.Letters for the week of May 25-31, 2005

A throng of anonymous teachers responds to Robert Gammon's recent cover story on Randolph Ward's efforts to reform Oakland's schools.

“The Caustic Reformer,” Feature, 4/27

Randolph Ward is like a small-time mafia boss
I was on my way to eat lunch when I picked up a copy of the Express and saw Randolph Ward’s face on the front cover. I was nearly floored. I felt anger, fear, and then I started laughing remembering my experiences teaching for Oakland Unified. This is what I saw when I was there: classrooms in disrepair, chaos, stressed-out teachers, unruly administrators, threatening letters, out-of-control students, uncaring parents. As a teacher in one of those flatland schools, I put up with this and much more up until they adopted the Open Court Reading Program. That about did it for me.

Last year, I tried leaving Oakland when I was confronted with an alarming letter from Ward. He threatened teachers who wanted to quit before the beginning of the school year with revoking their credentials. At that point I realized that the Oakland Unified School District was an institutional mafia. Ward was the mafia boss. Thanks to counterthreats from the teachers’ union, I was able to get out of my contract a month into the school year. This cost me many job opportunities even though I finally found a teaching job working in yet another dysfunctional public school district. The funny thing is that next school year I think I’m going back to Oakland — hopefully at a small independent charter school. You have to be a little crazy to teach — and probably really insane to teach in Oakland.

The question I ask myself is: Should I be afraid of the most hated man in Oakland, or should I feel sorry for him?
Former Oakland teacher, Berkeley

A conspiratorial scream to oust a corrupt leader
Randolph Ward is simply a union buster. His big reforms are part of the long repertoire of teacher-demoralizing, union-busting tools. Other techniques are cutting salary, closing schools, firing teachers, and involuntary transfers. He is using site-based budgeting because it discourages teachers from striking.

Ward has already been involved in corporate cronyism. One key crony is Kevin Wooldridge. This piece of work was in charge of many of the thirteen schools on the list to be turned into internal charters. Then this same guy takes an “unpaid leave of absence” to become the head of the agency that runs the same schools as charters. If this doesn’t smell of corruption, it is only because living in the Bush age has desensitized us to it.

Now, as for the urban superintendents’ program: Why would CEOs and business bigwigs want to take pay cuts to work for public education? They care about education, or they see it as an opportunity to make money? I think it is safe to make an assumption here. A lot of urban public school property sits on some valuable real estate.

Maybe I’m just a conspiratorial union teacher, but I do believe that screaming for corporations to pay more for public schools is not the best use of our energy. Our best use of energy is to get this opportunist out of Oakland. Randolph Ward is no reformer. He is a corrupt leader with a lot of powerful friends. His only vision is money and power for him and his friends. He deserves his status as Oakland’s most hated man.
An Oakland teacher, Richmond


If we can afford war, we should fund schools
Like most of my colleagues, I am a passionate, qualified teacher who chose to work in a flatland Oakland school. I also voted against the proposed contract. Here’s why: Ward wanted to eliminate art, music, and library classes for elementary students. These classes are all Oakland kids have left of enrichment classes taken for granted in richer districts.

The contract would reduce the number of counselors. It’s no secret how great a need Oakland children have for access to social services, behavioral support, and interventions when they are failing academically. We need MORE, not fewer guidance counselors.

Under the proposed contract, many teachers with families would face an immediate pay cut of up to $2,000-$3,000 a year because the district would not continue to cover the full cost of health insurance, resulting in an increased pay cut each year as the costs rise.

In addition, what parents don’t realize is that the district is suggesting middle schools CUT social studies and science classes in order to provide four periods a day of math and language arts as a way to raise test scores. Teachers and administrators are scrambling to find ways to change our schedules so our children don’t lose these basics.

It was flat-out bizarre that you portrayed results-based budgeting as an attempt to remedy the inequity between hills and flatland schools. A veteran hills-school teacher is far more likely to accept a position in Orinda or Walnut Creek than step foot in the flatland schools. Besides, the budgets for flatland schools do not provide enough money to be able to afford veterans either, because the allocation is based on an average that’s low. Finally, parents of upper-middle-class children have ALWAYS raised the money to protect the quality of THEIR children’s education, either through property taxes, bonds, or outright donations. They will not stand by and lose highly qualified teachers to the flats.

