Alameda County Grand Jury • 2019-2020

Castlemont High School: Cheating Its Students

Published: June 15, 2020 114 pages Consolidated Report

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Findings 28 findings

20-1 Page 1

Oakland Unified School District’s public comments regarding Castlemont High School's misuse of APEX and other grade recovery programs misled the public about the severe academic and ethical breakdowns that occurred at the school.

20-2 Page 1

Oakland Unified School District’s weak internal policies, inadequate training, and lack of oversight enabled some Castlemont High School teachers of onsite make-up courses and credit recovery tutorials to run roughshod over academic integrity and best practices.

20-3 Page 1

Oakland Unified School District’s policies on administration of APEX Learning online credit recovery courses were inadequate to ensure consistent and appropriate application of APEX and allowed abuse by a small number of teachers and counselors at Castlemont High School.

20-4 Page 1

APEX teachers received little or no training in the proper use and administration of APEX courses and of the grading of students in those courses.

20-5 Page 1

Extraordinarily high truancy rates at Castlemont High School and insufficient administrator intervention made it impossible for habitually truant students to receive the required educational experience.

20-6 Page 1

Some long-standing OUSD students arrive at Castlemont High School unprepared for high school level work due to being repeatedly promoted in earlier grades without meeting the district’s requirements for promotion. 29 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report

20-7 Page 1

The friction between AHS’s responsibility for operational control and Alameda County’s health service mandate and allegiance to other constituencies continues to frustrate both parties, exacerbate their mutual distrust, and interfere with their ability to communicate and implement long-lasting solutions to AHS’s financial crises.

20-8 Page 1

AHS’s narrow focus on a balanced operating budget and EBIDA does not adequately represent the actual financial position of AHS.

20-9 Page 1

Even with transparent and efficient management, an average annual EBIDA Margin of 3% to 5% is not sufficient for AHS to pay off its outstanding debt and buffer against any future financial crises.

20-10 Page 1

AHS and Alameda County do not agree on whether AHS can establish a cash reserve to pay prioryear liabilities. The lack of a cash reserve exacerbates the long-term financial stability of AHS and its ability to comply with the Permanent Agreement, leading to further distrust between AHS and Alameda County.

20-11 Page 1

AHS does not provide its financial reports to county supervisors and staff sufficiently in advance of regularly scheduled meetings between the parties to allow county supervisors and staff time to familiarize themselves with those reports prior to being presented by AHS. 52 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report

20-12 Page 1

AHS and Alameda County acknowledge the need for flexibility in the use of Measure A funds to take advantage of matching-fund opportunities. However, they often disagree on how AHS should specifically allocate Measure A funds to support its operations. This disagreement magnifies and exacerbates the distrust between AHS and Alameda County.

20-13 Page 1

Political pressure from some Alameda County supervisors has interfered with AHS operations and efforts to control costs.

20-14 Page 1

Negotiating separate contracts with 18 different labor unions is both time consuming and expensive for AHS and limits AHS’s negotiating flexibility. AHS’s negotiations with labor have been further compromised by public support of negotiating labor unions from some county supervisors.

20-15 Page 1

AHS and Alameda County agree that the governance structure of AHS is problematic and needs to be revisited and strengthened in order for the parties to better understand and respect each other’s governance and operational roles.

20-16 Page 1

Oakland’s communications center fails to meet the CalOES Standard of answering 95% of all emergency calls within 15 seconds, jeopardizing public safety. Finding-20-17: The communications center continues to operate under-staffed and has not conducted a dispatcher recruitment since June 2018, placing an unacceptable burden on dispatchers working excessive overtime hours.

20-18 Page 1

The amount of overtime paid to dispatchers in 2019 reached $2 million. This amount of money could be used to fund up to 15 permanent dispatcher positions.

20-19 Page 1

Delays in completing the new CAD project are due, in part, to lack of available staff dedicated to provide project management and comprehensive configuration input to the vendor.

20-20 Page 1

The responsibilities to manage Public Records Acts requests and staff the Oakland Police Department’s complaint line creates an unacceptable burden on an understaffed communications center and diverts staff away from answering emergency calls.

20-21 Page 1

The communications center’s failure to establish a call-answering policy or standard contributes to a lack of accountability to the Oakland community. 67 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report

20-22 Page 1

The communications center’s recorded messages that callers are greeted with when call takers are busy unnecessarily increases the number of abandoned calls.

