Thomas Ultican, the chronicler of the Destroy Public Education movement, writes here about the calculated destruction of the Oakland Public School District, which has suffered at the hands and by the wallets of billionaires.
In 2003, the district had a deficit of $37 million.
The state forced the district to take out a loan of $100 million.
In return, the state took control of the district.
After six years of state control, the district’s deficit increased from $37 million to $89 million.
Unfortunately for Oakland, the billionaire Eli Broad decided to turn the district into his petri dish.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown welcomed the state takeover.
The Broadies romped.
A California central coast politician named Jack O’Connell was elected California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2002. He selected Randolph Ward, a Broad Academy graduate, to be Oakland’s state administrator. When O’Connell ran for state superintendent, his largest campaign donors had been Netflix CEO Reed Hastings ($250,000), venture capitalist John Doerr ($205,000), and Eli Broad ($100,000). Brown described the state takeover as a “total win” for Oakland.
2003-2017 Broad Academy Graduates and Superintendents of OUSD
Broad Academy graduates are often disparagingly called Broadies.
The OUSD information officer in 2003 was Ken Epstein. He recounts a little of what it was like when Ward became the administrator:
“I remember a school board meeting where Ward and the board were on stage. Each item on the agenda was read aloud, and Ward would say, “passed.” Then the next item was read. In less than an hour, the agenda was completed. At that point, Ward said, “Meeting adjourned” and walked out of the board room and turned out the lights, leaving board members sitting in the dark.”
When Ward arrived in Oakland, the district was in the midst of implementing the Bill Gates sponsored small school initiative which is still causing problems. The recently closed Roots that caused so much discontent in January was one of the Gates small schools. Ward opened 24 of them (250-500 students) which in practice meant taking an existing facility and dividing it into two to five schools. He closed fourteen regularly sized schools.
When Ward arrived in Oakland there were 15 charter schools and when he left for San Diego three years later there were 28 charter schools…
Kimberly Statham, who was a classmate of Ward’s at the Broad Academy, took his place in 2006. The following year a third Broad Graduate, Vincent Mathews took her place.
After a short period of no Broadie in the superintendent’s seat, Antwan Wilson was hired in 2014. Shortly after that, the New York Times reported that the Broad Foundation had granted the district $6 million for staff development and other programs over the last decade. The Broad Center also subsidized the salaries of at least 10 ex-business managers who moved into administrative jobs at the district office.
Kyla Johnson-Trammell, an Oakland resident who and educator with OUSD, was named to replace Antwan Wilson in 2017. When he left to lead the Washington DC’s schools, he left a mess in Oakland. Mother Jones magazine says Wilson saddled the district with a $30 million deficit. They continue, “A state financial risk report from August 2017 concluded that Oakland Unified, under Wilson, had ‘lost control of its spending, allowing school sites and departments to ignore and override board policies by spending beyond their budgets.”’
The preponderance of the problems in OUSD are related to the state takeover, FCMAT and the leadership provided by Broad Academy graduates.
The usual billionaires have selected several of the OUSD board members and showered them with donations from out-of-district and out-of-state.
The fundamental problem is Oakland has a dual education system with 37,000 students in public schools and 15,000 in charter schools. It costs more to operate two systems. Every school district in California that has more than 10% of their students in charter schools has severe financial problems. Oakland has the largest percentage of charter school students in the state with 29% so financial issues are the expectation.
This is an education crisis that was manufactured by the super wealthy and implemented by neoliberal politicians.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I just don’t understand the “mega RICH” and their dastardly deeds.
They think that they are God-like and should be worshipped as such. We only need to buy in, to be as great as they are. Dissenters need to be punished and set an example of, until they figure it out.
The super rich and colluding politicians should not be allowed to use young people as a lab rats for their biased ideas. We need to return education to educators. Schools should not be a “petri dish” for the 1%.
These people present what they are doing as market based education. This is a lie. The super rich are pulling the strings and manipulating politicians to do their bidding. It is a corruption of democratic principles when representatives only represent the interests of the super wealthy, and young people and their education are at the mercy of the whims of billionaires.
Perhaps it’s not PC to say this, but I find it sad that at least 3 of the four Broadies involved are black (can’t tell from the picture of the fourth one). How does one sleep at night knowing they are destroying their own community for the profit of the mega-rich?
