Urban school districts, like their broader city contexts, are defined by their diversity of people and ideas, as well as longstanding struggles to confront race and class inequality with shrinking funds for public services. Over the past three decades, districts adopted market-based strategies centered on curricular, instructional, and financial reforms, often in response to demands to improve the achievement of low-income students and students of color. In recent years, education reform efforts have shifted from community and philanthropic investment in specific school-based initiatives to restructuring the entire governance of districts. Many large districts negotiate the financial and political pressures through a policy approach called the portfolio strategy, which aims to expand school options for students, families, school operators, and give schools more autonomy over certain areas (e.g., hiring, curriculum) while the district coordinates enrollment and other shared systems – analogous to an investment portfolio.

As district and private sector leaders work to unify charter and traditional public schools under one governance “umbrella,” many questions emerge about the shifting power dynamics that reshape democratic engagement. For example, it is unclear whose voices, needs, and ideas are centered and why market-based reforms, like the portfolio strategy, are advocated by philanthropists, consultants, and political leaders as the natural next step, or politically inevitable, for urban districts. Scholars have traced the evolution of traditional district governance to portfolio, but as yet, we know little about how community members experience governance “redesign” in their day-to-day lives. Moreover, previous studies have not considered why some district and community leaders, rather than going the portfolio route, have chosen to maintain their improvement efforts by working within the public sphere.

This dissertation is a comparative case study of school district governance in two cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, the portfolio governance model in Oakland and the public governance model in Berkeley. Drawing on interviews, participant observations, and policy and media documents, this study explores how city politics shape the emergence of portfolio districts, and how local stakeholders navigate new partnerships through sustained coalitions called urban regimes (Stone, 1989). Concepts from urban regime analysis and cultural political economy frame the development of the portfolio district within a trajectory of “manufactured debt crisis” in racialized urban spaces that are rapidly gentrifying. I also leverage differences between my two case study sites, including political economic conditions, advocacy organizations, and race and class politics, to show how understandings about the purpose of schooling – and by extension the role of districts – shape divergent strategies for improving educational equity, achievement, and funding in distinct local political contexts.

The first finding on the local political economy identifies the intergovernmental challenges to “fiscal vitality,” and to what extent a district can reorganize its way out of state finance inequities. California tax reform, charter laws, and audit culture shape a manufactured “urban crisis,” particularly in Oakland, which underwent a state receivership in 2003 and the subsequent proliferation of charter schools. In Berkeley, the ability to “stay in the black” during the 2008 Great Recession was a major feat, which is due to both a series of financial decisions that maintained independence for the district as well as a growing affluent population. In the second finding on urban district governance, I examine how crisis management is maintained and contested through local governance restructuring, where private contracting and non-profit management are increasingly justified through community engagement mechanisms. Distinct visions and strategies are reflected in each district’s governance structure: Berkeley Unified leaders implemented a desegregation strategy through district-managed student attendance zones, while Oakland Unified leaders decentralized pedagogical and organizational reform at the school level through public-private partnerships. In Berkeley, the district’s pioneering desegregation efforts in 1968 are a source of pride for the self-identified progressive city, which over the years officials have had to find creative ways to continue integration efforts through other variables such as socioeconomic status and residential neighborhood. Under Oakland’s portfolio district, district and school board leaders continued to advance school closures, budget cuts, and common enrollment to keep the district “financially solvent,” echoing austerity measures that state officials implemented during the receivership. The limited community engagement practices in OUSD were replaced with symbolic community informing sessions to the frustration of many participants.

The study’s third finding on coalitional politics indicates that distinct visions and strategies are reflected in each district’s urban regime, where government and private sector leaders took in different, and sometimes contradictory, approaches to engaging Black, Asian, and Latinx communities in district reorganization. In response to the community backlash against school closures, Oakland’s ‘portfolio regime’ comprised of district leaders and philanthropically-funded education reform advocacy organizations attempted to rebrand and refocus towards district-charter “unity” with the help of a growing network of advocacy organizations that have cultivated and politicized new district leaders. However, resistance to the portfolio idea and its power brokers is growing — at times, but not always, coordinated — which culminated in the 2019 Oakland teachers strike. In Berkeley, the absence of education reform advocacy organizations meant education leaders sought change within the district, most notably through a decade-long “collective action” strategy that brings together public institutions to close the achievement gap. However, it also fostered some complacency in regards to education reform/improvement, where there are fewer megaphones (and organizational structures) for unhappy families, overwhelmingly Black and Latinx, amidst an espoused social justice discourse.

In illustrating the democratic dimensions of district restructuring through a comparison of public and private approaches to equity-oriented goals, this dissertation study seeks to build a more comprehensive conceptualization of urban governance as ideology and negotiation through diverse perspectives beyond central office. This analysis of the rhetoric, policies, and practices around equity strategies and how they intersect with private contracting underscores how “democratic engagement” is a contentious ideal for low-income families and families of color, where their participation is often stifled in the name of “crisis” and “efficiency.” Lastly, this comparative case of urban governance illuminates the way market strategies like the portfolio strategy go beyond restructuring a district’s central office, and instead reorganize the relationship between communities and their schools.