OAKLAND — School leaders here chose an interim superintendent Friday who will helm the financially troubled and politically fraught district, a surprise vote that took place weeks after the school board mysteriously fired Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell.
Denise Saddler, a veteran of East Bay educational institutions whose career began in the 1970s, is finalizing contract terms with the Oakland Unified School District, officials said. She will likely start July 1.
The school board voted 6-1 in a closed-door meeting, led by board President Jennifer Brouhard, one of four directors who last month voted to fire Johnson-Trammell.
Most recently, Saddler filled in as an interim principal at Oakland schools in need of leadership restructuring.
She sat on the advisory committee that helped name the district’s new West Oakland headquarters for Marcus Foster, the first Black superintendent of a large city’s school district who was assassinated in 1973.
For those skeptical of the Oakland teachers union, her key role was a job she held decade ago: president of the Oakland Education Association.
Saddler, though, appears to have served in that role as far back as the 1980s, before working at Holy Names University, in Oakland’s city government and then in various leadership roles at the city schools. She earned a doctor of education degree from Mills College in 2014, per her LinkedIn page.
Fellow longtime education leaders cast doubt Friday that Saddler would lean toward the union’s interests when she sits across from them at the bargaining table. The teacher contract expires June 30.
“I’m not for a second worried,” said Jorge Lerma, who recently worked with Saddler as interim co-principals of Garfield Elementary School and served a brief school board stint last year, during which he did not earn the union’s favor. “She’s accomplished and she would do the job right.”
The board’s decision to hire Saddler, rather than someone already working in the district’s central office, did appear to signal a kind of overhaul at Oakland Unified that reshapes its leadership and moves away from Johnson-Trammell’s immediate orbit.
School Board Director Mike Hutchinson, a foe of the teachers union and the board majority it backs, cast the lone dissenting vote in Friday’s decision.
“They forced our superintendent out and now they’re trying to destroy her legacy and undo the real progress we’ve made over the last three years,” he said Friday. “I’m going to continue to fight.”
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 politics at Oakland Unified have moved from contentious to outright toxic in the past two years, with the board split on key votes around financial decisions.
The grey area between union representation and district leadership has led Hutchinson and others to accuse Brouhard and directors Valarie Bachelor, Rachel Latta and VanCedric Williams of colluding with their labor allies.
Johnson-Trammell and Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Alysse Castro have pressured the city board to close or merge some of the district’s campuses to save on administrative costs. But labor leaders and the board’s majority have resisted getting rid of the city’s smallest schools.
Any optimism over Oakland Unified’s exit from the county and state’s financial oversight may have been marred last month by Johnson-Trammell’s firing.
The former superintendent had previously intended to serve in her role through the end of her contract in 2027. At her final news conference Thursday, she warned about rapid turnover of leadership, saying it can cause instability.
Former school board Director Sam Davis, who has known Saddler for years, speculated she would be as likely as her predecessor to find closing some campuses to be a fiscally necessary move.
“I don’t think she’s going to come in and be this firebrand,” Davis said in an interview. “I think the differences we’re talking about here are inches apart.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].