OAKLAND – The Oakland Unified School District was elected, officially dismissed the superintendent on Wednesday during a controversial meeting where they gave no reasoning for the dismissal.
The Board of Directors has concluded a voluntary separation agreement with Kyla Johnson-Tammell, which has been running the district since 2017, and has passed the school system through its difficulties to go out under control by the State and the education officials of the County of Alameda.
Oakland Unified is now getting out of the reception, the school board planned to reimburse what remains of a 100 million dollars loan that the district contracted from the state after having declared bankruptcy in 2003.
When the decades of Séché reveal, the finance control of the district will be returned to the OUSD board of directors, which approved in February 100 dismissals of district employees to save money but resisted the merger or closure of school sites.
However, the apparent dismissal of Johnson -Tramell – mediated by the director of the Board of Directors Mike Hutchinson, who, in doing so, violated the confidentiality rules concerning the disclosure of details of staff changes – revealed the continuous cleavages to the board of directors.
The chairman of the board of directors, Jennifer Brouhard, did not announce the details of the 4-3 vote, although a vote earlier this month advanced the district to the withdrawal of the Superintendent saw Hutchinson joined by the administrators Patrice Berry and Clifford Thompson in dissident of the dismissal of Johnson-Tramell.
Brouhard and his colleagues Valarie Bachelor, Rachel Latta and Vancedric Williams put pressure for the first time for the dismissal of Johnson-Trammell, a model that most likely took place in the decision on Wednesday. The four directors who sought to withdraw the Superintendent are supported by the political branch of the Oakland Education Association, the local teachers’ union.
Hutchinson, an enemy of the Union, accused his opponents to the board of directors on Wednesday of “openly coluer” with the managers of work.
“We should blow up champagne – it is how historic this success is,” said Hutchinson, referring to the end of the reception. But, given the dismissal of Johnson-Tammell, Hutchinson added: “I can’t even smile today.”
The end of the reception is a rare sign of positivity around the finances of the district, which otherwise have been in tumultuous form for years.
The Alameda County Education Office, which has taken care of the state tasks on monetary decisions of Oakland schools, warned in December that the district would soon be lacking once the school board had approved a negative budget.
In a February letter, the Superintendent of the County of Education, Alysse Castro, warned that the OUSD still needed to draw up a responsible spending plan, but recognized that the district could leave room by June 30.
It was a long trip to the district, which decided to close several schools at the beginning of 2022, aroused generalized demonstrations and even hunger strikes. The board of directors, reshaped during this year’s elections, then canceled some of the closures and did not put a more recent proposal to merge campuses to a vote.
Lisa Grant-Dawson, the district business director, noted that many adults who attended and graduated from Oakland schools “does not remember a time when (reception) was not there”.
The administrators supported by the work which seem to have directed the vote on Wednesday to dismiss Johnson-Tramell did not clarify their motivations, which are authorized to be maintained behind closed doors under a set of laws of the meeting open from the State ratified by the Brown law.
The two directors of the school board seemed to have been left in the dark.
“I know you don’t get any information,” said Maximus Simmons, a junior at Oakland High, “because I know I have no information.”
California Daily Newspapers
