That whole thing about the finances is shameless though. I hope the community gets out from under that debt.

Of course, Ward and his successors were all assigned to OUSD by State Superintendent Jack O’Connell in order to advance So. Cal. billionaire Eli Broad’s interest in transforming our district into a Broad-view of what urban public school districts should be. Broad believes districts should be operated using the business model. He would like to see school districts like ours to become a network of independently run charter schools. The schools would be the “product” for parents to “buy” and they would be run by either a private individual, or by a private board of directors. None of the school operators would be elected by the residents of Oakland.

This concept is totally experimental; Oakland became Broad’s guinea pig.

All three state administrators, and a good number of their Second Ave. staff, were trained at the Broad Center, and have an identical outlook on what our district should be like. That’s why there has been so much turmoil, and so little interest from Second Ave. in recent years with checking in with the local community; they weren’t interested in hearing from us. Because their focus was to work hard at setting up this experimental model, they neglected dealing with our financial state, thus the discoveries of the past few weeks.

Also, two of the schools you’ve listed are Aspire Public Schools, a large CMO with schools throughout California. They have several schools in Oakland, Berkley Maynard being just one. Aspire is the manager of California College Prep which moved to Berkeley at the beginning of this year. They are now off OUSD’s charter school list. Wouldn’t that put the official count at eight schools?