Teachers and parents are on the same side. Since our school board has been taken from us, we must stand together to demand better for our children. If we have money for war, we have money for our schools.
A.F., San Francisco

Tyranny and propaganda have infuriated teachers
The letter that arrived in the mailboxes of the teachers of Oakland contained the glib, slick tone of speciousness we’ve come to expect from Randy Ward. Is it possible to insult us more? Everyone on the receiving end of his “reforms” knows his actions belie those hollow words. How can he say “we all know that the relationships among students, parents, and teachers are at the heart of good schools” when every decision is made without input from any students, parents, or teachers, and every “effort to find solutions” is riddled with callous disregard for those very relationships?

Some of the changes being promoted aren’t necessarily bad ideas. In fact, many of them were already being put into motion before the hostile state takeover. Many of the proposed changes contain elements of ideas that teachers in this district have been talking about for yours. Before the conspiracy of Don Perata, Jerry Brown, and Jack O’Connell to vilify and remove Dennis Chaconas, under his leadership we were already working on smaller schools, decentralizing management, site-based leadership, and so forth. Sadly, Ward and his backers fail to realize it doesn’t work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps. It’s even harder when you’ve first sucker-punched those you expect to do the jumping.

Chaconas may have had his failings, but everyone felt in their bones that he really cared about the kids of Oakland and the Oakland community. He didn’t need to hide behind a bodyguard. I initially resented him for taking the $300K some odd severance package, but now that I see the way they did him, I don’t blame him for a minute.

The rank and file understands that success can only come from a respectful process and inspiring those you purport to lead. Tyranny and propaganda only infuriate. We’re infuriated.
A veteran Oakland public schools teacher, Oakland

Ward’s actual goal is to dismantle public ed
You’ve probably received a flood of letters in response to Robert Gammon’s pathetic piece of shoddy journalism, but you deserve the hits.

It’s sad that you would print that Oakland has “two systems: one for primarily white kids in the hills and another for poor black and Latino kids in the flatlands.” Not only is it cheap to play the race card, it’s also incorrect: less than 7 percent of OPS students are white, so while there may be one or two schools with a majority, most of the hill schools have a minority of white students. And your racial terms completely leave out our Asian students. To inject such racial comments into this discussion implies that central administration made decisions in favor of white children because of their race, and ignores the fact that the superintendents for over the last fifteen years have been people of color. Our school district’s problems are problems of management, not ethnicity.

Gammon’s description of the difference in the distribution of funds is also woefully inaccurate. Most flatland schools receive Title 1 funds and Bilingual Education funds that never reach the hill schools. These funds are not mentioned in the article. Were they excluded because to include them would show that many flatland schools receive more money per student than hill schools? One wonders. And to accuse the district of “cheating the kids who most depended on public schools” is to hold us responsible for a system put in place by the state and federal governments.

Gammon also states that Measure E money was used to “subsidize salaries at Thornhill and other schools with too many well-paid teachers;” this is not only untrue, but it would be illegal, and the use of Measure E monies is still being debated. And I am flabbergasted by Gammon’s use of the oxymoron “well-paid teacher” — it’s reminiscent of our governor’s attitude toward the profession.

It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots between the Eli Broad Foundation, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Randy Ward to show a plan to dismantle public education as we know it, beginning with Oakland. The plan has some pretty big holes. Edmonton did not tackle teachers’ salaries nor the cost of health care. These are the two most costly elements that Ward’s plan is tinkering with, and there is no model for the changes he is proposing. Teachers’ salaries are calculated and negotiated as a large group of about three thousand employees; it makes no sense to force principals to deal with salary issues for employee groups of twelve to eighty. The conditions and formulas that are used to manage and predict salaries and benefits won’t apply to such small groups of employees.

More importantly, pushing sites to be in total control of their budgets will force them into conflict of interest situations where, for example, a school site will decide whether to serve another special-education student because doing so will break the bank. These ethical decisions cannot be made solely on the basis of money!

Gammon refers to Ward’s hiring business experts to run schools without noticing the obvious glitch: schools are not businesses, so what makes him think that a good business person would make a good principal? The management needs are vastly different, and businesses operate under different laws than the vast array of policies and requirements governing schools. Lynn Dodd described the typical duties of a principal and the time demands. Most business managers wouldn’t put in that amount of time for the pay our principals get, which by the way, is significantly lower than Ward’s bodyguard.

