Oakland school board elections: Jennifer Brouhard, Nick Resnick and Valarie Bachelor on way to seats

A year of instability – and often chaos – at the Oakland Unified School District is likely culminating in new leadership, with retired teacher Jennifer Brouhard, union organizer Valarie Bachelor and business executive Nick Resnick in the lead for board seats.

With several thousand votes counted in each race and another large set of results expected to be released Monday, the election could mark a change in direction for a school community rocked by controversial campus closures, intensely disputed internal finances and concerns over student safety. If the three frontrunners are elected, the new majority could decide to revisit the decision earlier this year to close several schools.

So far, the election has also been a victory for the Oakland Education Association, the district’s teachers union whose political action committee spent tens of thousands of dollars independently of candidate-controlled committees to get Brouhard and Bachelor elected to the board. A third candidate it supported, district parent Pecolia Manigo, has fallen behind in the District 4 race.

But the union’s hefty spending was matched by another independent entity that spent similarly large sums of cash on both Resnick and incumbent Director Kyra Mungia, who is losing to Bachelor in District 6.

That group, cryptically named Oakland Teachers Supporting Resnick and Mungia for School Board 2022, sponsored by Committee for California, is not affiliated with the faculty union. Representatives of the committee could not be reached at a publicly listed phone number.

The remaining uncounted ballots – combined with the city’s ranked-choice voting format that allows voters to list their candidates by preference – could still see current board directors Mike Hutchinson and Mungia catch up to Resnick and Bachelor in districts 4 and 6, respectively.

Currently, ranked choice results from the already-counted ballots indicate that Resnick is leading Hutchinson 52% to 48% in District 4, which runs from the Allendale neighborhood to Montclair in the north.

Bachelor leads Mungia in District 6, which covers a lengthy portion of East Oakland from the Oakland Coliseum all the way to Anthony Chabot Regional Park in the hills.

In District 2, which encompasses neighborhoods south and east of Lake Merritt, it appears likely from the early results that Brouhard, a retired teacher of 27 years, will defeat David Kakishiba, a school board veteran who last served in 2014. Brouhard has about a 62% to 38% lead in early ranked choice results.

“It was eye-opening to see how much it costs to run a school board campaign,” Brouhard said, crediting the teachers union’s financial support as “so helpful in dealing with those costs.”

Brouhard is receiving the majority of second-choice vote transfers from Max Orozco, a parent in the district who, like Brouhard, campaigned in vehement opposition to the district’s closing of several schools earlier this year for financial reasons.

The same goes for Hutchinson, a current director who voted repeatedly against the closures earlier this year and is receiving transfers from like-minded Manigo. Hutchinson ran for the District 4 seat after his home was redistricted, but he can serve out the last two years of his term in District 5 if Resnick prevails.

Resnick, a former Oakland Unified math teacher and the CEO of a textbook company, opposed the closures this year over concerns that primarily Black and Brown students would be affected by them, but he does believe consolidating campuses could help restore the district’s finances.

“In Oakland, we often get into these one-issue battles,” he said in an interview. “And to be a school board member, especially at this time where we know we’re failing so many families, voters have understood that we can’t just be about one thing.”

Beyond the candidates themselves, the major player in this year’s school board elections was the teachers union, a Goliath that Resnick said his campaign had to “actively overcome every day for the last 12 months.”

In total, the union’s PAC spent $68,000 in support of Manigo, $50,000 in support of Brouhard and $46,000 in support of Bachelor – mostly for mailers and digital ads. All are candidates who campaigned against the school closures and faced opponents – Resnick, Kakishiba and Mungia – who have adopted more moderate stances.

“The days of truly independent candidates seem to be over for now,” said Kakishiba, who served on the school board between 2002 and 2014. “Overall, that doesn’t bode well for our schools or democratic participation.”

Brouhard, on the other hand, has little patience for ominous talk of big union spending: “It drives me nuts,” she said.