Activism

Protests Surge as District Moves to Close Black and Latino Schools

This Saturday, there will be a rally for members of Oakland communities and affected school communities to fight against the closures beginning at 10 a.m. at Prescott Elementary at 920 Campbell St. in West Oakland. Prescott, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2019, is one of the predominately Black schools facing closure in June. The school community has pushed back against the district for years as central office administrators tried to suppress the school’s enrollment, urging families not to enroll their children at the school.

Published

3 years ago

February 12, 2022

Oakland Post

Day 8 of a hunger strike continues as Oakland Unified School Board is slated to take a vote Tuesday on a controversial proposal to close 16 schools. (Video: ABC 7)

By Ken Epstein

More than 2,000 outraged teachers, parents and community members attended a Zoom school board meeting Monday evening to speak out against the closures, consolidations and mergers of 15 predominately Black and Latino schools this year and next year.

Some Oakland schools facing closure this year are (From top, clockwise): Prescott, Horace Mann, Brookfield, Westlake, La Escuelita and Grass Valley. Photos courtesy of OUSD.

The meeting lasted until 3 a.m., with hardly a speaker supporting the closures, as hundreds of speakers opposed these draconian measures, demanding that school and community voices not be ignored. The board majority, led by Board members Gary Yee and Shanthi Gonzales, may be hoping to avoid prolonged protests by rushing to a vote at a special board meeting next Tuesday, Feb. 8 to finalize the closing of the schools in June.

Only Board members VanCedric Williams and Mike Hutchinson are opposing the closures.

This week’s Board meeting may have witnessed the largest turnout at a school board meeting since 2003 when State Receiver Randy Ward took over the reins of the school district and announced he was unilaterally closing about 25 schools.

At that time, thousands filled the street in front of the administration building and packed the hallways and boardroom, forcing terrified overseers to significantly reduce the numbers of schools on the chopping block.

The affected schools are now mobilizing their communities and reaching out to broader communities in Oakland. On Tuesday, Westlake Middle School students and staff walked out and marched to the district headquarters at 1000 Broadway, where several Westlake staff had started a hunger strike. Families, teachers, and students at La Escuelita also walked out and marched to the district office.

Prescott, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2019, is one of the predominately Black schools facing closure in June. The school community has pushed back against the district for years as central office administrators tried to suppress the school’s enrollment, urging families not to enroll their children at the school.

The school board and the district administration, while turning a deaf ear to the community, is seeking to satisfy the demands of the Alameda County Superintendent of Schools L. Karen Monroe and state-financed nonprofit agency, Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT), which are demanding school closures and as much as $90 million in budget cuts.

FCMAT made its position clear in a Jan. 4 letter, which was sent to the district, calling for “affirmative board action to continue planning for, and timely implementation of, a school and facility closure and consolidation plan that supports the sale or lease of surplus property.”

Some activists point out that Oakland schools are caught in a vicious cycle at the hands of the state, Monroe and FCMAT. Saying the district was in fiscal crisis, the state and its representatives moved in and took over in 2003 and since then has never left.

While some hold out hopes that officials will someday be satisfied with the endless cuts and closures the state is demanding, it appears they don’t ever plan to give up their behind-the-scenes power over Oakland schools, say school observers.

School activists are also asking how the district can achieve the elusive goal of “fiscal stability” as long as these officials are the ones running OUSD’s finances and continuously moving the goalposts of the nebulous standards of fiscal health.

Since FCMAT arrived in 2003, it has been pushing for closing schools, according to observers of the school district. At first, FCMAT did not justify closures as a way to save money. They said there was a state formula for how much real estate a district should have per student at elementary, middle school, and high school levels — and the district was not aligned with this state formula.

In this writer’s experience, the story was going around the school district administration building in 2003 that there was a plan to transform the district of 58,000 students and over 100 schools into a district that was small enough “to fit in your hands.”

That’s when the rush began to bring charter schools into Oakland, reducing the public school student population by over 13,000 and placing more than 40 charters in the city, costing the district an estimated $57 million a year.

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Activism

The Best Advice for Raising Children: Discipline That Makes Sense

In his book Developing Positive Self Images and Discipline in Black Children, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu suggests that primary aims for socializing Black children should be: establishing goals related to God and the church; familiarizing children with religious texts like the Bible or Quran; educating them of Black culture like Khemetic (Egyptian) Civilization; enlightening them about Black leaders like Malcolm X and Sojourner Truth; and teaching them to strive to be employers, not employees.

Published

2 days ago

May 13, 2025

Oakland Post

Headshot of Dr. William A. Thomas. Photo courtesy of Dr. William A. Thomas.

By William A. Thomas, Ph.D.

In many African societies, the primary aim of socialization is to raise children to be socially responsible and eventually provide economic support to their parents and extended families. Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye taught that children are raised to be respectful of the wishes of their parents and extended adult family members.

In his book Developing Positive Self Images and Discipline in Black Children, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu suggests that primary aims for socializing Black children should be: establishing goals related to God and the church; familiarizing children with religious texts like the Bible or Quran; educating them of Black culture like Khemetic (Egyptian) Civilization; enlightening them about Black leaders like Malcolm X and Sojourner Truth; and teaching them to strive to be employers, not employees.

Effective disciplinary strategies appropriate to a child’s age and development teach them to regulate their behavior; keep them from harm; enhance their cognitive, social, and emotional executive functioning skills; and reinforce the behavioral patterns taught by their parents and caregivers.

Below are some specific guidelines for disciplining children.

Listen to what children are talking about with interest and show them you understand their feelings. Remember, children mirror and learn about their emotional selves by hearing their feelings reflected back to them. Staying on target also means avoiding labels. When children fail to do what is expected, discussing it is helpful rather than saying how stubborn, lazy, dumb, or bad they are. By the same token, more positive labels can be helpful.

Dependability is another essential component of the discipline process. When parents are dependable, their children learn what to expect and are helped to feel secure. When parents are consistent, children learn to trust, that is, predict their parents’ behaviors with certainty. A child thinks, “When I spill something, I will always be asked to wipe it up.” A child thinks, “If I use foul language, I will always be corrected.” A child thinks, “If I take something that doesn’t belong to me, I will always have to give it back.” The ability to predict with certainty leads children to rely on their parents and the village/community in which they live. Children feel safe when they know what to expect.

Conclusions

It takes a village/community to raise the divine gift that is the Black child. Parents look to therapists for guidance concerning a variety of parenting issues, including discipline. Keep in mind that evidence suggests that corporal punishment is both ineffective in the long term and associated with cognitive and mental health disorders. When parents want guidance about the use of spanking, a child therapist can explore parental feelings, help them better define the goals of discipline, and offer specific behavior management strategies. In addition to providing appropriate education to families, the Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists (Bay ABPsi) can refer them to community resources, like parenting groups and classes.

About the Author

Dr. Thomas is a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice in the SF/Oakland Bay Area and Beaumont. He is a member of Bay ABPsi, a healing resource committed to providing the Post Newspaper readership with monthly discussions about critical issues in Black Mental Health. Readers are welcome to join us at our monthly chapter meetings every 3^rd Saturday via Zoom and contact us at bayareaabpsi@gmail.com.