Alice Spearman, the incumbent for the East Oakland-Elmhurst seat on the school board, has avoided a runoff in the three-way race against Doris Limbrick and Beverly Williams.

According to the official results released by the county registrar’s office, Spearman won 50.4 percent of the vote, just over the 50 percent-plus-one-vote she needed to win outright. Limbrick trailed with 32.3 percent, and Williams with 16.6 percent.

There were only 5,642 votes cast in this election, so each one carried a fair amount of weight. In fact, Spearman needed 2,822 votes to win, and netted 2,844.

Spearman said she aimed to push for a policy that would favor local contractors Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland school board convenes its twice-monthly meetings at 4 p.m. — at least an hour earlier than most. Sometimes, they don’t adjourn until the next morning.

No matter how mundane the agenda, or how straightforward or short, the meetings almost always carry on into the bleary-eyed hours of the night, or morning. And around 10 p.m., like clockwork, the discourse starts to disintegrate — or maybe it’s just my own diminished ability to comprehend what’s being said.

Tonight, just before 11 p.m., board president David Kakishiba noted the hour and — to our collective relief — asked to postpone the last discussion item. I’m still fuzzy on what happened next.

We had made it to the “New Business” section, and some board members were trying to get certain issues on the next agenda (the status of an English teacher position at Paul Robeson High School, a staff report on the “substandard” facilities at Cox Elementary). Others — sometimes, simultaneously — tried to sort out what was policy-setting and what was micro-managing, and who decides what makes it onto the agenda.

“This must be what waterboarding feels like,” Ward Rountree, a former teacher’s union president executive director and board meeting regular, said after it finally ended.

I have a policy proposal. Read the rest of this entry »

Update: The most recent vote tally, which came in this afternoon, has Spearman at 50.5 percent.

Last week, it looked like Alice Spearman and Doris Limbrick were headed into a runoff. Spearman had a double-digit lead over Limbrick in the three-way race, but in the initial count, she fell short of the 50 percent she needed to win outright.

Well, the news has gone and changed again! As of this morning, anyway, Spearman had won enough votes to land the Elmhurst-East Oakland seat. But they’re still counting.

Guy Ashley, from the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office, tells me that most of the provisional votes and any remaining absentees would be added to the tally around 4 p.m. today. You can check for updates here. 

Here is the tally, as of earlier this week:

Spearman - 2,742 votes, 50.59%

Limbrick - 1,749 votes, 32.27%

Beverly Williams - 890 votes, 16.42%

Now, unless Limbrick concedes, the results won’t be certified until July. But Spearman sounded pretty confident this morning, as she did on election night, that she had it wrapped up.

“I had good opposition, but they weren’t strong enough to do what they thought they were going to do,” she said. “Like I said, folks have confidence in me, so I’m not going to let them down.”

Note: An earlier headline on this blog post referred to the new votes as provisional, but those votes were absentee ballots turned in on election day.

The board has its next regular meeting Wednesday, on the eve of the last day of school. Here’s the agenda, and some of the highlights:

• A presentation on the district’s graduation rates and the percentage of students who graduate with the UC/CSU requirements, broken down by race
• Paid meal price increases, proposed for the fall
• A discussion of the proposed changes to OUSD’s enrollment policy and its admissions priorities (No vote yet, just a hearing)

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: It looks like there could be a runoff between Alice Spearman and Doris Limbrick for the East Oakland-Elmhurst seat. With all of the precincts counted, Spearman had 49.54 percent of the vote (Limbrick 32%; Beverly Williams 17%), and candidates need at least 50 percent to win.

Jody London won the North Oakland race, with 55 percent (Brian Rogers 36%; Tennessee Reed 9%). Jumoke Hinton Hodge will represent West Oakland on the board (Hinton Hodge 52%; Olugbemiga Oluwole Sr. 47%)

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Jody London (North Oakland) and Alice Spearman (East Oakland-Elmhurst) have double-digit leads on their respective opponents, but Spearman was barely beyond the 50 percent threshold as of midnight.

Unless Spearman secures 50 percent-plus-1 in the race against Doris Limbrick and Beverly Williams, she’ll face Limbrick (now in second place at 31 percent) in a runoff.

It looks like London has a lock on the three-way race for the North Oakland seat, with 55 percent of the vote to Brian Rogers’ 36 and Tennessee Reed’s 9 (57 percent of precincts counted). If London dips below 50 percent, it’ll be a run-off between her and Rogers.

The District 3 race is slightly closer. Read the rest of this entry »

Depending on where you live, you can legally vote in only one Oakland school board race tomorrow, if that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion of who should come out on top.

In District 1 (North Oakland), you have Jody London, Brian Rogers and Tennessee Reed (left to right) vying for an open seat. Read the Trib’s coverage of the race here.

In District 3 (West Oakland), Jumoke Hinton Hodge hopes to succeed her husband, Greg Hodge, on the board; Olugbemiga Oluwole Sr. has his eye on the seat as well. Tribune Read the rest of this entry »

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Oakland school board hears an update on how the governor’s latest budget proposal (more specifically, its cuts) will affect the local budget. They’ll be filled in on the latest OUSD financials, too.

Also, staff almost completely re-wrote the student “dress and grooming” policy, which was last updated in August of 2004. The document is much more neutral and professional-sounding now, but not nearly as interesting to read.

One item that was axed: “Undergarments shall not be used as outer wear. Students may not wear smooth fabric jogging suits, which are a leading symbol worn by gang members and drug dealers.”

Here is the full agenda.

image from tigerfoods Web site at flickr.com/creativecommons

Brian Rogers may be running for a nonpartisan office — the District 1 seat on the Oakland school board, against Jody London and Tennessee Reed – but his Republican party affiliation has hardly been a non-issue.

The Oakland public school parents Yahoo! group has lit up in recent weeks with debates on Rogers’ politics, knee-jerk reactions to those politics, his endorsement by Jerry Brown and his large donation to Mitt Romney (who is a proponent of private school vouchers, according to his Web site). Read the rest of this entry »

There was standing room only in the Havenscourt auditorium tonight.

Parents and teachers crowded into the large room to listen to what the Oakland school board hopefuls had to say, while small children scampered up and down the aisles.

Unlike the painstakingly neutral League of Women Voters events, the organizers of this forum — Oakland Community Organizations — made their case for certain school reform policies at the get-go.

“We cannot afford to go back to the way things were before small schools and charters,” Deanita Lewis, a parent at Havenscourt’s Coliseum College Prep, told the people on the stage.

The climate was so favorable for candidates who embraced independently run, public charters and small schools (loud, mid-sentence cheers, vs. polite silence and half-hearted courtesy applause) that few on the stage dared to say much to the contrary.

Even District 7 incumbent Alice Spearman, Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday’s board meeting will begin with a twist — a school board-organized rally against the state budget cuts.

The regular agenda is full of interesting topics as well, including:

• A “sunshine” proposal for Oakland’s school principals
• New positions and layoffs for non-teaching staff Read the rest of this entry »