One of my issues is that there should be a law against public governing boards spending any of the public’s money for lobbying. That the Oakland School Board spends education dollars for lobbying is, I believe, wrong.

Besides K Street lthe Oakland School Board votes pay for lobbying in Washington D.C. I don’t care whether lobbying is cost effective, I believe it should be unlawful for public governing bodies.

Jim Mordecai

But if I could just choose just one of the 87 contracts this month (and in the spirit of Randy Shandobil’s investigation report 15 years ago – see J.R. link above) it would have to be the $48K stolen from the minds of Oakland’s starving children this month and given to K Street Consultants, a high priced public relations consultant for the superintendent to receive policy advice. Why do we need to pay a private consultant $90,000 a year to tell us what our public policies are or to tell the policy makers what they should be.

Private contractors are less accountable to the public and the school board. They are not required to open their records or decision-making process to the public, and are usually not covered by open meeting laws or freedom of information acts. There is also the potential for fraud and waste that often come with outsourcing these services. Lax screening requirements of contractors can put the public at risk. Look at the huge waste of money, time and resources we had in 2012 over the failure of the district to properly supervise the American Indian Charter School.

Privatization hurts local and state economies. When we contract-out it exports taxpayer dollars from employees and communities to organizations often headquartered out of the City of Oakland. We then lose public sector jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits. The alternative is to improve delivery of public services through partnership with front line workers’.

School districts have saved money and improved services by relying on the ideas, experience and commitment of experienced workers, actively involving them in restructuring through joint efforts. If we spend as much on contracts for every month in 2013 as we did in January, which is $3.8M that would be $45.6M. This equates to 702 district positions ($50K salary a year with 30% benefits) to do all the art, intervention counseling, special education and other needs of Oakland’s children. The school is not only in the community; it must be of the community.

Oakland Unified School District is a common public trust; we need to make sure we do not circumvent constitutional and democratic accountability measures by merging with the private sector and marketplace. Finding solutions in a public space emphasizes accountability, voice, transparency, rules and claims through reasoning that goes beyond the self. This speaks to our common ethics and values. We must never be seen as abandoning the public arena in the management of our schools.

I am curious why so much OUSD money is goig to Charter school contractors…The most unseemly is OUSD paying Aspire to learn how to work with Aspire…???

It would b nice to understand more about how Charter budgets are funded &/or intermingled with District or Public funding. Does anybody have a link that better explains this? Or Katy do you have a previous exposé on this topic?

Thank you…

Contracts being provided at school sights are not going out of the school system…they’re being provided AT the public schools. Furthermore they were approved by SSC’s which include Priniciples, Parents AND Teachers. And these have nothing to do with “corporate school reformers”. (Indeed many School Sight contractors are former or even current teachers”.

I really don’t understand how spending money IN our traditional school sights, APPROVED by the school sight councils, has anything to do with ” corporate school reformers continue to skim more and more wealth out of our public education system.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lHEPOwKA_k

I’ve found that often–not always, but often–criticism of “outside consultants” seems much less warranted once one learns what the consultants are actually doing.

A lot of money is paid to outside consultants for special education and crisis intervention. Is there any way to find out if this is consistent with other urban districts?