OAKLAND — Candidates seeking to lead the Oakland Unified School District faced a barrage of tough questions one recent evening — an interrogation led by an enthusiastic group of new voters suddenly endowed with political power: 16- and 17-year-old high school students.
In a first for California, teens in two Alameda County school districts, Berkeley and Oakland, were granted suffrage in school board races for the first time this November.
About 1,000 Oakland students had registered as of Oct. 22. And to court their newest and youngest constituents, several Oakland candidates assembled before a packed auditorium in East Oakland for a grilling.
“What ideas do you bring to the table to improve school safety for the schools in your district?” Ojiugo Egeonu, 16, a junior at Oakland Technical High School, asked the candidates. There had already been “several school shootings in the last year” on high school campuses, she…
