Candidate for
County Superintendent of Schools; County of Alameda

I want to take this opportunity to respond to some frequently asked questions.

What do you see as your priorities if re-elected?

I will continue to fight for quality education for all our children. Last year, a defensive battle against the governor's budget take-backs and against his attacks on teachers took center stage. I was a leading voice in those battles. I was one of the few administrators in the state who spoke out in print and on radio and television in defense of the teachers and children. I am proud that I marched in Sacramento with the teachers, nurses, and firefighters.

I also spoke out loud and clear against President Bush's military recruiters invading our students' privacy, against the wishes of parents. I opposed the corporate predators' pressure to put junk foods and junk beverages into our school cafeterias and hallways.

This year we have a positive agenda. I stand together with Assemblywoman Wilma Chan in support of the Preschool for All initiative, Proposition 82 on the June ballot. Preschool can make the difference between success and failure in school, college, and life. I urge all voters to join me in supporting this initiative.

The County Superintendent's Office is not just a desk to sit behind. It is a platform for advocacy on behalf of the children.

Training, recruiting, retaining, and upgrading quality teachers is the top priority for the County Office of Education. I have written about this point separately in a position paper, above.

I will continue to lead the county office in providing strong support services for the districts. Because we anticipate a slightly improved budget picture in education this year, we will be able to devote more resources to educational support services: teacher training, truancy abatement, business training, school inspections, emergency preparedness, and computer upgrades, to name a few. The county office has a strong staff of administrators and a transparent and efficient business operation. We have a track record of success with the districts. For details, see the ACOE web site.

I will continue to lead the way as an educator. We will continue the progress we are making with the children no one else wants: the students in Juvenile Hall and the community schools. Our aim is to make their visit to the county schools a turnaround experience that launches them on a second chance at a better life. The County Office will continue to maintain strong ties with the county's many communities and their cultures. We will also continue and expand the wonderfully successful Art IS Education program, cited recently by the Ford Foundation as a national model.

My door is always open. I have always believed that educators teach best when they learn from their students and from the communities they serve. I am ready to listen to you and I will try to answer your questions or to find someone who can. Please feel free to contact me at sheila@sheilajordan.org .

In California's 58 counties, seven school districts went bankrupt. Two of them were in Alameda County. Why is that?

The Bay Area has one of the highest costs of living in the state, especially housing. High costs put terrible pressure on school budgets. It's hard to ask teachers and staff to take wage reductions when costs are so high. At the same time, many parents of school age children can't afford to live here, so you have declining school enrollments. Meanwhile, the state cut back its support. Every district in the state has been feeling the pressure. Bay Area districts felt it worse than most, and the weakest ones cracked. Four of the seven districts that went bankrupt statewide are in the San Francisco Bay Area. (The other two are Richmond/West Contra Costa and Vallejo.)

The good news is that all the troubled districts in Alameda County are operational. Where district superintendents submitted truthful numbers, there were no bankruptcies. The County Office appointed fiscal experts to go in, take charge, and help them get straightened out. All five troubled districts where the County Office intervened are now back under local control. Of the two county districts that went bankrupt, Oakland is operating under temporary state control, and Emeryville is doing well and its board is in charge.

What happened in Oakland to cause the State takeover?

The Oakland school board hired a superintendent who promised far-reaching and much-needed reforms: Dennis Chaconas. Unfortunately Chaconas was not competent with numbers and ignored his fiscal responsibilities. He ran the Oakland school budget into the red, just as he had done with the Alameda district earlier. Instead of frankly owning up to the mess, the Oakland administration under Chaconas went into denial and covered it up, while the red ink continued to flow. They submitted budget numbers to the County Office that looked fine on paper and met all applicable standards, but were as fictitious as James Frey's Million Little Pieces. By the time the house of cards collapsed, the hole was so big that only the State had the resources to fill it. You can read audit reports, news accounts of the Oakland meltdown reproduced on my website, http://www.sheilajordan.org.

Couldn't the County Office have known that Oakland's numbers were fictitious?

The Oakland school district uses its own peculiar and antiquated computer system, instead of the standard system the County Office recommends. The County Office cannot access Oakland's computers and does not have legal authority to make Oakland change systems.

The Alameda County Civil Grand Jury has issued reports saying that the County Office should exercise more control over school districts. What is your response?

The members of the civil grand jury are advocating a change in the way that school districts are governed. They want the county office to have more control.

