Ben Visnick led the Oakland teachers union for six years before Betty Olson-Jones succeeded him in 2006, after the near-strike of that year. I began covering the schools beat in the Olson-Jones era, so I haven’t interacted much with Visnick, who is reputed to have a more confrontational style.

But now he’s back — and ready to take a seat at the other side of the table. He spoke several times at Wednesday’s school board meeting, which happened to be located in his district (4), at Laurel Elementary. He is challenging two-term incumbent Gary Yee.

He has some bold ideas, too, from taxing individual Oakland residents who make more than $106,800 to consolidating the Emery and Piedmont school districts into Oakland Unified.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oakland Unified’s hard-line charter schools office says the district should renew its contracts with two schools: Oakland School for the Arts, a middle and high school located in the renovated Fox Theater building downtown, and Berkley Maynard, one of six charters in Oakland that are run by Aspire Public Schools, a management organization.

image by Nick Bygon, flickr.com/creativecommons

Translation: The district will support a “teach-in” and demonstrations before and after school — as long as the actions don’t “impede student learning,” according to OUSD Spokesman Troy Flint.

Betty Olson-Jones, the teachers union president, says there is not a strike planned for March 4, but that some teachers and students plan to be out of school that day. Others, she said, will picket before school starts or, possibly, take their children on a “walking field trip” to demonstrate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some highlights from the Oakland school board discussion on Superintendent Tony Smith’s proposal for cutting $39 million from the general purpose budget. Note: District staff will bring back a report, later, on the “restricted” side of the budget, as well as the impact of the proposed cuts on individual school budgets.

Tony Smith: “This is ongoing work and getting clear on what are our priorities … We’re going to keep working on this… Just to be clear, we will keep working on this until we come to board for the vote (in June).”

Jumoke Hinton Hodge: “I want to support the direction that this is going in. … Let’s keep going down this road, but I feel comfortable and safe on this particular path.”

David Kakishiba: “Upkeep of the facilities has always been the number one complaint we receive as school board members…. I need some degree of confidence that we’re not going in the toilet around our facilities.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tribune file photo

I can’t imagine spending a year of my life trying to come up with a school parcel tax measure that is palatable to Oakland’s edu-political extremes, but some brave souls have done just that. And, believe it or not, the democratic process behind simply crafting the ballot measure has yet to run its course.

Maybe you can help the parcel tax coalition and the Oakland school board (that, or further muddy the waters!), by opining on the following points that are still up for debate. That is, if you think the school district should float another parcel tax to boost the compensation of its employees in the first place.

Should the measure…

a) go on the June 2010 ballot Read the rest of this entry »

At an organizational meeting this morning, the Oakland school board unanimously elected second-term board member Gary Yee (right) as its president and Chris Dobbins as its VP, according to Troy Flint, the OUSD spokesman.

The board also voted to increase its monthly compensation from $750 to $787.50, a 5 percent raise which amounts to an extra $450 a year per member ($3,150 for all seven board members).

I wasn’t at the meeting, so I didn’t hear the discussion around this issue, but I’ll watch the video when it’s posted. Thoughts?

Jason Hodge, the youngest person to win a seat on the Oakland school board, died unexpectedly yesterday at age 34. His cause of death was unavailable.

Hodge, a 1992 Skyline High School graduate, was first elected to the board in 1996 at age 21 and served two terms. He later became the public information officer for Vallejo City Unified.

You can read the Tribune story about him here.

District staff are recommending that Explore Middle School, a small school that opened in East Oakland in 2004, close at the end of the year.

Also on the 2010 closure list are two schools that were scheduled to close a year or two down the road, following a lengthy phase out: BEST High School (McClymonds campus in West Oakland) and Paul Robeson School of Visual and Performing Arts (Fremont campus in East Oakland).

Staff didn’t come out with a definitive recommendation for Martin Luther King Jr. and Lafayette elementary schools in West Oakland Read the rest of this entry »

David Kakishiba will remain on the Oakland school board for the rest of his term – which ends in December 2010 —  rather than step down, as he had initially announced, he told me today.

“I believe my obligation, my responsibility, is to serve out my term,” he said.

Kakishiba’s original announcement, that he would resign from the board at the end of October, came in response to a conflict-of-interest opinion by Oakland’s general counsel, Jackie Minor. Kakishiba is also executive director of the East Bay Asian Youth Center, which does lots of work in Oakland schools.

But Kakishiba said most of his board colleagues — who rejected the legal department’s recommendation in a 5-1 vote last week Read the rest of this entry »

Lawyers spent at least an hour last night laying out the facts and explaining the various bodies of law (Government Code 1090, Common Law, Political Reform Act, Board Bylaws) that led to their conclusion that David Kakishiba’s dual roles as Oakland school board member and executive director of the East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC) pose a potential conflict of interest.

EBAYC has received 64 contracts worth $6.5 million and brought 21 grants worth $8.3 million to the school district since 2004, according to the legal analysis. While Kakishiba says he doesn’t take part in the drafting of those contracts or vote on them, the attorneys say that’s not enough to remedy the appearance of — and opportunity for — impropriety, especially since he’s the head of the nonprofit.

Laura Schulkind of the SF-based law firm Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, which reviewed the case, said “the law doesn’t care” if Kakishiba is a noble and ethical public servant — that the laws were written to protect public institutions from nepotism and conflicting economic interests.

It’s not just Kakishiba who faces a potential conflict in the current situation, in her view. For example: What about an OUSD employee who — through no doing of Kakishiba’s — decides to promote a contract with EBAYC, rather than with another organization, in part because he or she thinks it will please the board member (and, maybe, offer job security)?

Enter the “red flag” e-mail. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland school board will hold a special meeting Wednesday to decide whether to accept a legal opinion of the district’s top lawyer: that board member David Kakishiba can’t wear two hats — as executive director of a nonprofit that works in Oakland schools and as a board member — and avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Although the board doesn’t vote until Wednesday it seemed clear, from their questions and comments, that they’ll do what they can to convince Kakishiba to stay. Read the rest of this entry »