20-23 Page 1

Hiring of communications center staff has lagged because of an overly complicated hiring process.

20-24 Page 1

The recruitment of dispatchers is set as an unacceptably low priority by OPD.

20-25 Page 1

GSA has a culture of poor communication with its client departments which contributes to unnecessary delays and increased project costs.

20-26 Page 1

Poorly developed and disseminated Capital Program and procurement procedures result in inconsistent project management within GSA. 96 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report

20-27 Page 1

GSA’s redefinition of professional requirements for project managers and its inability to sufficiently staff project manager positions contribute to poor control over the delivery of capital projects.

20-28 Page 1

GSA’s failure to update as-needed professional contracts results in unnecessary bidding which contributes to unwarranted delays in project delivery.

20-29 Page 1

Alameda County’s failure to prioritize long-range planning and site safety assessments has set county government capital construction on a rudderless course oftentimes guided by litigation and emergency needs.

Recommendations 27

20-1
Page 1

The Oakland Unified School District must develop and enforce appropriate policies and practices for onsite make-up courses to correct the failures noted in this report. Specifically: • Onsite teacher-designed make-up courses must be included in course lists and available to all failing students. • Credit must only be given for make-up classes in the same subject as the failed course. • Credit toward a required number of subject units cannot be given for the same semester course taken twice. • Course curricula and assignments must be administratively reviewed. • Aeries records must include attendance data and progress through the recovery course as in regular courses. • Credit cannot be awarded for failed courses based on subsequent courses that were passed.
20-2
Page 1

The Oakland Unified School District must implement specific controls to ensure all APEX learning complies with recommended APEX policy, procedures, and best practices. At a minimum: • Limit the number of courses taken simultaneously. • Require all quizzes and exams be proctored on campus. • Confine APEX classes to one subject. • Prohibit enrollment in the same traditional and APEX classes at the same time. • Require a minimum number of online hours within a minimum number of weeks of instruction not restricted entirely to quizzes and exams. • Ensure teachers do not coach students through pretests, quizzes and exams.
20-3
Page 1

Teachers of APEX courses must be credentialed in the subject of the course and must be trained in APEX Learning’s published best practices for teaching the classes, in using pretests for customizing course curricula, in making graded assignments, and in grading quizzes, exams and classes using progress and proficiency scores produced by the APEX program. The exercise of teacher discretion in assigning grades for APEX courses must be strictly regulated by school site administrators.
20-4
Page 1

Castlemont High School administrators must put in place and rigorously enforce robust procedures to track and control excessive student absences, consistent with the Oakland Unified School District’s standards and the California Education Code. When local efforts fail to ameliorate truancy, cases should be referred to the Alameda County Truancy Court. Graduation 30 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report of students with chronic absenteeism resulting in failures in required courses must be prohibited, until those courses are properly passed.
20-5
Page 1

District-wide procedures must be developed and implemented to consistently enforce OUSD’s existing Pupil Promotion and Retention Policy that prevents students from being promoted into grades for which they are insufficiently prepared. REQUEST FOR RESPONSES Pursuant to California Penal Code sections 933 and 933.05, the grand jury requests each entity or individual named below to respond to the enumerated
20-6
Page 1

If resources prove insufficient to adopt and maintain a balanced AHS budget, AHS and the county must identify and agree on the scope of services and on the least politically damaging way to provide them—by cutting back on services, increasing the county’s financial support, or some combination of the two. Both parties then must present a uniform public face in support of that decision.
20-7
Page 1

Beginning with its FY2021 budget and continuing with its presentation of financial results, AHS must include all revenue and expense accounts in accordance with pronouncements of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The budget and presentation of financial results must not exclude accounts, believed by AHS, to be outside its control.
20-8
Page 1

AHS must, by September 30, 2020 and in consultation with Alameda County supervisors and staff, develop and regularly report a cash flow statement of sufficient scope and detail to provide an early warning system as to the approach of another cash crisis. 53 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report
20-9
Page 1

Alameda County and AHS must collaboratively resolve how to pay for AHS’s long-term debts with the county.
20-10
Page 1

AHS and Alameda County must develop a procedure whereby AHS has the ability to set aside cash to pay prior-year liabilities.
20-11
Page 1

AHS must provide financial reports to county supervisors and staff at least one calendar week prior to any regularly scheduled meeting at which those reports are to be presented.
20-12
Page 1

