Education

State “Culpable” for School District’s Financial Crisis, Says Former County Schools’ Supt.

Published

7 years ago

December 16, 2017

The State of California, which is legally responsible for overseeing the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) budget, is “culpable” for the ongoing financial crisis caused by lack of fiscal controls and overspending that came to light at the end of the administration of former Superintendent Antwan Wilson, according to Sheila Jordan, who served as Alameda County Superintendent of Schools for four terms.

Jordan, county superintendent from 1999-2014, told the Oakland Post that she feels compelled to speak out.

“People call me,” she said. “They stop me in the street and ask, ‘What is going on? How is it possible that Oakland is in financial trouble again?’”

She said that the state, acting through a trustee, had one role to play in Oakland – fiscal oversight – and it did not do it

“They’re culpable,” said Jordan.

“With all the additional spending that was going on, the overspending was extremely visible,” she said.” I believe the state has a great deal of culpability in this current situation.”

When the district went into receivership and was forced to take a $100 million state loan in 2003, then State Superintendent of Instruction Jack O’Connell dissolved the board and appointed a state administrator to operate the district, with a focus on stabilizing the budget.

Until that loan is paid off, the trustee – paid by the district – comes in a couple of days a week to review the local budget and decisions that have financial implications.

The trustee, who reports directly to the state superintendent of instruction, has the power to “stay and rescind,” which means he or she can block any district decision before it is approved by the administration or board or undo the decision once it is approved.

In a situation where the trustee has so much power, a recommendation or a few words of advice can carry a lot of weight.

The way it works, she said, is that “the trustee speaks to the board and superintendent and says you can’t do that.”

“They are paying a trustee from the state to have that oversight,” Jordan continued. “It’s not the district’s choice, but rather the state imposes the trustee. It is the trustee’s responsibility is to let the board and superintendent know if there is a problem.”

“To my knowledge, the trustee never contacted the county to say there was a problem or report to the Board of Education to let the board know there was a problem. There are no reports of the trustee talking to the board.”

The former state trustee, Carlene Naylor, retired soon after the district’s financial crisis became public. She was formerly associate superintendent of business services at the Alameda County Office of Education.

“If expenditures being made were so dangerous to the financial health to the district, why didn’t the state step in? asked Jordan.

The overall fiscal problems resulted from a “lack of leadership” that included OUSD’s business office and the school board, she continued. The district’s responsibility is to ensure that expenditures do not exceed revenue, she said.

The district’s internal fiscal controls were weak, she said, because there is not sufficient staff and expertise in the budget office, and the school board “has a certain culpability, too, because they needed to tell the superintendent they would not approve the budget.”

OUSD’s current fiscal condition can be traced to the highly contentious state takeover of the district in 2003, according to a number of former district employees and longtime observers who spoke to the Oakland Post.

At the time, State Schools’ Supt. O’Connell and influential State Senator Don Perata were instrumental in putting together a deal requiring the district to accept a $100 million loan, even though it was only $37 million in debt.

OUSD had adequate money on hand in a construction fund that could have temporarily paid off the shortfall, but the state would not allow Oakland to tap into that fund, though the practice was allowed in other districts.

The loan from the state was spent by the state – with no outside oversight. The state administrator, a trainee of the Broad Foundation, spent the money as he saw fit.

No audits were conducted for six years.

A number of Broad interns and trainees have held central office positions ever since the takeover, including former Supt. Antwan Wilson

The Broad (rhymes with load) Foundation and the Broad Leadership Academy are central players in school privatization and corporate charter school growth in the U.S., as well in Oakland Unified.

Under state trusteeship, the district closed 14 schools, and charter schools flourished – now numbering over 40, including a number that are located or co-located at district campuses.

A state-sponsored attempt to turn over the OUSD headquarters property at 1025 Second Ave. to private real estate developers was quashed, thanks to a public outcry and the efforts of then Mayor Ron Dellums.

The Oakland Post was not able to reach the former trustee for comment.

A spokesman for the California Department of Education (CDE) wrote in reply to questions, “The CDE is working with the trustee and the Alameda County Office of Education, which is also responsible for fiscal oversight, to monitor the situation in Oakland very carefully.

“Full powers were restored to (the OUSD board) more than eight years ago…(The) trustee, whose authority is limited solely to monitoring and reviewing the operation of the school district…may stay or rescind an action of the governing board of the school district that, in the judgment of the trustee, may affect the financial condition of the school district.”

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Art

Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

10 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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California Black Media

On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Published

11 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.

If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.

California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.

“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.

Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.

“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.

Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.

“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”

A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

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Activism

NAACP California-Hawaii State Convention Highlights Black Voter Engagement, and More

A Friday panel featuring NAACP Chairman Leon W. Russell and Regina Wilson, Executive Director of California Black Media, examined Project 2025, an initiative perceived as a potential threat to civil rights, healthcare access, and environmental protection. This session emphasized Project 2025’s projected impact on Black communities, noting that policies within the initiative could diminish gains in civil and environmental rights over decades. Russell and Wilson highlighted the need for vigilant monitoring and community mobilization to address these challenges.

Published

18 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

NAACP State Conference President Rick Callender (right) engages in a discussion on voter engagement and community advocacy with NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson during the 37th NAACP California-Hawaii State Convention in Los Angeles. Photo by Rich Woods.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

The 37th NAACP California-Hawaii State Convention concluded on Sunday, Oct 27, following four days of discussions and workshops at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott. Bringing together civil rights leaders, policymakers, and advocates from California and Hawaii, the convention operated under the theme “All In.” The participants discussed critical issues impacting Black communities, including criminal justice reform, health equity, economic empowerment, education, environmental justice, and voting rights.

On Saturday, the President’s Fireside Chat brought together NAACP President Derrick Johnson and CA/HI State Conference President Rick Callender, who discussed the urgency of voter engagement and community advocacy.

Guest speakers included Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA-43), who spoke at the Women in NAACP (WIN) Labor Luncheon about the intersection of labor rights and civil rights. California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond delivered remarks at the Leadership Dinner on education equity, focusing on policies to ensure all students have access to high-quality education.

Honors were given to longtime social justice advocate and former Assemblymember Mike Davis for his work in community activism. At the same time, actor and activist Danny Glover and the Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown received the 2024 Legacy Hall of Fame Awards, recognizing their lifelong commitments to advancing civil rights.

The convention also offered practical workshops, including “What’s On Your Ballot?,” where coalition leaders provided analyses of California propositions, explaining their potential impacts on community rights and resources. The Voter Turnout Workshop provided background and encouraged participants to promote voter turnout through community-centered outreach strategies.

Sunday’s events closed with a Prayer and Memorial Breakfast honoring the contributions of past and current civil rights leaders.