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The Unlikely Oakland Military Institute
Mayor Jerry Brown Lauds Dose of Discipline in Troubled District
 Listen to Richard Gonzales' June 18, 2002 report on the OMI.
 Web exclusive: Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown shares his vision of the military academy's future.
Web exclusive: OMI Academic Director Rick Moniz talks about the challenges of educating kids with troubled backgrounds.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and OMI Commandant Col. Bradford M. Jones of the California Army National Guard.
Photo: Saundra Leake, OMI |
"I believe that had I been sent to a military academy as my mother and father threatened, I would have been president a long time ago."
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown
Web exclusive: Brown shares his vision of the future of OMI.
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OMI student Kelly Velasquez and school color guard.
Photo: Saundra Leake, OMI |
OMI student Vanessa James.
Photo: Saundra Leake, OMI
Web exclusive: OMI Academic Director Rick Moniz talks about the challenges of educating kids with troubled backgrounds.
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Jerry Brown: A Brief Biography
• Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr. was born in San Francisco on April 7, 1938. His father, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, was California's governor from 1959 to 1967.
• Brown was elected governor in 1974, and was re-elected in 1978. Despite his reputation as an ultra-liberal Zen visionary, he proved to be a fiscal conservative with an unusual style.
• In 1976, he campaigned to be the Democratic Party candidate for president, losing to Jimmy Carter. He lost the 1984 U.S. Senate race to Pete Wilson (who became governor himself in 1990). He sought the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, again with his own unique twist: He refused to take contributions larger than $100, and used an 800 number to raise funds.
• Brown was elected mayor of Oakland in 1998.
Source: State of California, JerryBrown.org
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June 18, 2002 -- Anyone who has followed Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's quixotic political career from ultra-liberal Zen visionary to tight-fisted civic leader probably won't be surprised that he is staking his reputation as a public school reformer on a military-style charter school.
When he was first elected mayor in 1998, Brown made little secret of his disdain for the Oakland public school system. As Richard Gonzales reports for Morning Editon, the district was beset by low test scores and demoralized teachers. Twenty-five percent of high school students dropped out, and those who did graduate were ill-prepared for the state university system.
However, Brown's vision of a military academy -- emphasizing rigorous academic study and tight discipline -- encountered fierce local resistance. Both the city and county school boards voted to deny his proposal for a charter. Critics argued that the city didn't need a military school.
What it needed, they said, is for the nationally-recognized mayor to make all of the district's 54,000 students a priority.
Undeterred, Brown called in help from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and fellow Democrat Gov. Gray Davis, who was chief of staff in the 1970s when Brown served a two-term stint as the state's chief executive. Brown received a charter from the state Board of Education and $3 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and the California National Guard.
In July 2001, over 200 prospective seventh-graders, virtually all from low-income inner city families, attended a two-week "boot camp." As one National Guard sergeant put it, "These kids didn't even know how to walk in a straight line, much less march."
By the time the Oakland Military Institute opened in August 2001, 169 cadets remained and officials got a good look at the hard road ahead. Since enrollment was open to any local student with no record of expulsions from public school, the students were typical Oakland seventh-graders: rowdy, rambunctious, and reading far below grade level.
So plans to launch an aggressive college prep curriculum were shelved in favor of remedial education.
There were other "growing pains," Brown says. Not every cadet was prepared for military-style discipline. About a quarter of the original applicants have been dismissed, mostly for lack of discipline. Nor were the veteran teachers prepared to work with the National Guard.
Every classroom (bearing names such as "Fort Justice" and "Fort Responsibility") has a teacher and a National Guard sergeant. As one teacher said, "The kids are sometimes confused. They don't know who to obey, or who to respect."
But Brown remains undeterred. In his typical blunt style, he says that some cadets simply won't cut it at OMI. And he's looking forward to recruiting the incoming class for next fall.
Brown also dismisses criticism of the OMI from some in this notoriously anti-war community. Brown says military academies have been open to rich families for generations -- so what's wrong with providing poor families with the same opportunity?
As for those who ask whether he thinks inner city kids need more discipline, Brown told KQED-TV, "If I had been sent to a military academy like my parents threatened to do, I believe I would have been president a long time ago."
Other Resources
• Oakland Military Institute official Web site.
• JerryBrown.org, the mayor's "official" personal Web site.
• OaklandNet.com, the official Web site for the city of Oakland.
• Official California home page.
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