By Oakland Post Staff

Alameda County Office of Education has called the budget ‘a materially stronger submission than the district has filed in recent years’

Caption: Dr. Denise Saddler. Courtesy photo.

The Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), the state-funded nonprofit in charge of advocating for budget cuts and school closures in local school districts, on Thursday released its Fiscal Health Risk Analysis (FHRA) of Oakland Unified School District.

FCMAT initiated the review after the Alameda County Superintendent of. Schools issued a ‘Notice of Going Concern’ last April. Basing its analysis on the district’s 2025-26 Second Interim Report which reflects financial data as of Jan. 31, FCMAT rated the district’s risk for fiscal insolvency as “high.”

But a later review of the district’s financial reports demonstrated faith in OUSD to turn things around. In its Sept. 15 letter conditionally approving the district’s budget, the Alameda County Office of Education called the budget “a materially stronger submission” than the district has filed in recent years.”

 The County Office of Education noted that closing a structural deficit requires staff to bring forward hard choices, that the Board make them, and staff to carry them out. The county found all three appear to be happening in OUSD. The district is rebuilding the reserves it needs to remain stable, and it still has challenging work ahead.

The district’s progress reflects difficult choices by the Board of Education and staff. In June, the board adopted one plan for the district’s financial recovery and approved the 2026-27 budget. 

Emphasizing how much progress the district has made in the last few years, OUSD Superintendent Dr. Denise Saddler said, “We are working to balance our budget and fund the programs that show results for our children. FCMAT’s findings are part of that work, and we will address the findings in the report.”

Oakland is not alone under state scrutiny. This year, FCMAT also rated 11 other districts, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Antioch,

Burbank, Saddleback Valley, Petaluma, San Ysidro, Rincon Valley Union, Pleasanton, Santa Rosa, and Pacifica as high risk for fiscal insolvency. 

Those districts range from a 2,600-student elementary district to the second-largest school system in the nation. Across these districts, FCMAT found many of the same pressures: compensation growing faster than revenues, rising special education costs, declining enrollment, and budgets that count on reductions not yet named.

That pattern points to the challenge facing public schools across California, and Oakland Unified intends to help lead the response, according to a district press statement. 

California districts are navigating the challenges of a rapidly changing state and an evolving educational landscape. As one of California’s most diverse urban school districts, Oakland Unified faces these pressures with a distinct responsibility to the students, families, and communities it serves. While standing in solidarity with districts statewide, according to OUSD.

Oakland Unified remains steadfast in its commitment to educational equity, innovation, and student achievement, demonstrating that even in the face of significant challenges, its mission to provide every student with a high-quality education remains unwavering, the district said.

By Post Staff

Dolores Huerta, a community organizer known most for her work to support fair wages and justice for migrant workers, passed away in her Bakersfield home on Wednesday from complications of cancer. She was 96.

Accolades poured in from across the nation.

“I cannot imagine a world without Dolores Huerta, and it is with deep sadness that I mourn the passing of my dear friend and legendary leader,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee who met Huerta in the 1970s. “She understood how race, gender, poverty, and economic inequality intersect, pushing for a women’s movement inclusive of Black women and women of color. And she never separated the struggle for farmworkers from reproductive freedom and other civil rights and human rights.”
 Former Berkeley mayor and current state assembly member Jesse Arreguin, who was mentored by Huerta said on Instagram that she was “always driven by a deep sense of justice and fairness, she transformed this state and this nation, changing the lives of farm workers and advancing the rights of all people.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris called Huerta a “pioneering labor leader and legendary civil rights activist.

“Amidst the struggle of the movement, her rallying cry, ‘Si se puede,’ was a call to stay in the fight,” Harris wrote.

Organizing was a family trait. Born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta was the daughter of a traveling coal miner whose reputation as a fiery union leader followed him to the New Mexico Legislature. After moving to Stockton, her mother held two jobs to support her children and went on strike with her cannery union in 1937.

After graduation from Stockton High School, Huerta attended University of the Pacific‘s Stockton College (later San Joaquin Delta College) where she received a teacher’s certificate.

But when the children of farm workers came to school hungry and needing shoes, she quit, believing she could do more for them organizing farm workers and joined the Community Service Organization (CSO).

By the late 1950s, she was organizing other CSO chapters and working as a lobbyist, speaking before the state Legislature, as well as teaching citizenship classes and supporting voter registration drives.

Over the next few years, she was part of several union efforts, co-founding the National Farm Workers’ Association (NFWA) with Cesar Chavez and Gilbert Padilla in 1962.

She became the UFW’s main negotiator, leading to favorable contract for grape workers in 1970. In the years that followed, there were successful boycotts of lettuce, wine and table grapes. In 1975, she helped ensure farm workers’ rights to collective bargaining with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act.

In 1988, while protesting George H.W. Bush’s candidacy for president in San Francisco, Huerta was severely beaten by a police officer, leading a five-year leave of absence from UFW. She returned to work after Chavez’s death in 1993.