Yes, Ward is a clever man. After he laid off about two hundred new hires, our average teacher salary went up, statistically. And by pushing low-performing schools into charters, our district average test scores go up, statistically. So I guess the real question is, when he has implemented his plan, will Ward go to work for the governor? Oops, he’s already been invited to sit on a governor’s advisory panel about educational improvement!
Name withheld, Oakland

Public school systems aren’t used to change
Thanks for the great article on Oakland’s schools. Dr. Ward’s administration is cause for great hope that the future for Oakland’s kids will be different than the status quo, which is totally unacceptable. Each year in Oakland, about four thousand kids enroll in ninth grade. Four years later, less than four hundred graduate having met the requirements needed to even APPLY to four-year colleges.

Change can be really, really hard even in the private sector, where reorganizations and strategic shifts are relatively common. Public school systems aren’t accustomed to change and aren’t good at it. We should not be surprised, therefore, if the friction related to these important changes is significant. Dr. Ward is attracting tremendous talent and resources to Oakland, and he is enabling this city to implement progressive educational reforms that are only TALKED about in other places. Caustic or not, he deserves support.
Jeffrey Camp, Piedmont

Robert Gammon responds
While “Name Withheld” is correct in noting that only 5.8 percent of Oakland Unified students are white, there are significant ethnic differences between hills and flatlands elementary schools, especially between whites on the one hand and Latinos and blacks on the other. Teacher salary records from the 2004-05 school year also show significant pay gaps among these schools. For instance, compare five hillside elementary schools — Chabot, Hillcrest, Joaquin Miller, Redwood Heights, and Thornhill — with five flatland schools — Allendale, Horace Mann, Lazear, Lockwood, and Stonehurst. The average ethnic composition of the hillside schools was 54 percent white, 21 percent black, 7 percent Hispanic, and 11 percent Asian, while the average composition of the flatland schools was 66 percent Hispanic, 23 percent black, 6 percent Asian, and just 1 percent white. (Totals do not equal 100 because of partial data or rounding errors.) Meanwhile, the average teacher salary in the five hills schools was $50,680, compared to just $41,618 for the flatlands schools. The difference in their respective academic records is similarly eye-opening. On the state’s Academic Performance Index last year, four out of the five hills schools scored a ten, the highest score possible, and the fifth scored a nine. Meanwhile, three of the five flatland schools scored just one, while the other two scored two and three respectively.

I did not discuss Title 1 and other restricted antipoverty funds in my story because they are precluded by law from being used for basic teacher salaries. Oakland Unified is prohibited by law from redirecting those funds to high-income schools, as has been done, in effect, with regular teacher salaries. In addition, hills schools parents have traditionally matched the antipoverty funds with highly successful PTA fund-raising campaigns. By contrast, many flatlands schools don’t even have PTAs.

There are no state or federal laws that require school districts to spend more money on teacher salaries in some schools than in others. Oakland and every other California school district created their own unequal systems by not demanding that all schools spend equally on salaries. Collective bargaining agreements are also partly to blame because they typically give veteran teachers the right to choose where they want to work while restricting involuntary transfers.

In the 2004-05 school year, Oakland Unified spent $3.085 million from Measure E funds in a category called “RBB transitions,” according to a April 2005 report by the district’s financial chief. This term is district lingo for subsidizing salaries at schools that employ more well-paid teachers than they can afford. For the 2005-06 school year, Ward has budgeted $1.72 million from Measure E funds for such subsidies. And while the language of Measure E does indeed limit what the money can be spent on, one acceptable purpose is “to attract and retain qualified teachers.”

Finally, in response to the letter from Jeffrey Camp: During the 2002-03 school year (the last year for which complete data is available), Oakland Unified had 4,144 ninth graders compared to 366 seniors who graduated and met the academic requirements to be accepted by UC or CSU campuses. However, those numbers are deceiving. It’s impossible to conclude that nearly 3,800 students failed to graduate with the needed requirements, because many Oakland high school students move to other districts or transfer to private schools before they graduate. The exact number of those students is unknown because California does not track that information.

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