OAKLAND — Through recent leadership turmoil at the Oakland Unified School District, a lone constant was Kyla Johnson-Trammell, who shepherded the embattled schools on a long journey out of the state’s financial oversight.
On Thursday, the final day of the 2025-26 school year, Johnson-Trammell addressed the public in rare fashion: She was preparing for her exit as the district’s superintendent, a title she had held since 2017.
But rather than set the record straight about her mysterious firing by the school board months earlier than her planned departure, Johnson-Trammell ran through her accomplishments and gave a kind of treatise on the district’s immediate future.
“We need to prepare our students for the future,” she said. “Our kids will change industries and jobs more than I ever did — and I consider myself young.”
In a controversial move, the school board voted 4-3 last month to sever ties with Johnson-Trammell, who otherwise would have served in her role through 2027.
She offered no explanation for her departure, citing the confidentiality of the board’s decision, and further declined to weigh in on the split politics of the elected body, in which four labor-backed directors have overruled the other three members on key decisions.
Still, the superintendent pointedly urged school leaders to acknowledge what she described as an uncomfortable reality for the oft-cash-strapped district — that a number of Oakland campuses will need to merge or close in the near future.
The district had launched an effort in the 1990s to prioritize “small schools,” but the financial challenges of paying for so much administrative staff has dovetailed in recent years with declining enrollment at campuses in some of the city’s lower-income neighborhoods.
The last attempt by school leaders to close campuses led to protests, hunger strikes and board resignations. Johnson-Trammell said that kind of chaos can be avoided next time if the district’s leaders “sit and listen to why (the community) is so angry.”
“Saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to deal with that (anger) so we’re going to do nothing’ — that’s weak,” Johnson-Trammell said at the news conference. “This is not a seat for the weak.”
Oakland Unified School District Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell takes part in a press conference on Monday, May 15, 2023, at McClymonds High School in Oakland, Calif. Johnson-Trammell discussed the end of a strike by teachers in the district. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group) (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
The outgoing superintendent was flanked by her most vocal supporter on the school board, Director Mike Hutchinson, who last month publicly criticized his fellow directors for firing Johnson-Trammell and accused them of colluding with the city’s teachers union.
Johnson-Trammell’s firing shocked even the district’s two ceremonial student directors, who said at the meeting they had been given no information for why the popular superintendent was shown the door.
In addition to school closures, Johnson-Trammell made it a point on Thursday to call for the Oakland schools to embrace artificial intelligence — “not as a replacement, but as a powerful tool,” she said.
“AI has the potential to help personalize learning … to free up valuable time for educators to focus on what matters most: building deeper connections with students,” Johnson-Trammell said.
The comments about AI may have suggested what the departing superintendent had planned to implement at the Oakland schools before her firing.
Hutchinson, however, later said in an interview he did not suspect that the technology — widely considered both remarkable and threatening to jobs — had anything to do with last month’s closed-door vote.
The news conference Thursday also counted as attendees Oakland Councilmember Noel Gallo, NAACP Oakland chapter president Cynthia Adams and former school board Director Sam Davis.
Three members of the Oakland Unified School District board, VanCedric Williams, left, Jennifer Brouhard, center, and Valarie Bachelor, hold a press conference, where they urged other board members to authorize negotiations for “common good” proposals demanded by the teachers union, outside a district office in Oakland, Calif., on May 8, 2023. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Johnson-Trammell, who rarely addressed the media directly during her time as superintendent, gave her remarks at the district’s new headquarters on Union Street in West Oakland.
A day earlier, the building had been named after Marcus Foster, the late superintendent of the Oakland schools — and the first Black person to hold that title in a large city school district — who was assassinated in 1973 by the far-left Symbionese Liberation Army.
The city schools are imbued with Oakland’s rich progressive history, a cause championed by the teachers’ union, which went on an extended strike in 2023 to embed social-justice policies into the new labor contract.
More recently, though, the union has become the subject of scrutiny across much of the district.
The decision by board President Jennifer Brouhard, along with directors Valarie Bachelor, Rachel Latta and VanCedric Williams, led the NAACP chapter to distribute an open letter on Wednesday defending Johnson-Trammell.
“Superintendent Johnson-Trammell’s contributions were not only historic but stabilizing,” the chapter said in the statement.
Indeed, Johnson-Trammell helped lead Oakland Unified out from more than two decades of state receivership — a setup in which California officials and later the Alameda County’s superintendent had final say over the district’s finances.
There were few answers Thursday for why the superintendent is leaving. But she had some ideas for what should come next.
“Rapid leadership turnover, erodes trust. Period,” Johnson-Trammell said.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].