Elections

Why does OUSD keep trying to close schools to balance its budget when it clearly doesn’t work? The answer might be that the people pushing that narrative aren’t interested in our budget, they are interested in our buildings.

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

Outgoing Superintendent Dr. Johnson-Trammell has long argued that Oakland Unified School District (“OUSD”) must close schools in order to be fiscally sustainable, yet the majority of our elected school board has resisted that call, rescinding a decision to close schools in 2023, and rejecting a new plan to close and merge schools last fall. The argument is that we have too many schools for our declining enrollment, and that some schools are “underutilized” and not generating enough revenue (dependent on the Average Daily Attendance or “ADA”) to pay for itself, as if each school is a McDonald’s that needs to show a profit to stay open. We need to balance our budget as a unified system, and we need to offer accessible public education to Oakland’s kids, but we are not willing to have a real conversation about what that looks like. 

Much is made about the fact that OUSD has more schools than many other California school districts per ADA. The question is, why does that matter and are we talking about public schools in the right way?

OUSD does have more schools per student than most medium to large school districts, but does that mean we have “too many schools”? Part of how you answer that question may depend on what you see as the purpose of public education and what our constitutional obligation to provide a free public education to all children requires of us. A child who can no longer go to school because her neighborhood public school has closed has no access to public education.

OUSD has argued that elementary students can walk 2 miles to school, but experts agree that is 2 to 4 times more than is reasonable. 

It is important to note that OUSD does not provide transportation to most students, no yellow school buses pick kids up and take them to their neighborhood school, which means that if you do not have a car, you must walk to school or take public transit. Especially for elementary age students who most agree cannot take the bus on their own, there is a limit to how far a young child can be reasonably asked to walk to school. So long as Oakland does not provide transportation to all students, closing schools removes access to public education for many students and as such is not acceptable.

OUSD has fewer schools per square mile than most comparable school districts, most of whom provide transportation to school

So long as we are not providing transportation to students, every student needs a neighborhood public school within walking distance. Ideally, that would mean you would have at least 1 elementary school per square mile spread out evenly so that no child would have to walk more than 1/2 mile to get to school. Fontana Unified School District has approximately the same number of students as OUSD on 25 fewer campuses and has been used by OUSD as an example of a district that is “right sized”. Fontana is 52 square miles, which means they have 0.87 schools per square mile. They also provide transportation to all students who live certain distances from their neighborhood school, as shown below.

Oakland is 78 square miles and has 69 active campuses across Oakland. A sampling of ten medium to large school districts with a UPP (Unduplicated Pupil Percentage) greater than 50% (including Fontana) shows that the average number of schools per square mile  is 1.06.  As you can see, Oakland is at 0.88 schools per square mile which is about 2/10ths of a mile below the average and just about the same as Fontana. For comparison, Piedmont Unified has 371 ADA per school and 3 schools per square mile, fewer students per school and more schools per square mile.

OUSD only provides transportation to certain disabled students. The majority of these other school districts provide transportation beyond that to all students who qualify (usually based on location), and the only two districts that do not have approximately twice the number of schools per square mile as OUSD does. If we think about public education as a common good that must be accessible to all students, the number of schools per square mile, especially when you fail to provide transportation, is a more relevant number than the number of students per school. 

So who is pushing OUSD to close schools, anyway?

The people you most often see pushing school closures, in addition to our Superintendent and certain board members (mostly no longer on board) are charter school advocates (because the primary barrier to charter school growth is access to facilities) and mostly white/affluent parents whose children attend “hills” schools, because they believe that their schools will be spared because they are “fully enrolled” and “high performing”. We have seen (with Kaiser and Hillcrest) that those parents will change their tune when their school is targeted.

“Lack of access to affordable school buildings is the single immediate and overwhelming factor containing [charter school] growth.”

So why do charter advocates care about public school closures? The answer is simple: real estate. The Center on Reinventing Public Education (“CRPE”) is a right-wing charter school think tank that understands that without facilities, it is hard to growth the “market share” of charter schools, especially in the Bay Area where real estate is so expensive.

At OUSD board meetings where school closures are on the agenda, the only people speaking in favor of them are those charter school advocates, as pointed out in 2019 by Director Hutchinson.

For many years, GO Public Schools (“GO”) flooded school board elections to stack the board with directors who would further privatize OUSD and rubberstamp the growth of charter schools. Groups like Families in Action for Justice (or Education) have taken over GO’s role in school board elections, supporting candidates who support the continued and ongoing privatization of OUSD, including through charter school growth. Interestingly but not coincidentally, the most vocal supporters of the “Bankrupt” narrative being pushed by Director Hutchinson have mostly been Families in Action members, and Director Hutchinson has now taken to endorsing those same school board candidates (Salop, Aikens, Berry and Thompson in the last election) as both Families in Action and the new anti-progressive, anti-union group “Empower Oakland”.

Under Prop 39, closed district campuses must be offered to charter schools

We have posted before about Prop 39, the law that requires school districts to provide space in its schools for charter schools who ask for it in return for a “facilities use fee” that is significantly lower than for publicly owned spaces, usually less than $5 per square foot per year (not per month). Every year, OUSD receives between 5 and 17 requests for space in OUSD schools. Most of our previously closed schools are already spoken for, so charter schools have to “co-locate” with district schools unless there are newly vacant properties through school closures.

OUSD has a long history of closing schools since 2003. From 2004 to 2018 OUSD closed 18 schools, and 14 of them became new homes for charter schools. It is no surprise, then, that charter school advocates urge OUSD to “be bold” and close schools.

It’s just 10 Days out from the Election. We have a clearer (but still incomplete) picture of each District 5 candidate’s finances. Here’s what we know.

