Appeal Filed to Return Local Control to Oakland Schools

Appeal Filed to Return Local Control to Oakland Schools

April 28, 2005

A group of Oakland community leaders have appealed the decision of an Alameda County Superior Court judge to dismiss their lawsuit challenging the legality of the State takeover of Oakland’s schools.

In their brief to the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco, the plaintiffs argue that the superior court erred in not concluding that Senate Bill 39 violates the rights of Oakland’s voters to elect a school board that exercises the powers and duties established under the State Constitution, Education Code, and Oakland City Charter.

The plaintiffs include include Oakland POST publisher and former school board member Paul Cobb, former Oakland school superintendent and current county school board member Dennis Chaconas, and former Oakland city council member Wilson Riles.

The plaintiffs ask the Court of Appeal to overrule the superior court’s order sustaining the demurrer by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell to their complaint so that they may take their case to trial. They argue that under the authority granted to charter cities under the State Constitution, the Oakland City Charter provides for the election of its school board. A school board possesses substantial powers and duties that are set forth in both the California Constitution and the State Education Code.

SB 39, by eliminating all of those powers and duties, thereby conflicts with the Constitution, Education Code, and City Charter, according to the appeal. The plaintiffs argue that the State did not have the discretion to refuse to provide financial support to the Oakland school district to insure that it did not run out of funds in 2003. Therefore, according to the appeal, the State’s fulfillment of its responsibility did not allow it to attach unlawful conditions to its loan to the Oakland school district.

Under well-established legal authority, the State’s intrusion into the affairs of the Oakland school district was required to be accomplished by means “narrowly tailored” to satisfy the State’s lawful concerns with only minimally necessary intrusions on local interests, according to the appeal.

SB 39 fails this test, the appeal concludes, because complete State assumption of the powers and duties of the Oakland school board was not necessary to insure that the State’s interests in the repayment of its loan and in the Oakland district’s fiscal recovery were protected,

The appeal, filed by Oakland attorney and school board member Dan Siegel, will be heard in approximately six months.