The recipient of numerous awards, Huerta used the $100,000 gift for receiving the Puffin/Nation Award for Creative Citizenship in 2002 to create the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which funds full-time organizers to go to neighborhoods and teach residents how to collaborate with government and community groups to exercise self-determination.

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and was made a member of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest award given to foreigners by the Republic of Mexico.

Huerta was married twice and is survived by seven children.

Wikipedia, the Associated Press and other online reports are the source of this story.

By Ashley Hopkinson, EdSource

This story was originally published by EdSource.

Children born to first-time mothers with limited incomes who received home nursing visits showed increased mental health, stronger social and emotional development and academic gains, according to researchers who analyzed the impact of the Nurse-Family Partnership program, one of the largest home visiting programs in the country.

Researchers also found the program reduces anxiety and improves the parenting skills of mothers. It also has a positive impact on home environments and behavior skills in children, researchers found. Researchers said the benefits of the program “warrant continued and increased investment.”

The Nurse-Family Partnership program utilizes trained registered nurses who work closely with families during pregnancy and up to age 2. The nurses teach them to maintain proper health, develop parenting skills and establish work and family goals.

The research team that conducted the analysis was led by James Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in economics and professor and director of the Center for Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago. The study was titled “Nurse-Family Partnership: Parental education and early health result in better child outcomes.”

“This study of Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) shows that parenting early in life very much matters, and that voluntary programs that work closely with parents to strengthen parenting skills and provide early health can make a difference,” the study states. Researchers analyzed information on the health and well-being of mothers and children from pregnancy up to age 12. The study includes a sample size of 1,138 participants. The study analyzed outcomes for children who participated in the program, compared to children who were not part of the program but received some services at the same ages.

A family’s participation in the Nurse-Family Partnership program ends when a child turns 2 but the study found long-term benefits. For instance, the study found that young boys who participated in the program scored higher than peers that did not participate in the program on reading and math assessments, as 12-year-olds, the age when they were last assessed. Researchers said this academic achievement could be attributed, in large part, to the program’s impact — seen as early as age 6 — on cognitive skills, such as a child’s ability to understand, reason, learn and remember.

While the study found the program improved cognitive skills for both boys and girls at age 6, it did not find any significant effect on reading and math achievement for 12-year-old girls who participated in the program. Researchers did not directly address reasons for this in the study.

During home visits, nurses help to promote healthy eating, prenatal care and eliminating the use of tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs, the study states. After delivery, nurses help to foster strong parenting skills and show new moms how to interact with their children. For example, parents are encouraged to read to their children. Mothers are also given advice on goal setting in areas such as work, school and family planning.

The study divided its analysis into five categories: child health, family environments, child cognition (thinking, learning, understanding), social and emotional development (behaviors and attitudes) and achievement scores on math and reading. For example, The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, which measures what experts in the field call English receptive language skills. That refers to words young children can identify and understand when they hear them.

Other key findings in the study include:

• Improved birth weight for infant boys. Boys were healthier at the time of delivery. If left untreated, low birth weight is associated with developmental problems that can persist as a child grows.
• Healthier home environments, parenting attitudes and maternal mental health “significantly improved” among participating mothers for boys and girls by age 2. Mothers of young girls specifically experienced less anxiety, more self-control, higher self-esteem and greater emotional stability, the study states. Under the same categories for boys, results show “mixed.”
• Girls showed more improvement in social and emotional skills, the ability to manage and understand emotions. They specifically improved in areas such as warmth and sensitivity.
• By age 6, both boys and girls who participated in the program showed better cognitive skills, such as thinking, reading, memory and learning.
• Long-term benefits of the program were more evident for boys than girls. For example, by age 12 boys outperformed peers who were not a part of the program in reading and math achievement. Study states “much weaker long-term effects” for girls.
• Positive effects overall were associated with the program’s impact on mothers’ health and early investment in young children.

Faith leaders pledge to build a national movement of moral resistance and act against weaponized religion 

On October 26, in the first-of-its-kind religious movement, more than 30 faith leaders representing over 10 million people launched A Pledge for Moral Defiance, a multi-faith anti-authoritarian initiative. Before a pulpit in the middle of H St and 16th streets NW, within view of the White House, religious leaders vowed to turn the tide on the nation’s democratic erosion. Leaders across faiths and denominations, including Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Christian Church, AME Zion, Latino Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims called on others to join and take action in their states and to the U.S. Capitol. 

Rooted in “An American Encyclical on Our Authoritarian Crisis,” the initiative calls on all religious leaders to actively reject authoritarianism and the weaponization of religion. Law firms and higher education institutions each banded together to defend themselves against direct attacks. Multi-faith religious leaders are now doing the same through prayer, protest, mobilization and accountability. They pledge to refuse allegiance to any political leader or ideology, name voter mobilization and protection as priorities and stand in solidarity to actively defend freedom of conscience. 

Bishop William J. Barber II, civil rights and social justice leader, Founder of Repairers of the Breach and Founding Director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, noted the agreement across this movement of religious leaders that complicity to authoritarianism betrays all faiths. 

