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White’s Departure Disrupts Facilities and Repair Department at OUSD

Published

11 years ago

March 6, 2015

Administrator Tim White’s departure under pressure from the Oakland Unified School District has left the department he led – Facilities Planning and Management – in disarray, according to sources.

Workers and administrators in the department are apparently afraid and demoralized, fearful for their jobs and afraid that they will be targeted for retaliation if they come forward with their concerns, the sources say.

“They feel scared, and they came to me,” said Joanna Lougin, executive director of the United Administrators of Oakland Schools (UAOS), the union that represents many school administrators.

“I wanted them to meet with the superintendent and said I would go with them so he could talk to them directly,” Lougin said. “But they are afraid. They are scared of losing their jobs.”

For the past 14 years, Tim White headed the department, which is responsible for overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in new construction and renovation of school buildings and day-to-day school maintenance, painting, gardening, custodial services and electrical and boiler repair of school properties.

OUSD General Counsel Jacqueline Minor

Among their concerns, a number of people are saying that technical advice of the department is regularly overruled or ignored by the district General Counsel Jacqueline Minor and her staff.

Employees are concerned that Lance Jackson, the head of the firm SGI that provides project management consultants to the district, has been made the temporary chief of the department.

They say he might use his authority to layoff or fire employees so that they can be replaced by consultants from his firm, Lougin said.

“They are afraid the consultant is going to try to get rid of their jobs and try to bring in his own people,” said Lougin.

“They are right to be upset,” she said. They don’t know if they are going to be cut, reduced or changed.”

They are unsure why Custodial Services Roland Broach has been appointed to lead the Buildings and Grounds section of the department. Though Broach is highly respected for the work he does, staff are concerned about what it means to appoint someone who has no background in repairs and construction, Lougin said.

“The district has never made this many changes in this short a time,” Lougin continued. “Why is all of this happening now?”

In response, district spokesman Troy Flint said, “Tim led the facilities department for more than a decade, so it’s natural that his departure would unsettle some people.”

“That doesn’t mean their jobs are in jeopardy, just that they’re reacting to change. Change is always difficult, but we’re well positioned to continue the forward movement of our Facilities Department,” Flint said.

“Part of the reason why we asked Lance to serve as interim head of Facilities is because his familiarity with OUSD’s ongoing and future work will help minimize disruption during this transitional period,” he continued. “Lance is not going to bring in a raft of SGI employees, if any. SGI has a long relationship with the district and if those employees were angling for positions in the district, they could have done so long before now.”

“Roland Broach, the new executive director for Buildings and Grounds, has spent most of his adult life in OUSD’s Facilities Department and has familiarity with all OUSD sites from his work as head of Custodial Services. He will be working with OUSD’s longtime Director of Building and Grounds Leroy Stokes, who retains his current position and will continue to offer his decades of experience in this role.”

“The knowledge base remains, and there is not going to be a staff overhaul – only the reporting structure at the top is changing.”

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

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1 week ago

March 1, 2026

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

2 weeks ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke