MERELY FOR THE SHOW
During the last time American political
jurisdictions openly maneuvered to keep African-Americans from voting–for you young
readers, we’re not talking about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, but Alabama and
Mississippi in the 1950’s and early 60’s–there used to be a joke told by black comics
about the black fellow who came back home to South Carolina to register to vote after
spending many years in New York and Philadelphia, a Bachelors Degree in American
History from Temple and a Masters in Government from NYU in his pocket. In those
days, Southern registrars used what they called the “literacy test” to keep black
people from registering. A prospective black voter had to read, and then interpret,
several government documents to the satisfaction of the registrar, who sometimes
could not read the documents himself.
As the joke went, the registrar pulled out the Declaration Of Independence, asked
the black fellow to read a passage, and then said, “What does that mean?” The registrar
then got a copy of the Constitution, pointed to an obscure clause, asked the black
fellow to read it, and then said, “Now tell me what that means.” Then came an old
dog-eared Federalist Papers, a request to read a paragraph out of one of the articles,
and then the question: “What does it mean?” The black fellow expounded on each answer
for fifteen minutes or more, providing citations to various texts he had read on
the various subjects. He’d gone to school for this, after all. He was well prepared.
Finally, the white registrar went into the back of his office, rummaged through some
old books, and came back with a copy of Plato’s Republic. “Pick a passage,
any passage, and read it,” the registrar said. The black fellow opened the book,
leafed through it a moment, and said, “This book’s in Greek. I don’t read Greek.”
“That’s okay,” the registrar replied. “Just tell me what it means.” The black fellow
thought a moment, closed the book, and handed it back to the registrar. “It means
I’m not going to be able to vote,” he said.
Sometimes, we sadly discover, the results of government policy are pre-ordained,
and the various actions leading up to them are merely for the show.
So it was with the takeover of the Oakland public schools.
In the first UnderCurrents column for the Berkeley Daily Planet, in April
of 2003, I wrote about three separate calls, over the years, for state takeover of
the Oakland Unified School District. Each, interestingly enough, involved a different
announced reason for the threatened takeover (in 1998 the desire by some state officials
to get rid of then-OUSD Superintendent Carol Quan; in 2000, it was over a discrepancy
in reported attendance figures; in 2003, the year the Oakland schools were finally
seized by the state, it was because of overspending the budget to finance a teacher
pay hike). Interestingly enough, too, each of the three calls for a state takeover
in the past eight years involved State Senator Don Perata in some way.
Despite the fact that this was the largest school seizure in California history,
and a complete disenfranchisement of Oakland voters over the running of our school
system, the East Bay public still knows almost nothing about how, and why, the State
of California came to take over the Oakland schools.
But at least now, thanks to a recently-published book by local author, educator,
and political activist Kitty Kelly Epstein, we have some valuable insight into an
earlier attempt by the State of California to take over the Oakland schools, this
one ten years before Mr. Perata began making his threats in 1998.
In 1988, Ms. Epstein writes in “A Different View Of Urban Schools; Civil Rights,
Critical Race Theory, And Unexplored Realities,” the Oakland school district was
facing a fiscal crisis and needed to make severe budget cuts in order to balance
the budget. Epstein says that a coalition of public officials–including then-State
Superintendent of Education Bill Honig, then-State Assemblymember Elihu Harris (at
that time a candidate for mayor of Oakland), then-Alameda County School Superintendent
William Berck, and Sheila Jordan, the only white member of the Oakland school board–began
pushing for state intervention into the Oakland schools, even though the majority-black
school board had not sought out a state loan, and the budget was still balanced.
Harris went so far as to introduce state trustee legislation in the state assembly.
But the school board, led by members Sylvester Hodge and Darlene Lawson, arranged
the sales of something called “Certificates of Participation,” $10 million in financing
that made a state loan–and a state trustee–unnecessary. “Honig declared that he would
block the sales of certificates,” Epstein writes, “but Hodges and Lawson had done
their homework carefully. Other districts had already used this method of financing,
and the board members had carefully worked through the necessary procedures before
announcing the plan.”
Folks who followed the 2003 Oakland school takeover will see some interesting echoes
from what happened, or didn’t happen, in 1988. In 2003, in the frantic weeks before
the Oakland School Board was stripped of its power and Randolph Ward was sent in
to run the Oakland schools, the local board produced a balanced budget that would
have ended the need for a state loan, and a state takeover. That balanced budget
was based on the temporary transfer of construction bond funds, a transfer that board
members said was being done by other school districts around the state. But even
though the district’s bond attorneys–the same attorneys that advise the state, by
the way–said that the construction bond transfer was legal, the Alameda County Superintendent
of Schools held them up, and eventually they were blocked by an “opinion” by State
Attorney General Bill Lockyer. And who was the county superintendent who played such
an important role in keeping Oakland from bailing itself out in 2003 and retaining
home rule? If you guessed that it was the same Sheila Jordan who Epstein says was
pushing for state takeover as an Oakland School Board member in 1988, you win the
prize as a careful reader.
As important as Epstein’s account is of the 1988 abortive takeover, her description
of what happened immediately after is even more instructive. One year after Oakland
resisted state takeover, she writes, “the neighboring Richmond school district…went
broke and was forced to accept the $10 million loan originally slated for Oakland.
They were also forced to lay off hundreds of teachers and cut the salaries of those
teachers who remained. Today, more than a decade later, that district, now called
West Contra Costa County, has not yet recovered financially. Interest and fees on
the loan were so high that the loan will not be repaid and local control restored
until 2018. In contrast, Oakland did not lay off teachers or cut salaries [during
the 1988 financial difficulties]. And by the time Sylvester Hodges ended his tenure
as chair of the district’s Budget and Finance Committee, the school district had
achieved Standard & Poor’s highest bond rating and had accumulated a substantial
cushion of reserves.”
(Ms. Epstein’s book, which concentrates on how the issue of race affects American
public education, using Oakland as a prime example, is an essential text for people
wishing to understand what’s going on in public schools these days, by the way.)
The state has made a royal mess of things amongst the Oakland schools, if anyone
is watching. With Oakland further in debt than when the state administrator took
over, the school district is being slowly dismantled and outside companies coming
in and seizing campuses like the European colonial powers once seized African villages
and communities. Meanwhile, a potentially devastating teacher strike looming, is
there anyone around who will now argue that letting the state take a hand at running
the Oakland schools was a good experiment, and Oaklanders couldn’t have done this
better, our own selves?
But as we said, sometimes, the results are pre-ordained, and the various actions
leading up to them are merely for the show. For a long time, there have been folks
deeply interested in taking over Oakland’s public schools. Now that they’ve finally
done it, we may begin to finally understand why. But that’s a subject for another
day, and another column.