The Oakland school board sits at the center of your child’s daily school experience. When the board fails, your kids pay the price in unfinished homework, canceled programs, and broken trust.
Oakland school board failures and the impact on kids
The Oakland school board oversees an underperforming district where only about one in three students read at grade level and only a bit more than one in four reach math proficiency. For Black and Brown students, who make up most of the enrollment, the results are even worse. Families see homework folders come home empty and progress reports filled with gaps.
Instead of focusing on student learning, Oakland’s education system lives in permanent crisis. Parents have endured repeated strikes, budget emergencies, and leadership fights. Children see adults arguing in meetings while their own schools lose tutors, librarians, and electives that once kept them engaged.
How troubled leadership hurts student learning
The Oakland school board majority shows a pattern of troubled decision making that filters down into each classroom. When leaders postpone hard choices, the district responds with small, random cuts that hit kids where it hurts most. Support staff disappear, afterschool programs shrink, and special interventions for struggling readers go first.
Parents like Grace, a mother of two elementary students in East Oakland, notice the difference. Her son’s reading group lost its intervention teacher halfway through the year. No one explained why. Grace later learned the position was cut in a budget move the board approved while arguing about bigger structural issues they refused to touch.
Strikes, instability, and underperforming schools in Oakland
Families in Oakland have lived through three official teacher strikes in roughly seven years. Some parents kept their kids at home. Others crossed picket lines out of fear their children would fall further behind. All of them saw days of learning disappear in a district already struggling to raise achievement.
Labor rights matter. Teachers deserve fair pay and working conditions. Yet the way the Oakland school board handles these conflicts turns every negotiation into a new crisis. When strikes threaten again, parents ask a simple question. Where is the steady leadership our students deserve?
Teacher pay, politics, and student outcomes
Reports indicate that the current board majority approved, behind closed doors, a 14% increase in teacher pay. On its own, higher salaries make sense. Competitive pay reduces turnover and brings stability for students who need consistent adults in front of them. The problem lies in how the decision was made and explained.
When the board treats teacher compensation as a secret bargaining chip, it mixes children’s futures with political strategy. The community hears about raises and still faces the threat of more strikes. This erodes trust and keeps attention off the main goal of education. Every dollar spent must connect clearly with student learning, not with tactical maneuvering.
Oakland school board and the constant budget crisis
Oakland Unified spends roughly $27,000 per student each year, among the highest per-pupil figures in California. Yet the district lurches from one financial emergency to another. Parents are told the budget is on the brink, even as families see few improvements in classrooms or school facilities.
Current projections show a budget shortfall in the range of $90 million to $130 million. County and state officials are again watching closely, only a short time after the district regained local control from state oversight. Instead of confronting the full structure of the system, the Oakland school board majority relies on short-term fixes that make life worse for children.
“Death by a thousand cuts” inside underperforming schools
Because the Oakland school board avoids structural reform, it resorts to what many parents describe as “death by a thousand cuts.” The district trims staff, reduces hours, and strips away so-called extras. These losses include reading specialists, mental health supports, electives like art and music, and afterschool programs that keep kids safe and learning.
Each individual cut looks small on paper. In a child’s daily life, the impact feels huge. A middle schooler loses band, then the robotics club, then afterschool tutoring. By the time families recognize the pattern, their school has become an underperforming campus that no longer offers a full education experience.
- Firing critical staff: fewer aides, counselors, and intervention teachers to support struggling students.
- Cutting afterschool programs: parents lose safe, structured spaces where kids receive homework help and enrichment.
- Canceling electives: art, music, and advanced classes disappear, making schools less attractive and less engaging.
- Reducing student supports: services for students with learning gaps or emotional needs become harder to access.
These choices send a clear message. The system protects adult politics first and student learning last.
Leadership turmoil and accountability in Oakland education
Strong districts keep stable superintendents and hold them to measurable goals. Oakland’s school board did the opposite. After extending Superintendent Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell’s contract through 2027, the board majority moved to push her out within months. This happened while the district faced massive deficits and heated debates over school closures and services.
Removing a superintendent in the middle of a financial and academic crisis undermines districtwide efforts to improve literacy, math, and school culture. Teachers and principals lose clarity. Parents lose a key public face for accountability. Students see once again that the adults running their system shift focus from learning to power struggles.
What real accountability should look like
Accountability in Oakland education should start with student results and end with public transparency. Voters elect the school board to manage resources, negotiate with unions, and ensure that every campus moves toward high-quality learning. When the board operates behind closed doors, reverses decisions without clear reasons, or drags out conflicts, it breaks this basic contract.
Real accountability would include clear goals for reading and math, regular public reporting, and open discussion of trade-offs. If the board chooses to raise salaries or keep extra campuses open, it should show how these moves fit into a multi-year plan that directly benefits kids. Without this, families see only fragmented decisions and rising frustration.
Too many schools, not enough fully resourced campuses
Oakland Unified still operates around 80 schools in a district with falling enrollment. On average, these campuses sit at roughly 59% of capacity. Many districts of similar size run closer to 40 or 50 sites. Oakland keeps facilities built for a much larger student population, even as birth rates, housing costs, and charter growth change who attends district schools.
Maintaining underfilled buildings spreads money thin. Staff, services, and programs scatter across many small campuses instead of concentrating into strong, fully equipped schools. The result is an underperforming system where no one receives enough support. Instead of asking how to protect every building, Oakland should ask how to give every child a complete, high-quality education.
What if Oakland prioritized students over buildings?
Imagine a different approach. Instead of preserving every site, the Oakland school board could commit to fewer, stronger schools where each student receives the full range of services. That would mean honest conversations about consolidation, transportation, and community impact, but with kids at the center of every choice.
In such a model, each school would have stable teaching teams, robust afterschool programs, mental health supports, and targeted interventions for struggling readers and mathematicians. Families would send their children to campuses known not for crisis and cuts but for reliable, high-quality education.
A new vision for Oakland school board leadership
Parents across the city are already building that vision from the ground up. They attend board meetings, form advocacy groups, and share data on reading and math outcomes. Many of them, like the three Oakland parents who raised these concerns publicly, keep their children in district schools out of commitment to the common good, even as frustrations grow.
They want a school board that treats education as a promise, not a talking point. That means leaders who speak clearly about deficits, resist political games, and measure every decision against a simple standard. Does this help students learn more and thrive in safe, supportive environments?
What Oakland students deserve from their school board
Oakland students deserve more than survival inside a troubled system. They deserve a school board that protects learning time, stabilizes leadership, and aligns every dollar with student success. They need adults who focus first on reading, math, and whole-child development instead of endless fights over process and power.
For parents, the next step is clear. Watch how each board member votes. Listen to how they talk about kids, teachers, and money. Then demand accountability at the ballot box and in public forums. Oakland’s education future depends on whether families insist that leadership finally match the hopes they hold for their children.