The Oakland Unified School District will be without a permanent superintendent for at least another year, the latest setback for a district mired in financial strain and infighting.
In a closed session discussion Wednesday, the school board gave direction to restart the superintendent search this fall, board president Jennifer Brouhard told The Oaklandside.
“There was so much work going on with the budget that what the school board members had capacity to do was deal with the budget and deal with our first interim [budget report] and our budget adjustments,” Brouhard said. “We just felt like we needed to give the focus to that.”
Mike Hutchinson, who represents District 4, told The Oaklandside that the board intends to extend its contract with interim superintendent Denise Saddler for another year, through June 30, 2027.
Saddler, a former principal, central office administrator, and teachers union leader, was appointed as interim superintendent last year for a one-year contract set to end in June 2026 while OUSD searched for a permanent chief. Last October, the board approved a contract for up to $150,000 with the search firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates to lead a national search. The firm promised a robust community engagement process with town halls and surveys to hear from students, families, staff, and labor groups to gauge what these constituencies wanted in a leader, with a goal of presenting candidates to the board in January and February of this year, with a finalist selected by this month.
None of that work commenced, Brouhard said, and the firm has not been paid any of the original $150,000. She added that the board will publicly vote on amending the search firm contract and Saddler’s agreement by the end of June.
The apparent lack of transparency has echoes with another closed session a year ago, when the board first elected to end its contract with previous superintendent, Kyla Johnson-Trammell. In that case, too, the board held a discussion in closed session and revealed little afterward, until Hutchinson said publicly that they were attempting to oust Johnson-Trammell, who had been in the superintendent role since 2017. The separation was officially announced last April — but the board has yet to make public what drove the decision.
OUSD’s recent leadership challenges have not been confined to the superintendent’s office.
In December, OUSD’s chief business officer Lisa Grant-Dawson and chief of staff Dan Bellino left the district. The board then approved a $415,000 contract with Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates — the same firm it hired to conduct the superintendent search — to take over Grant-Dawson’s duties through May 1, 2026. On Wednesday, the board approved an extension of that contract through December 31, 2026, for an additional $450,000, for a total of $865,000, for work that includes calculating costs of new bargaining contracts, helping with budget adoption for the 2026-2027 school year, and advising OUSD on potentially restructuring the finance division.
Grant-Dawson’s annual salary was a fraction of that amount, $334,425.
Before signing off on the contract extension, school board directors asked for more clarity on what exactly the firm would be delivering.
“I do think it’s important for us to hold anyone accountable, particularly HYA. It is important for us to see the actual plan,” said Patrice Berry, the director for District 5. “How are they going to do it? Who’s going to do what? Who’s reporting to who? When are we going to see it?”
Hutchinson voted against the amended contract; the other six school board directors voted to approve it.
The OUSD school board in February 2026. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside
“We still don’t have a fiscal solvency plan,” Hutchinson said Wednesday. “With this new amendment, it’ll bring their contract for the year from OUSD in 2026 up to nearly a million dollars, or roughly three times what it would have cost to have a chief business officer.”
Saddler recently announced that she had appointed Tara Gard, previously the district’s chief of talent, as deputy superintendent of business and operations, effectively filling Grant-Dawson’s old role — and begging the question of why the HYA contract extension was needed. In that position, Gard will continue to oversee the talent division while also managing the budget and accounting, payroll, and transportation departments. Another staff member, Jeff Dillon Sr., will serve as the acting head of the talent department.
Reviving the school closure debate
Also on Wednesday, the district’s union for principals and school administrators, United Administrators of Oakland Schools, sent a letter urging Saddler and the board to reconsider their stand against school closures, noting that in the district’s current budget plan, schools are being stripped of crucial staff and resources that support student learning. The letter was signed by more than two-thirds of the district’s principals, representing preschools, elementary schools, middle schools and high schools from across the city.
“We can no longer afford to postpone difficult decisions about how many schools we operate,” the letter says. “If we neglect this work, we will continuously starve our schools of the resources we need to improve our outcomes for all students.”
The letter also raises concerns about the new OEA contract, which reduces teacher professional development, and the search for a new superintendent and chief business officer, emphasizing the need for strong senior leadership and collaboration at this moment. It asks for a meeting with district leaders to address contract negotiations, hiring for those two leadership titles, and reducing the footprint of OUSD.
“As educators, we are concerned that recent decisions — negotiated by talent and legal and supported by the board — have neglected informed stakeholder input, sidelining important voices from across our system,” the letter says. “We are concerned that these decisions will lead to decreased professional development at school sites, poor transparency in decision-making, and increased fiscal instability.”
Facilities updates
During Wednesday’s meeting the board approved its facilities master plan, an extensive report detailing the conditions of every OUSD property and the upgrades each site needs. It will serve as a roadmap for school board directors as they decide where to make capital improvements with future bond dollars. Measure Y, the last facilities bond approved by voters in 2020, is currently paying for major upgrades at McClymonds High, Coliseum College Prep Academy, Garfield Elementary, Melrose Leadership Academy, Fremont High, and Roosevelt Middle.
McClymonds High School is in line for major renovations as part of the Measure Y facilities bond. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside
The board made a small step forward in managing its vacant properties by approving a new advisory committee that will study the former district headquarters at 1025 Second Ave., the former Ralphe Bunche Middle School in West Oakland, and the former Lakeview campus at 725 Grand Ave. The so-called 7-11 Committee, comprised of seven to 11 community members appointed by the school board, is expected to be in place by June 30, and will make recommendations to the board by the end of the year about possible uses for those properties.
The board unanimously approved a plan to address sometimes grueling classroom temperatures during heat waves, a direct result of parent and community pressure. The plan will dedicate up to $8 million in funds from Measure Y to install window films, blinds, and canopies and plant more trees to provide relief from the heat at district elementary schools.
Alameda County Superintendent issues notice
Earlier this month, Alameda County superintendent Alysse Castro told the school board that OUSD’s incomplete financial picture is a cause of ongoing concern. She imposed new requirements the board must fulfill by the end of next week.
In an April 16 letter evaluating OUSD’s second interim budget report, Castro said OUSD’s patterns of fickle decision making, shifting leadership, and making financial commitments without the plans to support them have put the district in a precarious position.
She emphasized the board’s history of addressing budget constraints through a series of reactive budget cuts, rather than developing a fiscal solvency plan that fundamentally overhauls how OUSD spends its money. The district recently settled a contract with the Oakland Education Association teachers union, promising higher salaries but district leadership have not identified how it will pay for them, she noted.
Alameda County Superintendent Alysse Castro addresses the board during a meeting on Feb. 12, 2025. Credit: Florence Middleton for The Oaklandside
“Staff turnover, leadership transitions, and rapidly shifting plans have made it difficult to keep financial systems current,” Castro said. “At the same time, major decisions — such as staffing reductions, early retirement incentives, and labor agreements — are being made faster than their full fiscal impact can be analyzed and incorporated into the budget.”
The county superintendent is requiring OUSD to submit several reports by the end of April: budget projections with all contracts incorporated through June 2026, projections of cash balances as of June 30, and all collective bargaining agreements.
In 2021, former county superintendent L.K. Monroe issued OUSD a “lack of going concern” determination regarding the district’s finances and threatened to withhold pay for the superintendent and school board if they didn’t comply with her requests for additional financial documents.
She never took that step.
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