AHS and Alameda County must agree on how AHS allocates its share of Measure A funds as part of its budget.
20-13
Page 1

Individual members of the Board of Supervisors must not interfere in the day-to-day operations and management of AHS including labor negotiations and structure of service delivery. REQUEST FOR RESPONSES Pursuant to California Penal Code sections 933 and 933.05, the grand jury requests each entity or individual named below to respond to the enumerated
20-14
Page 1

The City of Oakland must establish a call-answering policy for the communications center to meet the CalOES requirement to answer 95% of all incoming 9-1-1 calls within fifteen seconds.
20-15
Page 1

The City of Oakland must conduct dispatcher recruitments on a continuous basis until dispatcher vacancies are filled.
20-16
Page 1

The City of Oakland must modify human resource and department policies to accept regional or allied agency dispatch testing scores to meet pre-employment requirements.
20-17
Page 1

The City of Oakland must increase the authorized and budgeted number of dispatchers and supervisors to meet state call answering standards as recommended by the city’s consultant.
20-18
Page 1

The City of Oakland must publish on the city’s website quarterly communications center performance data relating to emergency call processing.
20-19
Page 1

The Oakland Police Department must assign the responsibilities of managing Public Records Act requests and staffing of the OPD complaint line to another division as recommended by the 2019 consultant’s report. 68 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report
20-20
Page 1

The Oakland Police Department must assign a senior dispatcher or supervisor full-time to work on the CAD configuration until the CAD system is operational.
20-21
Page 1

The Oakland Police Department must change the outgoing recorded message to one that informs 9-1-1 callers that all available dispatchers are busy answering other 9-1-1 calls, when callers are on hold. REQUEST FOR RESPONSES Pursuant to California Penal Code sections 933 and 933.05, the Grand Jury requests each entity or individual named below to respond to the enumerated
20-22
Page 1

The Alameda County General Services Agency must provide sufficient staff or consultant resources to accomplish its capital program workload efficiently.
20-23
Page 1

The Alameda County General Services Agency must improve communication with clients throughout all stages of a project to build a strong and informed project team. GSA should place staff within client departments as needed during the project planning and design stages.
20-24
Page 1

The Alameda County General Services Agency must establish well-defined policies and procedures to guide staff work and to help clients understand the capital project development and bidding processes. Both existing and new staff and managers must be trained in these procedures.
20-25
Page 1

The Alameda County General Services Agency management must provide staff with work plans to track workload, progress, schedules, budgets to timely project completion.
20-26
Page 1

The Alameda County General Services Agency must establish or renew as-needed professional services contracts to ensure that project managers can quickly access a variety of expert services. 97 2019―2020 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report
20-27
Page 1

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the General Services Agency must complete updates to long-range and master plans, such as the Facilities Condition Assessment and Real Estate Master Plan, to better manage competing capital investment demands for staffing and funds. REQUEST FOR RESPONSES Pursuant to California Penal Code sections 933 and 933.05, the grand jury requests each entity or individual named below to respond to the enumerated

Conclusions 13

CL1 Page 29

Students First: We support students by providing multiple learning opportunities to ensure students feel respected and heard.
CL2 Page 29

Equity: We provide everyone access to what they need to be successful.
CL3 Page 29

Excellence: We hold ourselves to uncompromising standards to achieve extraordinary outcomes.
CL4 Page 29

Integrity: We are honest, trustworthy, and accountable. It is unfathomable that OUSD administrators were oblivious to the problems at Castlemont and did not intervene long before whistleblowing teachers reached out to the media in desperation. Statistical data demonstrating Castlemont’s under-performance, student truancy and rising graduation rates in the face of poor standardized test results have long been available for district scrutiny. When OUSD was forced to acknowledge the problems publicly, it wrongly denied there was misconduct, doing teachers, students, and the public a disservice. OUSD’s investigative reports failed to acknowledge the severe academic and ethical breakdown occurring at 28
CL5 Page 88

