six billionaire “education reformers” living across the bay – Reed Hastings (Netflix), Arthur Rock (Intel), Carrie Walton Penner (Walmart), Laurene Powell Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Doris Fisher (The Gap).

Reed Hastings established America’s first charter management organization (CMO) in Oakland. There are now six Aspire charter schools serving Oakland families.

Arthur Rock, Doris Fisher and Carrie Walton Penner have been investing in Teach For America (TFA) and charter school growth in Oakland. Mark Zuckerberg and Laurene Powell Jobs have been pushing education technology as well as TFA and charter schools.

Along with these billionaires, New Yorker Michael Bloomberg and Tulsa billionaire Stacey Schusterman have joined in the spending to sway Oakland’s school board elections.

Oakland’s own T. Gary Rogers established a foundation before he died that continues to be central to the local school privatization agenda. It significantly supports and directs privatization efforts by GO public education and Education78. The City Fund created by Reed Hastings and John (Enron) Arnold recently gave GO and Education78 a total of $5 million (EIN 82-4938743).

This brief outline of the money being spent to privatize schools in Oakland would be woefully incomplete if Eli Broad was not mentioned. Although his direct spending to advance privatization in Oakland has been relatively modest, the four Superintendents and many administrative staff members that he trained and got placed in Oakland are central to OUSD being the most privatized district in California. A key training manual developed at the Broad Center was the “School Closure Guide.”

“Black Hole Mike” Hutchinson observed,

“A lot of these policies were first tried out in Oakland. If you go back and look at the Eli Broad handbook on school closures, a lot of the source information that they used for that report is from Oakland.”

The billionaire spending has resulted in 39 charter schools operating in Oakland today. Nine were authorized by the county, one by the state of California and 29 by OUSD. Using data from the California Department of Education, it can be shown that 31% of the publicly supported k-12 students in Oakland attend privatized charter schools.

It is disturbing that 22 of the 39 schools have a student body made up by more than 90% Hispanic and Black students. Overall 67% of Oakland’s charter school children are Hispanic or Black but only 50% of the residents of Oakland are Hispanic or Black. The privatization agenda has driven school segregation in Oakland to new heights.

The other divisive agenda is gentrification. Ken Epstein is a longtime observer of OUSD and a bay area pundit. He observed,

“Many school advocates view these school closures as a land grab of public property by privatizers. Others see this is a way to force Black and Latino families out of Oakland, making education inaccessible for them by closing the schools in the neighborhoods where they live.”

If a well financed developer could gain control of the flats, the profit possibilities are immense. These concerns are further fed when OUSD board President Gary Yee tells a Skyline High School parent that the school should be closed because the property is too valuable to be used for public education.

Is Closing Schools in the Flats the Only Possible Solution?

In an email to board members, Jane Nylund an OUSD alum, a teacher and high school student parent with a long family history in Oakland stated,

“For 2018, I counted 14 positions at $200K+, including benefits. In 2020, OUSD had 47 admin positions at $200K+ including benefits (Transparent California). And in 2019, many of them got 10% raises, all inclusive, around $20-30K each. While it’s true that other large districts have a lot of admin, OUSD has one of highest paid administrations compared to the rest of the state, at 526% of the state average. It still has its consultants at 325% of the state average. Collectively, those salaries went from around $3M to $10.7M in two years.”

Based on the claims in the OUSD administrations school closing presentation, the salary increases Jane highlights total to a million dollars greater than the projected cost savings from the closures and those are disputed.

VanCedric Williams is a school board Director representing OUSD district-3. In a private email former OUSD teacher Steven Miller reported on a community meeting attended by Williams,

“VanCedrick Williams repeatedly pointed out that OUSD has not looked at any other possible solution than closing more schools. He also notes that there is no real plan, just a stampede to close more schools.”

The OUSD board believed they could afford to keep all their schools open in October. Then L. Karen Monroe from the Alameda County Office of Education threatened them. She is in a position to cause havoc in Oakland. That seems to have intimidated some board members who are now ready to ignore equity for residents of the flats. The case for mass school closings is not well founded. Rather, the evidence suggests market based ideology and gentrification are trumping justice.

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