Oakland School Board Election Results in Mixed Verdict
Oakland, Calif., voters delivered no clear message in last week’s school board elections, which followed the March 20 settlement of a monthlong teachers’ strike.
Two candidates backed by the Oakland Education Association, the union that organized the strike, won their races.
But Lucella T. Harrison, the board president and a key administration figure during the strike, also kept her seat, beating a union-backed challenger. Voters were filling four seats; three incumbents sought re-election.
In the aftermath of the strike, the 52,000-student district’s longest, the union had seen the election as a chance to remove its opponents from the board. (See Education Week, March 27, 1996.)