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

The most recent financial disclosures are in1, and although we have a good idea who is supporting each candidate, there are still some serious problems with Mr Lerma’s disclosures. In short, Mr Lerma continues to commingle funds in his 2020 and 2023 campaigns (which we discussed at length in an earlier post) and is not fully disclosing expenses (more below). We assume that the contributor list is finally complete and up to date, allowing us to understand who is behind each candidate, so we can take a look at that.

Knowing who is supporting each candidate is important information to help voters determine where the candidates stand on issues that are important them, which is why we #Followthemoney in every school board election. Since 2012, there has been a LOT of billionaire money coming into school board elections from outside of Oakland to support privatization, school closures and charter schools. In response to all that big PAC money, the unions that represent the educators, classified staff and district workers in OUSD have created their own Independent Expenditure committees funded by their workers to support candidates who support the public schools that they work in, and the unions that they belong to.

In 2016, GO Public Schools and the California Charter School Association (“CCSA”) spent an astonishing $785,000 in 4 races (while OEA spent less than $25,000), and the charter backing GO/CCSA slate won all 4 seats. By 2020, the charter alliance spending (flush with $500,000 from former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and more from CCSA) of $678,500 still dwarfed the teacher spending ($250,000), but 3 of 4 teacher backed candidates won seats on the board. It was clear that voters trust their teachers and workers, and do not want out-of-town billionaires deciding what happens in our schools. The charter alliance clearly understood that their super PAC strategy no longer worked in Oakland, and so they have changed tactics. There may still be billionaire backed PAC spending to come late (so as to hide it as long as possible) but in the meantime, the local charter industry supporters have thrown their money directly to Mr Lerma’s campaign.

So looking at the numbers, who is supporting each candidate? Mr Lerma has received contributions from 70 plus individuals, $21,150 in enumerated contributions of over $100, with an average contribution amount of $302 per contributor. Mr Lerma also received $1,446 in small dollar donations – those less than $100 which do not need to be itemized. Although Mr Lerma has claimed to be running a “grassroots” campaign2, his contributor list tells a different story.

Mr Lerma has 19 Contributors who donated the maximum allowed amount and 24 who contributed $500 or more (as compared to Ms Ritzie-Hernandez who had 2). One of the new strategies being used by the billionaire backed GO/CCSA crowd is to have its donors contribute DIRECTLY to candidates instead of spending large amounts of money through a PAC, and it is clear that thus far this is the case. It is also possible that in the last ten days leading up to this election these billionaire backed PACs could dwarf all spending that has happened to now. In 2022, $121,000 came in just in the ten days before the election to support the privatization candidates.

Ms Ritzie-Hernandez raised $13,542 total, $3,600 from 3 unions (plumbers, laborers and SEIU classified staff) and 57 individual contributions averaging $174 per contribution, plus $1,558 in small donations. Most of her contributions come from teachers and just 9% of total funds raised came from contributions of $500 or more. Ms Ritzie-Hernandez does benefit from spending by the unions of OUSD teachers and staff as well as the Oakland Rising Action PAC which is “a community-led political organization focused on supporting candidates and issues that drive a progressive agenda for Oakland’s working-class, immigrant and communities of color living in the flatlands of Oakland.3” There is a significant difference between spending by PACs which are fully funded by out of town billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Stacy Schusterman who know nothing about Oakland’s kids, and spending by local unions and progressive groups who work every day with Oakland students and families.

It is clear that both Ms Ritzie-Hernandez and Mr Lerma have roots in the District 5 community. Mr Lerma ran for school board in 2020 (when he was not the chosen charter industry candidate), and ran a much more “grassroots” campaign with just 7 contributions over $500 and just 2 GO major donors. Interestingly, just 5 contributors from his 2020 campaign chose to contribute this time around. This time, it is clear that the billionaire-backed charter industry believes that Mr Lerma is aligned with them on school closures and charter schools, and that is alarming. That is why it is so important to know who is funding his campaign, and why his delay in reporting was so troubling.

We appreciate that Mr Lerma’s campaign filed his 460s in a timely manner in this second reporting period, but there are still some very concerning ethical problems with his filing. As we have previously reported, Mr Lerma continues to use his 2020 campaign to raise funds, despite (finally) having a bank account for the 2023 campaign to collect them. To this day, his campaign “donate” button still uses the 2020 campaign FPPC number, contrary to law. Commingling of funds is absolutely prohibited and makes it impossible to accurately track campaign spending. We are concerned that Mr Lerma is not able to manage his campaign finances, which does not bode well for his ability to manage an $800 million district budget.

Even more concerning, however, is his continued failure to fully disclose his expenditures. We don’t know everything that Mr Lerma has spent money on, but we do know that he failed to disclose the expenditures for at least two mailers that went out to voters in the relevant period. This is not a small oversight, a forgotten receipt, this is likely thousands of dollars for printing and postage that do not show up on his reports, either as a payment, or an amount due. This is truly astonishing and reinforces our concerns about Mr Lerma’s ability to lead District 5 in a way that is competent, ethical, transparent and accountable to students.

If you live in District 5, please vote. You should have received a ballot in the mail, with just this one item on it, which you can fill out and return in the mail (no postage needed) by November 7th. You can also drop your completed ballot at one of two drop boxes (Peralta Hacienda and Cesar Chavez Library4). Finally, starting October 28th, you can vote in person in just one location: Think College Now Elementary School, 2825 International Boulevard. In person voting ends at 8 pm November 7, 2023. #vote

  1. All campaign expense data is taken from the Oakland Public Ethics Commission site found online at https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/Default.aspx?focus=SearchName ↩︎
  2. See for example https://archives.kpfa.org/data/20231025-Wed1430.mp3 ↩︎
  3. https://oaklandrisingaction.org/about/ ↩︎
  4. 2496 Coolidge Avenue, 3301 E. 12th Street ↩︎

Here is everything we now know about OUSD District 5 candidate Jorge Lerma’s campaign finance violations, and why it matters.