I do agree with the grand jury that the county office should have additional authority. For example, we should have the power to put all districts on the same computer system so that everyone can see where the money is going.

But we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. If the grand jury's recommendations were enacted into law, we would have one central school district in Alameda County instead of 18 local ones. All the districts would lose their fiscal autonomy. The county office would be treating the districts like a big bank treats its local branches. That's not fair.

I believe that local autonomy is essential if we want community involvement. We should be building grassroots participation and smaller schools, instead of building a more powerful centralized bureaucracy.

I am also concerned that if incompetent or corrupt persons got hold of this proposed county super-office, they could cause harm to our educational system on a countywide scale. Is it an accident, I wonder, that one of the loudest supporters of this proposed super-office is the same discredited superintendent who bankrupted Oakland?

The county office, under my leadership, has been working to strengthen the internal management capabilities of the local districts. We have fully exercised our existing fiscal powers to intervene in troubled districts, and where we have intervened, we have succeeded. But we balance discipline with support.

Apart from my opponent and his supporters, the civil grand jury's recommendations have found little echo. I have received broad support among all stakeholders. The Oakland Chamber of Commerce, which has a keen interest in the schools issue, has given me its endorsement for re-election. So have the Alameda County Central Labor Council AFL-CIO, the teachers' unions, and the union of classified employees; see my endorsements page. I am gratified that these diverse organizations have recognized and respected the principled course that the county office under my leadership has followed in the Oakland crisis.

How do you see the current situation in Oakland under the state administrator?

The Oakland school district has had severe problems for a long time. Too often, the people who ran the schools thought of themselves and their friends first, and the children last or not at all. As a result, many Oakland schools have been among the worst in the state.

The state takeover is a bitter medicine, and the doctor who is administering it has a thankless job. No local school board would be + or should be + happy that its powers have been stripped.

As long as the state administration lasts, the County Office is not in control of the Oakland district either, any more than the Oakland school board.

The current situation in the Oakland school district is a mixed bag. There is some real progress. Some of the worst schools have been or are being radically transformed for the better. I visited and was impressed, for example, by the changes at Castlemont High School. These achievements deserve to be more widely known.

I also hear many troubling reports about dilapidated facilities, demoralized teachers and staff, arbitrary decisions, out-of-control charters, and other issues.

Very troubling to us is the fact that Oakland's financial controls + its budget numbers + are no more transparent than they were before the state takeover. The County Office has a continuing responsibility to assist the state in monitoring Oakland's budget. We have on several occasions expressed our strong concern at the inadequate fiscal controls in place under the state administration.

How long will the state takeover last? That decision will be made by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, based on benchmarks developed by FCMAT, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. FCMAT gives Oakland's state administrator a detailed quarterly report card. Readers can follow Oakland's progress on the FCMAT web site.

What can Oakland education activists do to speed up the return to local control?

Finger-pointing is useless. For every finger Oakland points at the county or the state, three fingers point back at Oakland. Oakland caused Oakland's problems, and the first step in recovery is to take responsibility.

There is a fiscal recovery plan in place. Concerned educators, parents, and other members of the community should demand regular progress reports.

Oakland has a wealth of educational experience and wisdom. The way to speed the return to local self-determination is to demonstrate concretely that an organized, representative body of Oakland educational leaders has a workable, fiscally realistic vision for the Oakland schools.

What is your response to the criticism that your students at Juvenile Hall have among the lowest test scores in the state, and that the County schools at Juvenile Hall are substandard?

This criticism is indefensible and irresponsible. Students come to our county schools at Juvenile Hall because they have been arrested and convicted of a crime. Typically, they come from district schools that have among the lowest test scores in the state. These students spend an average of 15 days with us. We have made enormous efforts to ensure that their brief visit is an educationally positive experience. We have upgraded the teaching staff. We have built a library. We have started a numeracy program. We are most proud of our Character-Based Literacy program. This is a curriculum developed by Santa Clara University. I also brought in the Write to Read program that brings authors in person to visit with the students and talk about their books. We recently hosted Dolores Huerta as visiting author, for example (see photo). We have strong evidence of reading improvement in this program, and no one with actual knowledge of the program can fail to be impressed by what the staff does with these challenging children in the short time they are with us. The investment we have made in these children during the past years is paying off. The latest figures from the State Department of Education show that our students' test scores improved 163 points over last year, more than any other county with comparable alternative school enrollment figures.