1) How much government funding would still go to OUSD?
2) Would our property taxes fall to a level more consistent with the reduced amount of goverment funding?

And it gets worse. Any forward-thinking district leadership would also be alarmed at the loss of hundreds of  students from the schools. If you think that Tony and his cheerleaders are going to attempt to figure out why parents would rather pay tuition, opt for charter schools or migrate to other districts than to send their children here, you might be in a state of denial. The speeches, pontifications and grandiose plans do not seem to have stopped the increasing number of adult professionals and students from deserting the district. 

Meanwhile, at the next leadership gathering at the Oakland Zoo, Tony will do yet another I-feel-your-pain, powerpoint sermon about the plight of children in Oakland, with some in the congregation nodding their heads and looking at each other incredulously, “Our leader is one cool dude.” Don’t get me wrong, most attendees would  be looking at each other even more incredulously and thinking, and perhaps texting each other, “OMG, enough already! How in the world did we end up with this guy who gets paid so much in exchange for doing so little?” The only difference is that the latter are afraid to say it, lest they get replaced by yet another set of inepts. Even though the same silent observers wish and pray that Tony and his cronies would just leave, it  does not mean that they are not making exit plans to run for saner environs in case the disfunction continues to reign supreme. It is the same disfunction that shamelessly entertains thoughts of Mia as superintendent. 

Maybe when Katy gets back, these scandals can come unraveled.

One huge, huge difference. If you asked, “What is the Dewey Deciimal System?” to elementary, middle and high school students all over Oakland from kindergarten through high school my guess is fewer than 10% in the flatlands would know what it is to describe it as being used by a library. However, over 90% of the hills students would know that it is a way of filing books in a library.

I can almost hear you now. So what? The flat land students do not know how to look up information in our public libraries either. They cannot complete research work and my experience in the flatlands schools is that very few, if any schools require students to complete research reports at all unless the teacher keeps the books in his or her class. They do not go to the library at school, they do not trust that the sudents will know how or have the ablity to get to a public library and in the classes I have been in there are no students with library cards (one first grade class 2 students had cards).

The same Tony Smith who was personally asked to PLEASE investigate the charges of misconduct at Claremont by the (former) Principal and who immediately called said Principal, who then mercilessly retaliated against all teachers who expressed concern about her “leadership” abilities, or lack thereof.

If an organization’s dysfunctional leadership can be described as “a fish rotting from the head down”….. OUSD’s is like a Hydra….for each “head” you cut off… it grows 2 more.

SJMN identifies OUSD employee Mia Settles as an “Executive Officer Regional Network” (whatever that is) with a total compensation package worth $174,000.

Another public education (anti-!) bureaucrat getting rich off the system. And the beleaguered OUSD taxpayers can’t figure out where all the money goes.

We already pay for a public library bureaucracy — one that supports youth reading programs no less. The schools don’t need their own.