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

Spoiler alert: Mr. Lerma illegally used his failed 2020 campaign to solicit contributions and make expenditures for his 2023 campaign in an attempt to hide who is financing his campaign.

TIMELINE

  • 7/25/2023: Mr. Lerma filed his Candidate Intention Statement (form 501) for the 2023 special election for Oakland School Board, district 51
  • 8/11/2023: Date that the qualification threshold of $2,000 in campaign activity is met, starting the clock on the ten-day window to file a Statement of Information (form 410) for the 2023 campaign (but the form 410 wasn’t filed until 10/12/2023 – two months late)2
  • 9/7/2023: Mr. Lerma hosts a campaign mixer fundraising event with a link to donate and a note that says “Paid for by Jorge Lerma for Oakland School Board 2023 FPPC#1427022“, which is the Fair Political Practices Commission (“FPPC”) number from the 2020 campaign. This event was attended by former board members Gary Yee and Jumoke Hinton as well as charter industry leaders Kimi Kean and Hae-Sin Thomas, who were affiliated with the Bloomberg/Schusterman funded super PAC that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on past school board campaigns3 4
  • 9/19/2023: Libby Schaaf hosts a fundraiser for the 2023 Campaign, attended by various former politicos and charter industry leaders5
  • 9/21/2023: Mr. Lerma or his experienced treasurer (a tax accounting professional who acted as treasurer for the 2020 campaign, as well as the 2016 re-election campaign of Oakland City Council Member Noel Gallo) transferred $12,927.15 in 2023 Campaign funds illegally collected using the 2020 Campaign committee from the 2020 account into the 2023 Campaign account (which demonstrates that Mr. Lerma knew that he could not just use his 2020 Campaign for the 2023 Election)6
  • 9/28/2023: Date that every candidate for office in November must file a form 460 identifying all contributions and expenditures made between July 1 and September 23 – Candidate Sasha Ritzie-Hernandez files as required, Mr. Lerma does not file for either the 2020 OR the 2023 Campaign. If he had a good faith belief that he could use his 2020 campaign for the 2023 election, he would have filed the 460 for the 2020 campaign (showing all of the expenditures and contributors to the campaign) on time. Mr Lerma had filed every previous required disclosure for his 2020 campaign on time without issue.7
  • 10/10/2023: Parents United initial twitter post about the election finances, raising concerns about Mr Lerma’s failure to file his form 460
  • 10/12/2023: Mr. Lerma finally files (52 days late) his Statement of Organization for his 2023 Committee entitled “Jorge Lerma for Oakland School Board 2023” (form 410) which was due not later than 8/21/20238
  • 10/13/2023: 2023 campaign is issued an FPPC number 14635209
  • 10/14/2023: Approximate date that Mr Lerma uses the United States Postal Service to mail a two page flier to voters, with the notification that the mailing was “paid for by Jorge Lerma for Oakland School Board 2023 FPPC#1427022” – again illegally using the FPPC number for the 2020 campaign in what may be a federal violation of law in addition to state and local laws10
  • 10/17/2023: Mr Lerma files his form 460 for the 2023 campaign (19 days late) which indicates NO CONTRIBUTIONS (despite having attended at least 2 fundraisers) and NO EXPENDITURES (despite having created lawn signs, mailers, door hangers and other expenses)11
  • 10/19/2023: Mr Lerma files a form 460 for the 2020 campaign (21 days late) which finally lists WHO has contributed to his campaign and what he has spent money on.12
  • 10/20/2023: Voters receive another mailer from the 2023 campaign committee, using the 2020 campaign FPPC# 1427022 rather than the 2023 Campaign FPPC number 1463520 issued a week earlier13
  • 10/22/2023: Website continues to illegally list the 2020 campaign FPPC number on its “donate” page.14

On October 10, 2023 we posted (on the platform formerly known as twitter) what we planned to be the first in our regular “Follow the Money” series for the Oakland Unified school board races15. Since 2016, billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, Stacy Schusterman and Arthur Rock have flooded our school board elections with millions in out-of-town dollars to buy a school board that supports charter schools and privatization,16 and Parents United has shared that important information with voters to ensure that we elect candidates who support our Oakland public schools.17

Tweeted on 11/02/2020 by @parentsuniteoak

As of October 10, 2023, only one of the two District 5 candidates in this special election had filed the disclosures that are required to be filed by all candidates not later than September 28, 2023: first time candidate Sasha Ritzie-Hernandez. We were surprised and concerned that candidate Jorge Lerma – who knows better given his long history of involvement in Oakland politics and failed 2020 campaign for this same seat – had not yet filed. We knew from social media posts that he had held at least two campaign fundraising events, and that he had purchased lawn signs and other campaign materials, so why did he not file his form 460 as required?

https://x.com/ParentsUniteOak/status/1711781089243718096?s=20

Now we have a much fuller picture of what happened. Mr. Lerma, contrary to state and local law, was using his 2020 campaign to raise and spend funds instead of using his 2023 campaign as is required. It is important to understand that each election is completely separate, and the fact that an individual ran a campaign in the past does not mean that they can just use that same campaign account to run in the future, as clearly laid out by the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission.18

The Oakland Public Ethics Commission is an extremely helpful resource to candidates (as well as to the public), and every candidate is given information about resources that they have created to help first time (and repeat) candidates comply with the campaign rules which maintain the integrity of our electoral system. They even have an entire page entitled “Starting your Campaign” which walks candidates through the process, step by step.

Mr Lerma is not a first-time candidate, he ran (unsuccessfully) for the district 5 seat in 2020, so he knows the rules. During his 2020 campaign, Mr Lerma filed all of his disclosures on time without a problem. Mr Lerma also has an experienced Treasurer working on both his 2020 and 2023 campaigns. Jose Dorado is a tax accounting specialist who is listed as the campaign treasurer not just for Mr Lerma’s 2 campaigns, but also the campaign treasurer for the “Re-elect Noel Gallo for Oakland City Council 2016” campaign,19 It is impossible to believe (and highly disturbing if it were believed) that they did not know the rules for campaign finance.