“As people of faith, our ultimate allegiance belongs to a higher power, and our sacred text commands us to defend the vulnerable, and love our neighbors, and stand as a witness to truth,” Barber said. “We repent that sometimes we’ve been scared of the people in our pews rather than scared of the judgment of God, we repent, but we also recommit ourselves to the exhausting holy work of building a just society. It’s hard work when authoritarianism threatens to overwrite human rights, and silence conscience. The religious community cannot remain silent because if we do, we are accessories to the crime of everything authoritarianism is doing.”

The initiative emerged from a multi-faith convening of leaders to counter authoritarianism, hosted by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, a group focused on fostering inclusive democracies. Movement leaders are organizing to grow the initiative, mobilizing communities for strong voter turnout and organizing to meet with elected officials.

Corey Saylor, Council on American-Islamic Relations research and advocacy director, declared authoritarianism a threat to all people and faiths. “Authoritarianism arrives in stages, almost always testing itself first on communities that they think others will not defend,” Saylor said. “…This same playbook is used against immigrants, against Black and Brown voters, against journalists, against any faith community whose conscience refuses to submit and do what they’re told. That playbook is putting corrupt wealth and your freedom into their pocket. Today, you must look authoritarianism in the eye and say no. The pledge of allegiance … ends with the words ‘with liberty and justice for all.’ It is time to prove that we meant it.”

Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, asserted we would not idly stand by in the face of voter suppression. “We are in the midst or on the eve of a midterm election that is an inflection moment in our commitment and our cause of preventing the continued slide into authoritarianism,” Taylor said. “Authoritarian leaders are known to try to put their thumbs on elections, to make desperate moves to stay in power and consolidate power. We have our moral defiance playbook that is committed to fighting every form of voter suppression, because every voter is made in the image and likeness of God. We have a commitment to winning, not in a partisan way, but in a way that ensures massive voter turnout…We have a commitment to prove beyond a doubt the election results, and ultimately to ensure those results are enforced, all the way through the seating of a new Congress on January 3rd.”

Rev. Dr. Russell Meyer, executive director for Florida Council of Churches, proclaimed it was time to lift up what a just government should be doing for its people. “We gather today not just to point a finger,” Meyer. “Finger pointing does no good unless it leads to repentance and amendment to life and change. We look across the land, whether in the house behind us or the house in Tallahassee for our state governor, and they are oppressing the poor and enriching those who steal their labor as a means of living. It’s time for us to understand that we are not just defying a bad government, we’re lifting up a vision of what government really should be doing.”

Prominent religious leaders at the launch included:

• The Rev. Phillip C. Hirsch is the bishop at the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Hirsch has spoken out about threats to American democracy and the recent danger facing immigrant communities across the country.
• Rev. Dr. Hanna Broome, director of religious affairs for Repairers of the Breach and ordained elder in the A.M.E. Zion Church. She’s led congregations and coalitions across the Carolinas to confront poverty, racism and the death penalty. 
• Rev. Dr. Alvin O’Neal Jackson, retired pastor and former moderator of Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who has led marches against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and joined other faith leaders in calling for voting rights.
• Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners  who has called on religious leaders to resist anti-democratic threats and defend democracy, including  voting protections.

Learn more about A Pledge for Moral Defiance and see the full list of signatories at  www.moraldefiance.org. 

WATCH the announcement here:

By Special to The Post

Alena Maunder is a third-generation Marin City resident, parent, community advocate, and former Sausalito Marin City School District Trustee who served from 2020 to 2024.

Professionally, Alena is a registered nurse with more than 20 years of healthcare experience and nine years in leadership. She holds degrees in Psychology and Nursing, as well as a Master of Science in Nursing.

With school board experience, she brings a strong understanding of governance, fiscal oversight, accountability, and the importance of stable district leadership.

Alena has also remained actively involved in Marin City through community service, youth programs, and initiatives focused on strengthening opportunities and resources for children and families.

Maunder is seeking to return to the Board to continue advocating for academic excellence, fiscal responsibility, strong special education and mental-health supports, and meaningful community engagement. She is committed to strengthening relationships among students, educators, families, and the Marin City and Sausalito communities while ensuring every student has the opportunity to succeed.

Her campaign reflects her commitment to “Experienced Leadership. Students First.”

Learn more at www.electalenasmcsd.com.

Becerra Urges Black Leaders to Turn Out the Vote in Record Numbers

 A week before the Nov. 3 election where he hopes to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom as the next democratic governor, former U.S. Secretary of Health Xavier Becerra (center) stopped in Oakland to meet with Black leaders. Welcomed by Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee (center right), who is seeking reelection herself, Becerra said he was proud to stand with Black leaders in Oakland as Election Day grows closer. “Thank you to the elected officials, faith leaders, civic and community leaders who joined us at Oakstop, a Black-owned business that supports local entrepreneurs, artists, and community organizations. This election is about protecting all of California’s communities,” he said. “Let’s finish together.” They were joined by constituents Paul and Gay Cobb (left) and Sacramento Observer Publisher Larry Lee (right). Photo by Jonathan ‘Fitness’ Jones.