Jerry Brown: He Drove Oakland's Schools to the Brink of Bankruptcy Jerry Brown's mayorship was supposed to be about fixing the Oakland public schools

Jerry Brown: He Drove Oakland's Schools to the Brink of Bankruptcy

Jerry Brown's mayorship was supposed to be about fixing the Oakland public schools. Brown used his political clout to gain control of the school board, but the outcome ended up being one of the biggest failures of his career.

He succeeded in convincing voters to give him the authority to appoint the majority of the school board, but within three years, Oakland schools faced a $100 million deficit. Bankruptcy was so likely that the state of California had to step in and wrest control of the schools from Brown’s handpicked board. During Brown’s tenure in Oakland, test scores continued to be among the worst in the state and the dropout rate increased by 50 percent.

The city also continued to be plagued by high crime rates. In fact, the murder rate in Oakland doubled under Brown’s police department.

Brown’s failure on education in Oakland was predated by his lack of attention to schools when he was Governor. His father, former Governor Pat Brown, had built a legacy around investments in education, Jerry Brown abandoned California’s schools during his governorship and allowed per pupil funding in the state to drop from 18th in the nation to 31st.