Had Mr Lerma and his treasurer been truly confused about whether they could raise and spend money for 2023 through the 2020 campaign with the old FPPC, they would have simply filed the form 460 for that 2020 campaign ON TIME when due on 9/28/2023 as he had done for every 460 filed by the 2020 campaign in the past. Mr Lerma cannot claim ignorance of the law now when he had previously complied appropriately.

In addition, Mr Lerma (prior to anyone having any idea of what was happening) transferred funds from the 2020 campaign account to a different account presumably set up for the 2023 campaign on September 21, 2023. The ONLY reason for the campaign to do that was because they knew that it was illegal to use the 2020 campaign account for the 2023 campaign. At that point, given there was campaign activity in the 2023 campaign account, Mr Lerma should have filed the 2023 campaign form 460 on September 28, 2023 when it was due. The fact that he did not do so makes clear that this was not his ignorance but his desire to keep his contributors hidden as long as possible so that voters were not aware that his campaign was financed largely by those connected to the charter school and privatization industry.

Mr Lerma, when he ran in 2020, was not the “charter industry” candidate. He was not supported by the various Bloomberg and charter founder Jerry Brown funded PACs – that candidate was Leroy Gaines, who also lost the election. Mr Lerma knows that being supported by charter leaders and polticos who support charter schools and closing schools (which has proven to be very unpopular with voters) is not likely to help him win this seat the second time around. He could have just declined the support of those charter supporters, but he apparently decided instead to hide his financial backers by funneling contributions through his old campaign. The only campaigns required to file the 9/28/2023 disclosure are those vying for the November election, so absent all of this illegal campaign activity, the 2020 Lerma campaign would not have had to disclose all of these contributors. Once they were caught, they had no choice but to file the disclosures, and so we now can see clearly what the intent of this shell game of campaign finance was all about: ensuring that voters did not have the important information about who was financing his campaign until it was too late to make a difference. Unfortunately, we noticed, and the Oakland Ethics Department will notice. Mr Lerma must not be rewarded for his unethical behavior.

  1. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=208542770 ↩︎
  2. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=208660150 ↩︎
  3. https://www.eventcreate.com/e/jorgelermamixer ↩︎
  4. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jorge-lerma-014ab189_ousd-community-schools-activity-7105903190688112640-bN8k?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop ↩︎
  5. https://www.facebook.com/samdavis99/posts/pfbid02VDkgpEJg7dz2MFf4W4MoscgPz3y66vsxDxYaQdJPXkHXgr5kbdLtFQvXtzdtx73al ↩︎
  6. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=208674687 ↩︎
  7. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/AllFilingsByFiler.aspx?id=189891640 ↩︎
  8. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=208660150 ↩︎
  9. https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1463520; date confirmed by Secretary of State’s office by phone ↩︎
  10. https://ousdparentsunited.com/2023/10/17/ousd-district-5-candidate-continues-to-spend-campaign-funds-without-disclosing-its-source-that-is-against-the-law-and-should-disqualify-him-from-the-office/ ↩︎
  11. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=208674687 ↩︎
  12. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=208681958 ↩︎
  13. see image posted below ↩︎
  14. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jorge-lerma-for-school-board-2023 accessed 10/22/2023 at 3:15pm, see image posted below ↩︎
  15. https://x.com/ParentsUniteOak/status/1711781089243718096?s=20 ↩︎
  16. https://time.com/5792383/michael-bloomberg-charter-schools-donations/ ↩︎
  17. https://ousdparentsunited.com/2020/10/09/show-me-the-money/ ↩︎
  18. https://cao-94612.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/documents/OCRA-Guide-2022-FINAL-REVISED-4-20-22.pdf ↩︎
  19. https://public.netfile.com/Pub2/RequestPDF.aspx?id=161825762 ↩︎

Candidate Jorge Lerma finally filed his Form 460, but disclosed no contributors and no expenditures. So where are all those mailers, door hangers and lawn signs coming from?

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

In our last post, we called on Mr Lerma to finally file the form 460 for his campaign committee “Jorge Lerma for Oakland School Board 2023” that was due on September 28, 2023 so that the public could see who was supporting his campaign and paying for all of the campaign materials, including a USPS mailer, that we knew that the campaign had created. Shortly after that post came out, Mr Lerma’s campaign did file a Form 460, and we learned that, according to that form, he had NO contributors and NO expenditures to report. Wait, what? How can that be true when we know that he has spent significant amounts of money and held several fundraising campaign events?

Well, it seems that Mr Lerma has been hiding all of his contributions and his expenditures by using the account for his failed 2020 campaign to raise and spend money for his 2023 campaign, which is a serious violation of campaign finance law. Before Mr Lerma declared he would run in the 2023 special election, the 2020 campaign balance was $5,391.99. On September 21, 2023, the 2020 Campaign transferred $12,927.15 to the 2023 campaign, meaning that the 2020 campaign had $7,535 more than 3 months earlier. That $7,535 likely represents the difference between the contributions received for the 2023 campaign less the expenditures for the 2023 campaign such as lawn signs, door hangers, lit pieces, fundraising costs and of course the mailer that was sent via US mail. That $7,535 in transferred funds was improperly raised using an old campaign account, and those contributions and expenditures lack transparency because an old campaign account is not subject to the same reporting laws as a campaign for an upcoming election would be.

So what does all this mean? It means that we are 2 1/2 weeks away from this special election and Mr Lerma’s 2023 campaign has not disclosed a single contributor to his campaign. That is important information that voters need to properly cast their ballots, and the fact that Mr Lerma is trying so hard to hide it tells us that he likely has supporters he doesn’t want voters to know about.

It also means that Mr Lerma has certainly committed multiple violations of electoral reporting and disclosure laws, by:

  • Failing to timely file a Form 410 “Statement of Organization Recipient Committee” within 10 days of reaching the qualification threshold – due 8/21/2023 but not filed until 10/12/2023 (two days after Parents United first commented on the campaign disclosure violations)
  • Failing to timely file a Form 460 “Recipient Committee Campaign Statement” for 7/1/2023 through 9/23/2023 – due 9/28/2023 but not filed until 10/17/2023, and without including any of the 2023 campaign contributors or expenditures
  • Failing to disclose ANY campaign contributions towards his 2023 campaign
  • Failing to disclose ANY expenditures of his 2023 campaign
  • Sending a mailer through the United States Postal Service without a proper California Fair Political Practices Act (“FPPC”) number for the 2023 campaign
  • Using an improper FPPC number on his website, donation site, and possibly other materials in order to induce campaign contributions to his 2023 campaign that he thereafter failed to disclose as required by law
  • Using an improper FPPC number on a campaign mailer sent through the United States Postal Service, intended to induce voters to believe that he had a valid political campaign and induce support for that campaign

But perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates that Mr Lerma is not fit to be elected to the Oakland Unified School Board on November 7, 2023. Mr Lerma has shown us that he does not feel bound to follow the laws that all others, including his opponent, are bound by. He shows a total lack of concern for the transparency, fairness and accountability that we should expect from our elected leaders. Mr Lerma has demonstrated that he does not feel obligated to exercise the fiscal responsibility that is a key component of a school board member’s job. Given these clear and serious ethical violations, Mr Lerma should immediately suspend his campaign for school board in District 5, apologize to the voters and begin to clean up the ethical mess he has created.

The Registrar has spoken: District 4 voters elected Mike Hutchinson for School Board. Now, Nick Resnick must honor the will of the voters and support the recertification of the election

Video ~ ~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters (“Registrar”) told the Board of Supervisors yesterday that it had incorrectly configured its electoral software and that when the software was properly configured, in accordance with the Oakland City Charter, Mike Hutchinson was the winner of the Oakland Unified School Board Election for District 4. Yet candidate Nick Resnick, who had previously been incorrectly certified as the winner of this seat before the error was identified, issued a statement making clear he does not accept the correct outcome and has hired an attorney to help him thwart the law and the will of the voters. Mr Resnick must put his personal interests aside and honor the vote of the people.

The Oakland Unified School Board has acknowledged that it has much work to do to build trust with the OUSD community. At a special new board member orientation this week, OUSD’s consultant Dr Franco talked about Ethical Leadership and Building Trust and said that key to building trust is to demonstrate “at all time qualities that will evoke confidence and trust.” If candidate Resnick insists on being seated on the OUSD school board when everyone in the community knows that he was only certified due to a technicality he will undermine rather than evoke confidence and trust. For the good of our community, candidate Resnick must work with the rightful winner, Mike Hutchinson, to ensure that the legal winner is seated as the next District 4 school board member, much as Director Hutchinson congratulated candidate Resnick when the result was incorrectly certified, despite having apparently lost by only 42 votes. As urged by Dr Franco, candidate Resnick must “let right be done.”

PEMDAS 

Every child in elementary school will learn a fundamental rule about the order of operations in mathematics: PEMDAS. When given a set of numbers, you must follow the PEMDAS Order of Operations to find the correct answer, and if you fail to use PEMDAS using those same set of numbers, your answer will be incorrect. Every math teacher (even former ones) understand this basic concept and every child will learn it over the course of their studies. 

When setting up the software for this election, the Registrar’s office forgot about the Order of Operations – the “PEMDAS” in this situation. They failed to apply the rule (as codified in the Oakland City Charter) which determines how you tabulate the results, so that when they finished counting all of the votes and applied the Order of Operations, they got the wrong answer. Once the correct Order of Operations was applied, the correct answer was revealed and we all now understand that was a majority of votes for Mike Hutchinson. It’s that simple. 

Candidate Resnick wants the Registrar to pretend that no mistake was made

The disappointment that Candidate Resnick must feel is understandable, and the fact that this preventable error was not discovered earlier needs to be investigated fully and appropriate action taken to ensure that it never happens again. But doing what is right is more important than Mr. Resnick’s disappointment, and it is clear that by law Mike Hutchinson received a majority of votes and should be seated as the next school board director in District 4. 

In a statement posted on Candidate Resnick’s campaign facebook page he makes a variety of anti-democratic objections to the correction of the results, none of which addresses the simple fact that using the correct “order of operations” means that Mike Hutchinson is the rightful winner:

  • “We question the authority of the Registrar to conduct a re-tabulation” – in other words, once the Registrar became aware that a mistake was made, they shouldn’t have investigated to see if it impacted the outcomes of our election. Winning is everything for candidate Resnick (who lost another election in 2016 for community college board), even if it is on a technicality which deprives voters of the legitimate result.
  • “There was no proper public oversight of the Registrar’s process, which by their own admission was initially flawed. A recount includes a more thorough review of all ballots and not just the ballots the Registrar chooses to include, as was done here.” Candidate Resnick admits that the process that resulted in his certification as the winner was “flawed” and claims that public oversight of a “recount” is required. To be clear, this is not a recount of ballots, they have been publicly counted in accordance with the law. This is taking those same votes cast and applying the correct order of operations to get the correct result.
  • “We question the validity and integrity of the revised results provided by the Registrar. If there were mistakes the first time, there is also a chance there are mistakes the second time.” The Registrar has already admitted that a mistake was made in certifying candidate Resnick as the winner because the tabulation wasn’t done in accordance with the Oakland city charter. Applying the proper “order of operations” ensures that no mistake is made the second time. The Registrar made clear on Thursday there were only two choices for how to tabulate the “suspended” ballots at issue here and the first choice was wrong. There is no question about whether the retabulation is correct and questioning the “validity and integrity” of the results is outrageous.
  • “This unfortunate situation brings to light the errors that can happen in any election race where rank choice voting is utilized and I want to ensure that our election processes are fair.” To be clear, candidate Resnick was certified as the winner because of Ranked Choice Voting that he now claims to be error-filled and unfair.  Mr Resnick received less than 40% of the first-place votes, before the application of ranked choice voting. He is only now complaining that the result is not “fair” because the correct Ranked Choice Vote result is not in his favor. 
  • “We question whether the new results accurately reflect the intent of the voters who filled out the ballots in question.” The process for determining how “suspended” ballots are tabulated is set forth in the Oakland City Charter, but now candidate Resnick wants to substitute his judgment for the law. 
  • “Registrar unilaterally moved up” and “second guessed” voter intention. Wrong. The corrected result was based on the clear and unambiguous intent set forth in the Oakland City Charter, and while the Registrar has much to account for, he is not substituting his judgment for that of the voters in the way that candidate Resnick has done.
  • “When voters are confused about the voting process or when the process isn’t transparent, voters lose faith in the results and mistrust the process.” There is no indication that voters were confused, and the Registrar of Voters was very transparent in explaining the process at yesterday’s meeting. In our “stop the steal” electoral environment, it is irresponsible for candidate Resnick to stoke the flames of distrust when in reality he just doesn’t like the outcome.

This entire incident has been painful and confusing and should never have happened. Those who made this mistake have acknowledged that fact and are correcting the mistake by making this information public once it was determined that applying the law properly would have resulted in a different outcome. Certainly, it would have been easier and less embarrassing for the Registrar’s Office to have just ignored it altogether, and to use the excuses that candidate Resnick is proposing to allow an anti-democratic outcome to this election. Instead, we know what we know, and we must do the right thing. 

Mr. Resnick must let right be done

This was always going to be an historic election, regardless of the outcome. On the ballot were a trans-identified parent and two Black candidates. Whoever won would be a first for District 4, which is majority white and more conservative than other districts in Oakland and which has never elected either a Black candidate nor an openly trans-identified elected official, to our knowledge. According to an article in the Bay Area Reporter (Ballot count blunder means trans dad didn’t win Oakland school board seat :: Bay Area Reporter (ebar.com)), candidate Resnick’s “status as the Oakland Unified School District’s boardmember-elect for the District 4 seat meant Resnick was set to become the first transgender person elected to oversee a K-12 public school district in California. And it made him only the second trans man elected to an education post in the Golden State.” District 4 and Oakland should take great pride in this accomplishment. 

But as instructed by Dr Franco in her training about “ethical governance” it is time for us all to “let right be done.” Under the Oakland City Charter and the order of operations specified therein, Mike Hutchinson has won this election and Nick Resnick must honor the outcome as corrected. Parents United urges the following actions:

  • Mr. Resnick should immediately notify the Registrar of Voters, Mr. Hutchinson and the Superior Court in which Mr. Hutchinson has been forced to file a complaint that he acknowledges Mr. Hutchinson is the duly elected District 4 School Board representative and will support the recertification of this election in Mr. Hutchinson’s favor;
  • Mr. Resnick should decline to take the Oath of Office set to be administered on Monday, January 9th; 
  • The Alameda County Registrar of Voters as a Real Party in Interest to the complaint must ask the Superior Court to recertify the election with Mr. Hutchinson as the winner; and 
  • The Alameda County Board of Supervisors must vote to pay the costs and attorney’s fees incurred by Mr. Hutchinson in challenging the certification which was necessitated by the mistake of the Registrar.

We look forward to Mr. Resnick, and all interested parties, doing the right thing.

Don’t vote for more of the same for Oakland School Board

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

OUSD SPENDS 591% OF THE STATEWIDE AVERAGE ON CENTRAL SUPERVISORY SALARIES

Oakland voters have had a bad habit of electing Oakland Unified School District (“OUSD”) school board members who are endorsed by past board members (or in the case of Gary Yee – re-electing them) who then continue to make the same top-heavy, fiscally irresponsible decisions about the budget and policy that have gotten us into trouble in the past. This year, we must make better choices and elect a new kind of board member who is ready to challenge that top-heavy structure so that we are putting money into classrooms and not into what the Alameda County Grand Jury defined as a “broken administrative culture.”

Way too much money has been spent in Oakland to elect (and re-elect) school board members who continue to overspend centrally and underinvest at school sites and protect the status quo of the “Broken Administrative Culture”. Past members endorsing the next members and billionaires from out of town including Michael Bloomberg, Big Oil heiress Stacy Schusterman, Arthur Rock and former mayor Jerry Brown dumping money into PACs to flood our mailboxes with glossy fliers have resulting in us repeating the mistakes of the past over and over again. A misleadingly named PAC pretending to be Oakland’s teachers has spent nearly $130,000 in the last week alone to push just two candidates, who also happen to be the candidates endorsed by all of these board members responsible for the Broken Administrative Culture.

We cannot afford more of the same, we need to elect candidates NOT endorsed by the former candidates who have done so much harm to our students. These are the revolving door candidates who are on the ballot this year to continue the wasteful policies of the past:

Instead of making the same mistakes, vote with actual Oakland Teachers!

