A ‘re-unified’ Oakland City College? Merger raises questions, possibilities for cash

OAKLAND — For decades, Laney College and Merritt College have built up distinct brands on opposite sides of town, offering their own slices of higher education but often vying for the same students — and even fielding competing basketball teams.

But pesky financial challenges now may lead the Peralta Community College District to merge the two schools into a single institution: Oakland City College.

It is a bold new pitch, first reported by Laney’s watchful student newspaper, The Peralta Citizen, that Chancellor Tammeil Gilkerson introduced Aug. 14 to a collection of district staff and faculty.

Peralta leaders had kicked around the idea for years but avoided discussing it in concrete terms, with bureaucratic tangles often getting in the way.

Gilkerson, a Hayward native who previously s