Voter Frustration With OUSD on Track to Unseat School Board Incumbents
Oakland’s school board could be headed for a major shakeup after last week’s election, with one incumbent conceding defeat, one still trailing and the third locked in a tight race, according to the latest results.
Oakland Unified School District board president Jennifer Brouhard took a slim lead over her challenger Arielle Fleisher after Alameda County updated its ballot returns Monday night, while vice president Valarie Bachelor trails Alexandra Williams by about 10 points. Mike Hutchinson, a longtime critic of Brouhard and Bachelor, conceded his reelection bid on Friday night.
Regardless of the final results, voters’ strong showing for the newcomers in the races appear to have sent a clear message of dissatisfaction to the city’s school board.
“The campaign, putting a spotlight on the challenges that students face and the real failure of this current school board to address them … it feels like that message really, really cut through, and people want better for Oakland students,” Fleisher, a transit policy director and OUSD parent, said last week after initial ballot returns.
Three of the board’s seven district-based seats were up for election this month. All three incumbents ran reelection campaigns, and each was challenged by a candidate promising a new direction to OUSD amid increasing community concern about board dysfunction.
The current body, which took office in January 2025, has elected Brouhard and Bachelor as its president and vice president, respectively, for the past two years.
Under their leadership, a four-member majority backed by the teachers union has muscled through a series of controversial decisions on razor-thin votes: from agreeing to a separation agreement with longtime Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell in April 2025 and quietly suspending the search for a permanent replacement, to making financial decisions that backfired and seemed to undercut the district’s chief financial officer amid a dire budget shortfall.
Hutchinson has opposed the union-backed majority at nearly every turn. In an interview with KQED this fall, he called them “four directors who have hijacked our district.”
He was the only incumbent candidate who received an endorsement from Oakland Parents for Quality Education, a political action committee formed ahead of the election to elect candidates “who will put students first” and backed by moderate group Empower Oakland.
He has spent nearly two years espousing his own concerns with the district’s direction, but it seems that Oaklanders’ dissatisfaction with the board as a whole could have been a detriment to his campaign.
“While there are still ballots to be counted, it appears that we did not win reelection to the school board,” Hutchinson said in a statement Friday. “Although it is disappointing, it is not entirely unexpected given what we have faced over the last four years. I have often said that if doing the right thing costs me reelection then so be it.”
He said that he was proud of his record over the last six years — which includes reversing a controversial school closure plan in 2022 and overseeing the district’s exit from state financial receivership.
Camp, a public policy professional and OUSD mom, recognized Hutchinson for his years of service in a statement Monday night all but declaring victory.
While she said votes remain to be counted, “if given the privilege of serving on the school board, I look forward to bringing people together, finding common ground, and putting students first.”
The Oakland parents committee had urged parents to rank both Camp and Hutchinson in District 4 in the ranked-choice election. In District 6, the committee recommended voters rank Williams and another OUSD mom challenging Bachelor, LeAna Powell. In District 2, it endorsed only Fleisher.
“Throughout this campaign, we heard from families frustrated by years of instability and dysfunction,” said Trishala Vinnakota, a political consultant for the PAC.
“I think we are seeing that in these results,” Vinnakota continued.
Both Williams, a charter school educator, and Fleisher took up a tough task challenging incumbents backed by the Oakland Education Association, which has historically been a decisive force behind district politics.
As of the latest county results, Williams maintains about a 10-point lead over Bachelor after Powell is eliminated in the first round of ranked-choice vote tallying. Fleisher, who was ahead in initial ballot returns, fell 340 votes behind Brouhard in Monday night’s update.
To see both perform strongly against the incumbents was “shocking” to Anna Utgoff, who started a parent-run newsletter that reports on OUSD’s bi-weekly board meetings earlier this year.
“It is a huge change for parents … to be paying close enough attention to have voted in change candidates who are not the ones recommended by the OEA,” she said, referring to the teachers union.
“I do think given that the OEA-backed candidates have had the majority for the last two years at least, parents are starting to wonder if the OEA’s policy is what they want to support,” Utgoff continued.
She pointed to last May, when the board majority gave OUSD’s chief financial officer direction to cap contracts with consultants and service providers, as a “wake-up call” for many parents. The directive was part of a budget plan brought by Brouhard and Bachelor that aimed to “keep cuts away from students” — echoing the union’s common refrain that the district is top-heavy and spends too much on high-level employees and third-party contracts.
Hutchinson and Lisa Grant-Dawson, the district’s budget chief at the time, vehemently opposed the proposal, saying it could have unintended consequences. Still, it was approved, inadvertently capping contracts the school district held with local nonprofits that provide enrichment and after-school care. The cuts were quickly reversed, but they would have led to a reduction of those services by up to 80%, leaving parents scrambling.
Utgoff said the messaging “that ‘we’re not cutting services at school sites, we’re not cutting services for students,’ is the reality that parents experience.”
She said there’s been a similar dissonance in the district’s messaging about its fiscal status.
“The majority that’s been in charge has been sending this really consistent message of ‘Things are on track, we’ve got it under control’ — and that’s just not what parents feel in their schools,” Utgoff continued.
As recently as the week before the election, the district has received a series of warnings from the Alameda County Office of Education and FCMAT, the financial company tasked with assisting California districts with financial management, about its budget status — all while declaring that the district’s most recent budget is “worth celebrating.”
FCMAT cited “significant concerns regarding the reliability of the district’s financial management processes and the information used to support fiscal decision-making,” according to its most recent report, which lists OUSD’s risk of financial insolvency as high.
The review pointed to the district’s 2025-2026 budget, which the board approved despite a $30 million hole in June, saying they would identify the necessary cuts later. Earlier in the spring, the board approved a contract agreement with OEA that includes raises of at least 11% to 13% for teachers, to the tune of about $60 million.
In interviews with KQED this fall, both Brouhard and Bachelor said they believed the district was moving in the right financial direction.
Additional ballot returns are expected Friday evening.