Oakland Unified School District

Noel Gallo, Christopher Dobbins, Gary Yee, David Kakishiba, Superintendent Tony Smith, (Seated (l-r): Jody London, Alice Spearman, Secretary Edgar Rakestraw, Jumoke Hinton Hodge

What if a city held a school board election but nobody wanted to run?

In Oakland this election season, that isn’t far from the truth. Oakland public schools have improved steadily, say education advocates, but they still face an uphill battle to corral funding and improve student achievement for Oakland’s poorest. The system emerged last year from six years of state control, faces over $100 million in budget cuts and struggles with truancy rates.

This year, three seats on the seven-member board are up for grabs, but only one incumbent, Gary Yee, is facing a competitor. Two other incumbents are running unopposed, despite past ethics concerns about each that might have provided campaign fodder in a more competitive race.

Groups that hoped to make the race more competitive have turned up empty-handed. “We talked to people to try to get them interested,” said Betty Olson-Jones, the president of the Oakland teachers’ union, “and they said, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to do that.’”

Great Oakland Public Schools (GO), a new non-profit that informs Oakland residents about education issues, also tried to get more people to run. Jonathan Klein, a former teacher and the president of GO’s board, said competitive school board elections would show that people care about Oakland’s struggling, but improving, public schools.

“I’m disappointed that all the races aren’t contested, because I think contested races give us a chance to discuss the state of education in this city,” Klein said.

Unlike Yee, who is campaigning to protect his position from challenger Ben Visnick, incumbents David Kakishiba and Chris Dobbins are all but guaranteed reelection because they face no challengers.

Kakishiba drew scrutiny last year when the district’s new lawyer found his leadership of a local non-profit that contracts with the district was a conflict of interest, even though he recuses himself from voting on or discussing issues regarding his non-profit organization. Kakishiba offered to resign, but the board ultimately changed its rules to allow him to stay after deciding that its bylaws were stricter than the state’s.

Incumbent and board vice president Dobbins has a thornier past problem but no challenge. In 2007, he admitted to a romantic dalliance with a 17-year-old girl who was the student representative on the board. A fact-finding inquiry by the board reported the two had spent time together in Dobbins’ car and may have kissed.

E-mails between Dobbins, then 35, and the girl were released by the school district’s lawyer to the San Francisco Chronicle, including one from Dobbins that read: “I just wish our situations were different. … I have to listen to my head and not to my heart ... when the opportunity presented itself I got scared because I am too old to be trying to get at you.”

The girl and Dobbins both said that they had not had sex, which meant that no law had been broken. The board’s fact-finding committee concurred. A voter recall could have removed Dobbins from office, but none took place. Although some board members called for his resignation and voted 5-to-2 to publically censure him, Dobbins chose to remain on the board.

“It was a very bad choice to associate with her on my own time, but nothing happened; nothing illegal happened,” Dobbins said in an interview this month. “I don’t want to say it was a learning experience, but I don’t approve of that. I would never do that again. Frankly, I haven’t spoken to her since.”

Noel Gallo, who is the longest serving member with 18 years on the school board, called for Dobbins to step down at the time. He has not changed his mind. “We’re role models,” Gallo said recently. “It’s an honor to be on the school board. It’s an honor because you represent children. We as adults have to act with respect and demonstrate what good is.”

Dobbins’ past is no longer a concern for many. Peter Seidl, the vice president of the PTSA at Skyline High School, one of the largest schools in Dobbins’ district, said Dobbins is a responsive and involved board member and that his past is not relevant to the current election. “She didn’t press charges, so that’s the end of it in my view,” Seidl said.

Dobbins, “is certainly not lazy. He shows up at every meeting and pays attention. Whenever I want to talk to him he picks up the phone and calls right back,” Seidl said.

Union head Olson-Jones agreed. “Personally, it’s water under the bridge, and we aren’t raising those issues,” she said. The union is instead concentrating its efforts on passing state propositions 24 and 25 and supporting Visnick.

Visnick is a driver education and history teacher at Oakland High School in downtown Oakland and the former head of the teachers’ union. He is running on a union-friendly, five-point plan that calls for increasing teacher salaries, rewarding them for staying in the district for at least five years, canceling the district’s debt to the state and calling on the Port of Oakland and local professional sports teams to dedicate a portion of their revenue to schools.

Visnick disagrees with Yee on several aspects of Measure L, a property tax measure that Yee helped write. Measure L would raise funds to increase teacher salaries in Oakland, the lowest in the bay area. Visnick thinks the salary raises shouldn’t go to charter school teachers, and he opposes its formula, which is a flat tax, not a progressive tax scaled to property values.

Yee, who has held his seat since 2002, said he is running on the board’s successfully balanced budget and the reforms the board has put in place since the OUSD regained local control in 2009. “I’m an incumbent,” Yee said. “I take responsibility for the budget and the superintendent, and I take a great degree of responsibility for the [Measure L] language, so people can decide if this is the direction that they support or not. There’s a clear choice that District 4 voters have.”

Visnick said cynicism about the ability to create change, not confidence in the current board, prevents more people from running for the board. “If I was not running, they would not have the chance to hear a dissenting voice,” Visnick. “Maybe I’m a masochist, but someone has to do it—speak truth to power.”

Gallo said more must be done to give voters in other districts a choice about their school board representative. He has proposed holding a workshop to educate people about the position and encourage them to run. “It’s sad as citizens that we don’t take responsibility for the democracy that we have,” Gallo said.