A recent show on radio station KPFA 94.1 featured a discussion about the racialized threats to less affluent urban public school districts as state authorities pressure school leaders to take out bailout loans to resolve budget shortfalls. These loans come with draconian terms that eliminate the authority of voter-selected school boards and impose extreme austerity measures, including the closure of many schools in poorer neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
A dozen mostly minority school districts have been forced under state control in the past 20 years, including the Oakland Unified School District. At present, Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), an ethnically and racially diverse district of about 42,000 students, is the target, but the district\u2019s school board and the community are fighting back.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the July 15 show, \u201cEducation Today,\u201d hosted by education professor Kitty Kelly Epstein, Taylor Kayatta, a certificated public accountant (CPA) who serves as the first vice president of SCUSD, spoke about the ongoing struggle of their board and community to keep SCUSD from being taken over.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been pressure on my school district for over a decade now; there\u2019s a feeling (from the state) that we\u2019re intrinsically broken, that we cannot manage our finances,\u201d said Kayatta, who has two elementary students in SCUSD.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt reached a fever pitch a couple of years ago before COVID; I really felt it as a parent in the community that they were coming for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin the past year, they\u2019re back at it again,\u201d he said. \u201cThe pressure right now to accept a state loan is something I am not sure I could even describe.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said that the outside authorities would not even allow the board to hire its own financial adviser to help find solutions; the state takeover is the only option they want.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a county superintendent in Sacramento County (who) has been on the job for decades. It\u2019s been his mission, in my opinion, that something is wrong with Sac City Unified, that we are the problem child; we need outside control, (and) we shouldn\u2019t be running ourselves,\u201d said Kayatta.<\/p>\n
In a district where enrollment is slightly declining, and many students have complex educational needs, SCUSD does face financial difficulties, he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be challenges with the budget in the long term, but I think we need to address that in a way that is community-driven, with the community understanding what it means rather than accepting some blanket (imposed) \u2018best practice\u2019 that often involves making dramatic, harsh cuts, things like closing schools without plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you need to make cuts, make them in a way that makes sense rather than just trying to save a dollar this school year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For example, closing a school may save a little money in the short run but almost always means loss of student enrollment as families move out of the district, which ends up costing a district more than it saves and can lead to a cycle of decline and demoralization.<\/p>\n
Closely allied with the County Superintendent is the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), \u201cwhich has been at the heels of this district as long as I\u2019ve lived in the district,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
FCMAT is a state-funded nonprofit based in Bakersfield that has been granted sweeping authority under state law to pressure school districts to adopt fiscal austerity. <\/p>\n
In theory, something like FCMAT would be a good thing, an agency that would help districts that face some financial difficulties, he said. \u201cBut my experience and the experience of people in Sacramento is that they\u2019re an outside agency that has its own motivations.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not about helping you save your budget and helping you get through temporary (issues). They\u2019re more about taking control over a district that they think shouldn\u2019t be running itself.\u201d <\/p>\n
A school board is democratically elected and exists as \u201cthe people\u2019s voice,\u201d Kayatta said. Local schools need leadership that understands the problems and issues the community faces, \u201cnot an outside appointed group of people from Bakerfield who don\u2019t really understand what Sacramento needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Show host Kitty Kelly Epstein, who actively opposed the state takeover of Oakland schools two decades ago, discussed its impact, which formally lasted until OUSD\u2019s bailout loan was repaid in June 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a district is taken over by the state, that means the school board loses all their power, which means that the electors, that\u2019s the residents, lose all their power because they don\u2019t get to elect anybody. There\u2019s somebody put in charge, and they make all the decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of Oakland, Oakland\u2019s debt could have been solved internally. That was not allowed by the state senator at the time, Don Perata,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actual amount that the district needed was about $37 million, and they were not allowed to use their own money to cover the debt. The loan that was imposed without the will of the people of Oakland was a $100 million. They fired the superintendent, brought in a state receiver, and spent the $100 million on whatever they wanted because there was no participation by people in Oakland,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it sounds shocking. It was shocking, and Oakland was not the only district. There were others: Inglewood, Vallejo, Compton, said Kelly Epstein. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who often have the least amount of input anyway, because of inequalities and racism in our system, get the little bit of participation that they have in schools, which is to elect a school board, taken away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Post Staff A recent show on radio station KPFA 94.1 featured a discussion about the racialized threats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,2351,155163,7,51111,7360,172440,93,1493,10372,172441,1071,44283,143182,143,145,144,172442,172443,1492,69178],"class_list":["post-434285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-barbara-lee","tag-brenda-grisham","tag-california","tag-city-budget","tag-crime-reduction","tag-election-candidates","tag-featured","tag-homelessness","tag-illegal-dumping","tag-julius-robinson","tag-local-government","tag-mayoral-election","tag-mindy-pechenuk","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-mayor-race","tag-oakland-politics","tag-public-safety","tag-voter-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}