24-04-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Union-backed Oakland school board majority ousts home-grown superintendent
The Oakland school board voted Wednesday to replace the district's long-time superintendent, giving her a payout to step aside at the end of this school year, officials confirmed, rather than wait until the end of her contract in the summer of 2027.
The 4-3 decision to push out Kyla Johnson-Trammell was announced as a 'voluntary separation agreement,' although the board did not immediately provide details of the deal.
Johnson-Trammell will remain with the district as 'superintendent emeritus' from July 1 through Jan. 15, 2026, according to a joint statement released by her and board President Jennifer Brouhard. It is unclear what Johnson-Trammell's role will be under the new title. An interim superintendent will be appointed by July 1, they said.
The new agreement nullifies the superintendent's current contract, which was extended in August until the summer of 2027 by the previous school board to ensure a smooth transition of leadership.
Brouhard voted for Johnson-Trammell's contract extension, but has recently led the effort to bring a new leader in as early as this summer.
'Superintendent Johnson-Trammell has done an extraordinary job over the past eight years, a historic tenure marked by stability, strong fiscal oversight, and improvements in student achievement,' Brouhard said in the statement, citing increased literacy, improved graduation rates and historic pay raises for educators, among other accomplishments.
Johnson-Trammell was not available for additional comment. Board members were not immediately available for comment given their ongoing presence at the public meeting.
The announcement regarding the superintendent at the beginning of the meeting, however, was met with loud boos in the La Escuelita auditorium where the school board meeting was held. Several parents and community members challenged board members to explain the decision, but were given no explanation.
Oakland parent Vivica Ycoy-Walton said the community was kept in the dark, without the opportunity for any input.
'I'm outraged because we were given no forward warning, no reasons, no anything,' she said, adding that Johnson-Trammell is a native Oaklander who has the trust of the community.
'We love her. She's done a lot of great things. I trust her,' she said. 'Somebody who was born, raised, went to school and went through every level of leadership to get to the position she is right now — that is somebody the city trusts. And she looks like us and she supports all of us.'
This was the third closed-door session over the last month about the fate of the superintendent, with the Oakland branch of the NAACP, district administrators and some board members speaking out in opposition to Johnson-Trammell's possible ouster. Others criticized a process that appeared to be an effort to remove the superintendent in secret without any public input.
'While it is normal for new boards to provide new direction, I want to be very clear: what matters is how we pursue that vision,' said board member Patrice Berry in an April 13 letter to the community. 'What matters is that we lead with a process that is structured, careful, and transparent. Unfortunately, that has not been our path in this process so far.'
The board's vote, made behind closed doors, comes at a pivotal time for the district, which has faced significant declining enrollment and a persistent deficit, backfilled in recent years by pandemic recovery funds and other one-time funding sources. That money is nearly gone.
The district has about 40% fewer students than in the 1990s, but has not shrunk its footprint to address the decline, leaving many schools with fewer than 200 students.
Johnson-Trammell, the superintendent since 2017, has pushed the board to spend within its means and confront the thousands of empty seats spread across a large number of schools. She was expected to recommend a plan to reduce the number of schools in June, as mandated by the previous board.
It's unclear if that will happen now. The board majority has the support of the teachers union, which has opposed school closures and budget cuts.
The union, the Oakland Education Association, has called for a strike authorization vote to protest what its leadership has said is a lack of transparency over district finances. If approved by voting members, the union has said it will be able to call a one-day strike on May 1.
When Johnson-Trammell took over, after working for 18 years as a teacher and administrator in the district, Oakland Unified was already facing a budget crisis, with mid-year cuts required. During her tenure, she has led through three teachers strikes, the COVID pandemic, divisive school closure battles and the ongoing fiscal oversight given the ongoing debt from a $100 million state loan required after the district ran out of money in 2003.
The district announced this week that it will make the final payments on the loan in June and it has a final audit report in hand, which is also required before the state returns all local control.
The audit found that the district is 'in the best fiscal condition in 22 years,' officials said in a statement posted on the website, citing stable leadership as a primary reason for that.
But at the same time, there are big challenges ahead, district officials said. That includes facing the fact that attendance is below 85% in some settings and the city's schools lose 700 students every year during the elementary-to-middle school transition.
In addition, the public school system has 30 more schools than fiscally sustainable and only 6 of 77 schools are within sustainable size ranges, officials added.
'The report warns that without continued action to reduce costs and improve attendance, the District is at risk of needing another state bailout,' according to the statement posted on the Oakland Unified web site.