Implement a staff retention strategy
CL6 Page 88

Improve training in project management
CL7 Page 88

Begin a disciplined project planning system
CL8 Page 88

Make client communication and coordination a priority
CL9 Page 52

AHS and Alameda County have a complicated relationship that reflects the inherent complexities of operating a public health care system. In its investigation, the grand jury did not delve into and report on every detail of this relationship. Rather, we focused on broader patterns of interaction that reflect long-standing sources of tension in the relationship. AHS faced a financial crisis heading into FY2020, with a projected lack of operational profitability and no cash to pay for substantial liabilities from previous years. The AHS trustees and administration addressed the budget shortfall head-on and seemed to be back on track. Diligent financial oversight by the AHS trustees and budget management by the AHS administration needs to continue. Better transparency and efficiency of operations must also occur. Nevertheless, AHS and the county have not yet determined how to resolve the current cash and debt crisis. Long-standing issues of distrust and posturing around those issues continue to slow the effort to do so. Evidence considered raised the question for the grand jury: Can AHS ever fully repay its debt to the county? Even with transparent and efficient management, an average annual EBIDA Margin of 3% to 5% does not appear sufficient to pay off AHS’s outstanding debt and buffer against any future financial crises. Alameda County and AHS must collaboratively resolve how to pay for AHS’s long-term debts with the county. The county must meet its statutory obligation to provide medical care to indigent county residents. AHS must operate the hospital system to provide that medical care as efficiently and transparently as possible. If resources prove insufficient, AHS and the county need to identify and agree on the scope of services to be provided. If that scope is determined to be less than currently offered, AHS and the county need to agree on the least damaging way to provide health services—by cutting back on services, increasing the county’s financial support, or some combination of the two. Both parties then will need to present a uniform public face in support of that decision. As one witness aptly stated, “It’s not about the money. It’s about the political will and competency to make the tough decisions.” An improved relationship between the county and AHS is necessary to focus on defining a reasonable scope of the care to be offered by AHS, along with AHS reducing expenses and achieving revenue targets. Put another way, resolution will require the parties to make difficult decisions which appear to have been avoided or delayed to please special interests. These decisions cannot continue to be “kicked down the road.” The future of a critical county safety net is at stake. 51
CL10 Page 53

ADDENDUM This time of COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented demands on the finances, services and operations of both Alameda County and AHS. Nevertheless, the pandemic should not be an excuse to “kick the can down the road.” Alameda County and AHS should make a concerted effort to address the long-standing matters presented in this report. The pandemic takes highest priority, but the review and implementation of these findings and recommendations also must be of high priority. Otherwise, history most assuredly will repeat itself.
CL11 Page 67

The City of Oakland Emergency Communication Center does not meet the national or state standards to answer emergency calls. As a result, each year thousands of 9-1-1 callers abandon their attempts to reach out for help from first responders. Even more callers wait for over two minutes before being connected to a live 9-1-1 operator. Simply put, Oakland’s underfunded and understaffed 9-1-1 communications center cannot manage the volume of emergency and non- emergency calls it receives, placing the public’s safety at risk. 66
CL12 Page 68

While the grand jury acknowledges that Oakland faces an on-going financial crisis now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s failure to address staffing shortages within the communications center is inexcusable. The city was advised twice in recent years of these shortfalls in separate independent reports. The 2017 city auditor’s report and a city-sponsored consultant’s report in 2019 both concluded that the communications center was woefully understaffed. They both made comprehensive recommendations, many of which the city has ignored. The grand jury is disappointed that the city has done so little to address these persistent problems. City leaders must take immediate actions to rectify this negligent oversight of public safety service and operations.
CL13 Page 97

Our investigation found that high priority capital projects often moved slowly when GSA held the lead role. The grand jury identified staff retention and training, improved project planning, communication and coordination, and management’s attention to clients’ needs as the most important steps GSA must take to improve its capital project management and delivery. The grand jury heard from witnesses that GSA’s upper management must be more engaged; they should be front and center when explaining important delays or significant cost overruns to client departments or when key project manager turnover occurs. Such developments can be huge setbacks for capital projects, and clients need the assurance that GSA cares, understands, and possesses the capability to fix them. When staff turnover or increased workload threatens GSA's ability to deliver quality services, management needs to acknowledge those complications, inform client departments, and work creatively to find alternatives solutions, such as contracting with outside project management firms. GSA must also be more disciplined and transparent in communicating the status of its capital projects. One technique is to share with clients a weekly GSA report card on all active capital projects listing next steps, key milestones, responsible parties, and deadlines. Sometimes the reason for a client’s dissatisfaction is a lack of understanding of the planning, design, bidding, or award policies and procedures. Finally, GSA must lead with more robust planning for the county’s infrastructure with the guidance of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. This would help the General Services Agency better manage current projects and anticipate future workloads and secure the necessary resources.