The OUSD School Board plan to thwart democracy in District 6

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

On May 2, 2022, Oakland was taken by surprise when Oakland Unified School District (“OUSD”) Board Director Shanthi Gonzales suddenly resigned with 8 months left in her term, leaving a legacy of draconian school closures and disdain for parents and teachers. It was clear that certain members of the Board were not as surprised as we were, but it wasn’t immediately clear how coordinated and undemocratic the process was going to be. Now, thanks to an ethics complaint filed by a District 6 voter, the depth of the deception undertaken by this OUSD School Board is becoming clear, as laid out in an article in the Oakland Post yesterday. https://www.postnewsgroup.com/questions-about-contributions-to-kyra-mungias-district-6-school-board-campaign/

Ultimately, the Board conducted a charade of an appointment process, forcing community members who were willing to step into the void left by Director Gonzales’ resignation to go through a lengthy process that was never going to result in any other outcome than the one that ultimately did – the anointing of a successor to Director Gonzales, hand-picked BY Director Gonzales and her allies, to continue her legacy of destruction for the remainder of her term, and if they could manipulate it, the four years after. And so the board appointed Kyra Mungia who works in the Oakland Mayor’s Office of Education through a variety of fellowships paid through the Oakland Education Fund. A tangled mess of privatization entities that will create (and actually have already created) conflicts for Ms Mungia as a board member who also has interest in entities coming before the board. The Oakland Post dug into those privatization connections here: School Board Candidate is Mayor’s Staffer with Privatizer Connections | Post News Group

School Board President Gary Yee admitted in a board meeting on June 14, 2022 when he was defending Director Gonzales against claims that she had abandoned her responsibilities that Director Gonzales had already bought a house outside of Oakland and that “she actually stayed on in her house [in Oakland] for an extra month so we could prepare for this process [of appointing a new school board member].” What exactly was President Yee hinting at? A look at the timeline of the events might help.

  • Approximately April 1st, Shanthi notifies at least President Yee of her intention to resign her position and agrees to stay an additional month to help the board “prepare for the process” of appointing a successor (per President Yee’s comments on June 14).
  • April 21, 2022: Kyra Mungia files her Candidate Intention Form to run in District 6.
  • May 2, 2022: Shanthi Gonzales announces her resignation, effective immediately
  • May 3, 2022: Shanthi Gonzales contributes $1000 to Kyra Mungia’s campaign for School Board in District 6 and files an immediate form 460 reporting the contribution
  • May 11, 2022: Board votes to implement an appointment process for the vacancy
  • June 29, 2022: Board engages in performative selection process that results in the appointment of Kyra Mungia to the District 6 post
  • June 30, 2022: Kyra Mungia sends out a fundraising email using Shanthi Gonzales’ list of constituent email addresses which Ms Mungia acknowledges she was given by former Director Gonzales

So the extra time that Shanthi Gonzales gave the board was to cue up a candidate, seed her campaign, load her up with valuable constituent data and conduct a sham appointment process that resulted in the chosen candidate of Shanthi Gonzales being elevated to an incumbency to give her a leg up in the November election. That is NOT honoring the democratic process. 

All of this extra support has given Ms Mungia a definite head start in the electoral process, but we now know that it has also given her a bit of an ethical problem. A concerned District 6 resident dug into this information and has filed an ethics complaint against Ms Mungia alleging a variety of possible ethical violations, the most obvious of which is her failure to declare in her own 460 filed on August 1st, 2022 the $1000 contribution from Shanthi Gonzales’ campaign funds. In addition to the cash contribution, Ms Mungia also received an “in kind” contribution from Ms Gonzales in the form of the constituent email list that Ms Mungia received from Ms Gonzales. Mailing/email lists are extremely valuable to candidates and Ms Mungia is required to declare that “thing of value” as an “in kind” or non-monetary contribution. FEC | Candidate | Types of contributions None of Ms Mungia’s filed 460s contain any contributions from either Ms Gonzales or Ms Gonzales’ campaign committee, which is a clear violation of state election law and which the Ethics Complainant suggests may have been done in order to hide the very clear coordination between Ms Mungia, Shanthi Gonzales and some sitting OUSD board members. As stated by the complainant in the Ethics complaint “The above chronology appears to be evidence of a pre-meditated coordinated campaign between Ms. Mungia and Ms. Gonzales, and her allies on the School Board, to offer incumbency advantage to their preferred candidate for the upcoming election for the D6 position, and to hide such pre-meditated coordination from public scrutiny.” Ms Mungia now claims that she didn’t “deposit” the check because she (mistakenly) believed it was over the limit, but there is no indication that she returned it to former Director Gonzales’s campaign account (which is now closed) so whether she cashed it or not is immaterial.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole thing is that it has been a carefully planned and surreptitiously executed attempt to manipulate the democratic process. This continues a long pattern in Oakland of not trusting Oakland’s parents and voters to make good choices but instead flooding those races with misleading campaign information supporting candidates hand-picked by board members and funded by billionaires Michael Bloomberg, Stacy Schusterman, former mayor Jerry Brown and others who do not care about what is best for Oakland’s kids, but about privatizing our district. Ms Mungia has already benefited from $63,300 in spending by Jerry Brown and Oklahoma Oil Billionaire Heiress Stacy Schusterman with a misleading Political Action Committee pretending to be our Oakland Teachers.

This must stop now. Ms Mungia should step down from her seat and cease her campaign for school board, but we know that won’t happen. Instead, it is up to the voters to hold Ms Mungia and the Board accountable by voting her OUT of the office she was manipulated into.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

Don’t be Fooled by Fake Unions and “paid for” Slates – support the candidates actually endorsed by our teachers and community orgs

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

Two candidates are working overtime to trick voters by buying their way onto a slate of candidates and “endorsements” created by a staffer in the mayor’s office and that includes one candidate who has publicly called the slate out for misleading voters.

Both Nick Resnick (District 4) and Kyra Mungia (District 6) have paid to be included on the slate mailer put out by “East Bay Voter Guide for More Housing” that falsely implied shared values with Greg Hodge, but also explicitly calls for a “NO” vote on Measure W – “Fair Elections Act” which would limit candidate spending and provide voters with “Democracy Dollars” that they could use to support their candidates. This program has worked successfully in Seattle to increase candidate diversity and voter participation.

