Dear Oakland school board: Dinner’s on us
OUSD board members need to work together to turn the district around. Oakland Report offers a time-honored solution: break bread together.
At a recent Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board of education meeting, one parent told the board that they need to “shake hands” and “learn how to work together.”1
OUSD board meetings are famously contentious, with board members often expressing open animosity towards each other. In the midst of a stressful district restructuring, it’s easy to forget that everyone is on the same team and pursuing a critical and precious mission: educating over 34,000 Oakland students to lead happy, productive and fulfilling lives.
So, Oakland Report has a proposition for the seven members of the OUSD board of education: Let us take you all to dinner, on us. Breaking bread is a time-honored way for people to forge new bonds and bridge divides.
We are quite serious about this offer.
Ground rules
Oakland Report will foot the bill at a nice restaurant. We’ll pick the restaurant, but board members are welcome to send us suggestions or preferences.
Board members are free to pay for their own dinner if desired.
Oakland Report seeks nothing in return. We will reserve a table for seven and inform the board members of the time and place.
The ground rules are simple:
The subject of Oakland schools is strictly off-limits. No exceptions.2
Learn at least one new interesting thing about each of your colleagues that you did not know before.
Enjoy each other’s company.
Here are a few icebreaker questions to help you get started:
What was your very first job?
If you were a professional wrestler, what would be your entrance theme song?
What’s the most embarrassing fashion trend you used to rock?
What would your superpower be and why?
If you had a time machine but could only use it once, would you go back in time or into the future?
If you really want to get into the spirit: everyone create playlists of your favorite songs, then everyone listen to the playlists and guess whose is whose.
These may be silly questions, but they serve an important purpose: we believe that the OUSD board members have far more in common with each other than they may think.
They are all passionate about Oakland Unified’s schools, children, families, and workforce.
They are all volunteers who give untold hours of their time and attention to serving our public schools — an often thankless job.
They are all educated, thoughtful, grown adults whose lives and careers are ones of achievement and service to the community.
They all successfully ran for elected office, willingly putting themselves under a public microscope — and their reputations on the line — for all to see.
In short, they are all human beings who care a lot and deserve to get (and give) respect for trying to make our schools better, each in their own way.
If you take us up on the offer, or go independently, please send us a selfie. And regardless, we hope our offer is taken in the spirit it is given: friendship, collegiality, sincerity, and our shared love of Oakland’s schools and desire to see them succeed.
Dinner awaits.
Video clip 1. Parent of two OUSD students calls for decorum and urges the OUSD board to “shake hands, learn how to work together” at the December 10, 2025 board meeting:
Oakland Unified School District. “OUSD board meeting video.” Oakland, California, Dec. 10, 2025 (1:43:45 - 1:44:25) https://ousd.granicus.com/player/clip/2802?meta_id=1025467
The Brown Act does not prevent elected officials from being in the same room absent a posted agenda. Elected officials do this routinely, especially at social events. The Brown Act does prohibit a quorum from discussing their agency’s business absent a posted agenda and meaningful public access to the discussion. This is why our dinner proposal makes explicit that the board may not discuss school business at dinner. Our goal here is to show appreciation for the board taking on extremely challenging jobs on behalf of Oakland students — and provide an easy opportunity for the board members to improve their interpersonal understanding of each other, make small talk, and get to know each other as people on personal topics, not business.
Thank you, Oakland Report, for zooming in to give us granular details about all the issues, technical, economic & political, and for zooming out to keep our human perspective and empathy. Bravo. I hope the Board can see its way to not only accept your offer, but have the sense to recognize (and realize!) the deeper value and basic humanity it offers.
The short video depicts a lot of what's wrong at the Board of OUSD:
No decorum, playing politics and no co-operation among the members.