Oakland City Council members call for action by state leaders

By Ken Epstein

The Oakland Board of Education has backed off on closing some schools and pushed the bulk of school closings to the end of next school year in a seeming attempt to blunt the mounting protests of school closures.

Over the last week, those protests have mushroomed into school walkouts and strikes at affected schools, a hunger strike at Westlake Middle, opposition from City Council members and growing angry demands for action by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials.

Passed by a 4-2 board vote Tuesday night, the final amended list of school closures and mergers includes two schools that will close this year: Parker Elementary School in East Oakland and Community Day School, which serves students who have some of the greatest educational needs. The students will be transferred to a county program 18 miles away in Hayward.

In addition to the complete closures, La Escuelita will lose its grades 6,7 and 8, and New Highland Academy will be merged with Rise Community.

Five schools will be close at the end of 2023: Korematsu Discovery Academy and Horace Mann Elementary, as well as three schools that were postponed from this year – Brookfield Elementary, Grass Valley Elementary and Carl Munck Elementary.

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Hillcrest Elementary will lose grades 6, 7 and 8 at the end of next year.

Board members opposing the decision were VanCedric Williams and Mike Hutchinson. Voting in favor of the motion were Gary Yee, Shanthi Gonzales, Aimee Eng and Sam Davis. Clifford Thompson abstained.

Some of the seven schools removed from the original school closure list of schools had strong public demonstrations of school and community support. At present, the district no longer plans to close Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland.

The district also dropped plans to move and merge Westlake Middle School with West Oakland Middle School. Ralph Bunche Academy and Dewey Academy will no longer be moved to the Westlake campus.

In addition, Manzanita Community School will no longer be merged with Fruitvale Elementary School.

The Oakland Post requested a statement on the closings from OUSD but by press time had not received one.

Under state control since 2003, Oakland communities continually fought against school closings and consolidations, though nothing as massive as the current level of protests.

With the state-funded Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT) always threatening in the background, the district has already closed about 20 schools in 19 years and is under pressure to close, sell and lease as many as 40 more.

Backing the closures, Mayor Libby Schools, who is closely aligned with charter school privatizers and real estate developers, said in a KQED television interview on February 4 that the district could stand to close as many as half of the city’s public schools, adding, “This is an opportunity to do better for our students, for our educators, our families.”

Among the protests taking place at schools in the past two weeks were a mass rally and march downtown of teachers and community groups, a parent strike at La Escuelita, a protest at Brookfield, a hunger strike and student walkouts at Westlake Middle, a mass rally against school closings at Prescott, a strike at Grass Valley and a strike and a town hall meeting at Parker.

The teachers’ union is considering a rolling strike, meaning that schools would take turns striking for a week at a time. On Monday, a union meeting overwhelmingly endorsed a strike motion.

Said Keith Brown, president of the teacher’s union, in a media statement:

“Students, families, educators, community members, the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Education all opposed (the board’s action). Teachers, parents, labor, and the community are united to stop the implementation of school closures.”

City Council members have been speaking out against the closures.

District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife, who helped organize community support for Prescott School, urged the community to turn pain and grief into action.

“My heart breaks for the families, teachers and communities who will be immediately impacted, but for those who’ve put their bodies on the line and who’ve been organizing for the reality we want to see, this is fuel for the movement. This is our call to action,” she said.

Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan said the state needs to take responsibility.

“Many years ago, the State of California took over control of the Oakland public schools, which they claimed was for the purpose of fixing the finances,” she said. “Sadly, the state officials controlling OUSD ran up debt, leaving the schools worse off financially. Now that California has a record-breaking budget surplus, it is all the more unjust that our youth and families should be made to suffer by cutting their schools to pay off debt that was run up by State officials.”

Councilmember Sheng Thao said she was working with state leaders to find more money for Oakland schools. “Our families deserve a process that is transparent and equitable and that didn’t happen here. It’s not fair. It’s not just. And it should not stand,” she said,

Said Councilmember Nikki ‘Fortunato Bas, “Budgetary challenges should be addressed by our unprecedented state surplus and support our students’ stability — during one of the already most destabilizing periods in their lives.”

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