All four are black. Possibly Eli Broad and friends thought black faces would be more effective for their agenda in Oakland. The Broad Academy also placed multiple black faces in Detroit. But I think it is really all about the green stuff.
and the thoughtful choices they are making to help “sell” their product argues that they are doing just that: selling
dienne77, thanks for calling it out. Frankly, it should be done.
The answer is simple. It’s more profitable for Eli Broad and the privatizers to promote Blacks. The Black community is led to believe that because these Broadies share a common skin color, they will be treated fairly. Nothing could be further from the truth. One just has to know the history of the slave trade in the Americas to know how this model works!
Oakland has become a target for privatization for the usual reasons, but one that is often overlooked is OUSD’s valuable real estate holdings. The destruction of the Paul Robeson building (OUSD administration) downtown (some say that it was intentionally flooded), the vacant land parcel on Lake Merritt near Dewey, a high-needs alternative school, the closing of Lakeview (and its subsequent giveaway to a charter and OUSD admin), the push to disrupt and displace students at Westlake in an attempt to co-locate it with a charter (popular Westlake principal was forced to resign), and the recent vote to close Kaiser (located on a prime parcel with Bay Bridge views) all show a willingness to not only continue to displace students of color, but to cave to the developers of luxury condos or to sell out our public spaces for a one-time infusion of $$$.
Instructive of the political and economic giants manipulation of the Oakland Public Schools was this backstory of the Oakland Public Schools takeover.
There is also another backstory instructive of a muti-year, multi-million dollar deal brokered by an Oakland Mayor in 2006 that is generating millions for a single Oakland charter school.
Former Mayor, then California Attorney General, then California Governor Jerry Brown’s Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) charter school, one of two charter schools he founded when Oakland Mayor is up for renewal.
The OSA renewal vote is tainted by Mayor Jerry Brown’s 2006 “quid pro quo” deal” fashioned using the power of his office to fund his charter school with millions of dollars generated from the advertising rent from two Port of Oakland billboards.
Mayor’s deal was approved by Oakland City Council in 2006; and in 2018 the two Port Billboards was still generated over $5 million dedicated to Jerry’s OSA charter school. OSA audit reported income in 2018 Billboard #1 $3,246,249 and Billboard #2 $1,785,000 or a total of $5,031,249.
Oakland School Board should NOT vote to renew Oakland School for the Arts unless the Charter School refuses to take any more of its “quid pro quo” tainted Port billboards’ promised millions; and returns the tainted millions it holds in reserve to the City’s budget.
And, the current Oakland City Council should atone for its previous City Council vote by stopping Mayor Brown’s 2006 deal and have the City Auditor investigate ex-Mayor Brown’s funding of his charter school.
Mayor Brown’s abused his office to advance his private interest in his privately managed charter school.
It’s been said before: power corrupts!
As a relatively new educator onto the scene, who earned some of their stripes so to speak during last years strike, I would love to learn more about the backstory you describe here.
This is the first I’ve heard about this Broad Academy and the link between it and what would appear to be an uncanny number of our superintendents, and I know that I’d like to see if I can’t get a better grip, for my own edification, on when exactly OUSD so thoroughly fucked itself beyond all recognition.
I know that at present they are recommending another round of budget reductions, to the tune of $21 million or something along those lines, yet I never see anywhere the actual numbers to support this. Shouldn’t this information be readily available to the public seeing as it’s publicly funded?
I know I made this very point to one of the board members, the likable one, Rosie I believe her name is…(I’m terrible at that sort of thing), that had the district been transparent about it’s finances to begin with, as in fully transparent, money in, money out, this is what we’ve got sort of thing; you know…otherwise known as basic accounting and shown that their finances were as fucked as they said they were it’s likely that a strike could have been avoided, or that some agreement could have been reached which didn’t end up being so disruptive to the students and the community, but like I said I’m a newb so perhaps it should be taken with a grain of salt.
I only bring it up because you seem to be a well-informed sort who could likely point me in the right direction or set me straight so to speak.
Do you have any ideas how we keep more charters from moving in and further bleeding district dry given the continued budget cuts and school closures being pursued by OUSD at present?
Sammy,
Read this to learn about Broadies:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/a-guide-to-the-broad-foundations-training-programs-and-policies/
Thank you for this. Currently reading up on it now and I can’t help but get the feeling like it was taken straight from the plotline of a dystopian novel and we. never talk about this part at the union level, which to me would be necessary to address to some degree, especially if we are trying to prevent the closure of more community schools. This explains why alternative measures were never event considered as a means of reducing the budget imho.