In addition to this fake Slate, both Resnick and Mungia are benefitting from a fake Union created to trick voters into believing that Resnick and Mungia are supported by our Oakland Teachers Union, which they are most certainly not. As we wrote earlier in our piece entitled “What does it mean to be a “charter candidate” our teachers are so popular, the charter industry created a PAC entitled “United Teachers of Oakland” entirely funded by charter leader and former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown in order to convince voters that Resnick and Mungia are backed by the union.

What does it mean to be a “charter candidate”?

Nick Resnick and Kyra Mungia, and the charter backers that support them know that they cannot win if they play by the rules, so they are using misleading slates and pretend unions to defeat the ACTUAL candidates endorsed by our beloved teachers. Don’t be fooled, vote for these candidates #1 and #2 on your ballots.



District 2: https://www.brouhard4ousd.com/ and https://maxorozcod2.com/

District 4: https://www.pecoliaforoakland.com/

District 6: https://www.val4oakland.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/joelvelasquezforOakland/about

What does it mean to be a “charter candidate”?

~ kzt123 ~ Leave a comment

There is a lot of talk right now in Oakland School Board Electoral Politics about what it means to be a “charter candidate”. Both Nick Resnick and Kyra Mungia proclaim that they are not “charter candidates” because they don’t support adding new charter schools, but despite that, they are supported by Charter School Leaders, Charter School Supporters, Charter School Funders, Charter Supporting PACs and, for Nick Resnick, out of town billionaires who support Charter Schools. And GO Public Schools donors. Not only are they directly funded by Charter School Supporters, they also are being supported by a new Political Action Committee (“PAC”) entirely funded by former Mayor/Governor Jerry Brown who started two high profile charter schools in Oakland and still sits as the Chairman of one of those charter schools (Oakland Military Institute “OMI”).

This PAC has not a single Oakland teacher associated with it, yet it is misnamed “United Teachers of Oakland supporting Resnick and Mungia” in hopes of tricking Oakland voters into thinking that these candidates are supported by Oakland’s beloved teachers, which they most certainly are not.

If your campaign is being pushed by all of these folks, you MUST be the charter candidate…

Don’t be tricked, choose the candidates who are ACTUALLY endorsed by Oakland’s Teachers. Make sure your vote counts by ranking BOTH of your chosen candidates #1 and #2, and not voting for Resnick and Mungia.

#OUSD #nobillionaireboughtboard #vote

Parents United Endorses Chris Jackson for Board of Education in District 7

~ kzt123 ~ 1 Comment

chris-jackson

Parents United for Public Schools believes that this election of 2016, where four of the seven school board seats are on the ballot, presents a unique opportunity to elect strong, independent leaders who will work with parents, students, teachers and community to strengthen and transform our public schools.

We need community-driven change, strong accountability and a board that understands its role is to create policy and direct its Superintendent to carry it out. We need a board whose budget priority is classrooms and not consultants and central administrators. We need leaders who are willing to invest in proven, community-based reforms that will rebuild strong public schools in every neighborhood and serve every child.

Parents United believes that Chris Jackson is that leader in District 7. Chris is an OUSD parent with a long history of educational activism and leadership who will be a strong voice for parents, students, teachers and community.

Chris Jackson is an Oakland native who has lived in the Bay Area all of his life. As a student at San Francisco State University, Chris fought to give working class and students of color access to affordable college. After graduation, Chris continued his advocacy for youth and education, serving on the San Francisco Youth Commission and was twice elected to the Board for City College of San Francisco where he served as Vice President and the chair of the Budget Committee. In coalition with teachers, students and community, Chris and the Board successfully pushed back against attempts to privatize the college accreditation process.

Chris returned to Oakland to care for his mother, continue his social work to help the formerly incarcerated find homes, training and employment, and raise his children with his wife. When his daughter’s OUSD-run preschool, without parental notice or input, changed the drop-off from 8 to 9:30 (a hardship for many working parents), Chris became concerned that parent voices were not respected in OUSD and, like he has all his life, he decided to become part of the solution by running for School Board.

Chris understands that budgeting is a matter of setting priorities, and he wants to prioritize programs that will benefit our most at-risk students, including smaller class sizes. Chris knows that smaller class sizes matter, yet OUSD spends $35 million LESS (on an adjusted basis) on instruction than comparative Districts, but $13.7 million MORE than average on central administration. Chris is committed to putting those resources back in our classrooms.

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Chris also sees the destabilizing role the District’s current school reform model is playing in many of our public schools. The school improvement process has failed to engage parents in ways that make it truly community-led, and the School Board’s decision to continue to grow the number of charter schools has reduced enrollment and funding in many of our public schools. Chris has pledged to work to make sure school improvement efforts are led by school communities and has also pledged to support the moratorium on new charter schools called for by the Movement for Black Lives, the National NAACP and Journey for Justice.

Chris will work to make the budget process more transparent and the district more inclusive of parents, students, teachers and community. Chris understands that change needs to come from the community, not from highly paid consultants or administrators. Like Parents United, Chris is concerned about the influx of corporate money into our school board races through groups like GO Public Schools and the California Charter Association, and has pledged to refuse campaign contributions from corporate-backed charter interests.

For all of these reasons, Parents United for Public Schools believes that Chris Jackson is the candidate in District 7 who will best serve all of our public school students and we are proud to endorse him for the Oakland School Board.

Because Chris doesn’t have the kinds of corporate-backed support that his opponent does, we will win the election the old-fashioned way, by getting out into the streets and talking to voters. To do that effectively, we need your help.

Join Chris and Parents United on September 24th from 10 am to 2 pm for coffee and donuts followed by knocking on District 7 doors to let voters know why we believe Chris is the best choice for School Board. Sign up for the event on facebook or let us know that you can come by emailing us.

Check out Chris’ website for more information about his campaign and ways to help through donations, community door knocking (Saturdays and Sundays) and phone banking (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings):http://www.chrisjacksonforoakland.org/

You can read Chris’ complete answers to our candidate questionnaire here:https://ousdparentsunited.wordpress.com/elections/