OUSD names interim superintendent; outgoing leader cautions about rapid shifts at the top

A day after outgoing Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell delivered a farewell address, the Oakland Unified School District announced Friday that former Chabot Elementary School Principal Denise Saddler will serve as interim superintendent for the next school year.

The shift comes less than a year after the School Board extended Johnson-Trammell’s contract and a month after the board abruptly ended it in a 4-3 closed-session vote. The board has given no reason for her ouster, which is being called voluntary. But Johnson-Trammell told reporters Thursday that she and the board were not on the same page. Though she did not go into specifics, it has been clear that while the superintendent is willing to close under-enrolled schools, the current board has pushed against that option.

Johnson-Trammell will leave the district on June 30, which coincidentally, is the day the district will make its final payment on a $100 million state loan that OUSD took out in 2003, when it came under state receivership. Saddler, former president of the Oakland teachers union, will take the helm on July 1.

In an 11-minute news conference held Thursday, the last day of school before the summer recess, Johnson-Trammell urged the board to provide steady, intentional leadership for the district, adding, “Rapid leadership turnover disrupts progress and erodes trust — period.”

Johnson-Trammell is a product of OUSD, who returned as a teacher in 1998 and rose to superintendent in 2017. While her tenure was marked by the district’s chronic budget problems and its climb out from under state control, Johnson-Trammell highlighted the many strides schools made in those eight years.

She said the budget is in a better position, with a cushion of reserves and the impending infusion of $6 million annually that had been going to the state. She said the overall graduation rate is up to about 80%, rising 9 points in the past decade, while chronic absenteeism is down. And she highlighted the many public-private partnerships that have pumped tens of millions of dollars into the district, including $60 million that Kaiser Permanente has provided since 2010 to expand the community schools mission and bring health centers to 16 schools. The Stephen and Ayesha Curry Foundation — Eat.Learn.Play. — has invested $25 million to improver literacy in OUSD schools and joined forced with the community group Kaboom to rebuild 19 school yards and counting.

But the progress is ongoing, Johnson-Trammell said, with math and reading rates still unacceptable and district planning still not completely focused on instruction, equity and financial health.

“Part of the drive and the motivation to work so hard to get the stability in our system is to shift the energy from focusing on crisis, crisis, crisis to really focusing on academic rigor,” she said. “That is what parents want. That is what our students want.”

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