R.-1 21-0013 Decision Hearing by the Board of Education - Adopting Resolution No. 2021-0042 - Denial of Material Revision to the Current Aspire ERES Academy Petition (Request to Raise Enrollment Cap from 250 to 600, for Grades TK-8 - July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2024), pursuant to Education Code Section 47605.
The union (OEA) is an INTEREST GROUP in service of teachers, not students. Their misinformation narrative to teachers and the public reflects the preservation of a broken system that has undermined student outcomes with its actions - defending failure and insulating its membership from accountability. ERES is outperforming its OUSD neighbors by a large margin, the CA Dept. of Ed. shows this clearly. Yet, if ERES mirrored the performance of its OUSD neighbors, they'd have been closed, not having met the charter renewal criteria. If only OUSD held its own schools to the same standard as its charters. Fruitvale, Allendale, H. Mann, Global Fam. fail kids year after year, yet get green-lit every August for a new school year. Even if OUSD had the courage to be good stewards of our kid's education beyond their own political aspirations, OEA would never allow teachers to be held to a high standard of performance where there were consequences for mediocrity and incentives for excellence.
As an OUSD parent and an educator within District 5, I oppose the expansion of Aspire ERES. We need to invest in quality public schools, and not continue to drain resources from the district and its families!
A recent commenter wrote:"The entire argument about OUSD losing money to charter schools because of enrollment money is BS!” Actually, this “BS” is a fact that has been confirmed repeatedly (look up the objective third party fact-finder’s report from the strike and it is fairly common sense once you understand how school funding works). To break it down: Charters take money from the district while not inheriting any of the legacy costs of traditional public schools -- costs that go up as enrollment goes down. As a result, charter schools have higher per-pupil funding. This huge increase in enrollment takes even more funding from high performing public schools, many of which outperformed Aspire over the past 4 years, which then lose programs like reading and art. Another commenter complained about the "disappointing rhetoric of us vs them”; what they really mean is “don’t think about anyone EXCEPT us.” Please think about the whole community and do the right thing.
Con que derecho se sienten los individuos aquí de decir que todas las escuelas del distrito en el área de Fruitvale son buenas o que deberían ser opciones para todas las familias. Como madre de familia y con hijo que asistió a Manazinta Seed puedo confirmar que cada niño es diferente y ocupa cosas distintas algo que no todas las escuelas pueden ofrecer. Y tal cual, como mama y la primera maestra de mis hijos conozco y se lo que es mejor para ellos. Los problemas de un presupuesto no se solucionan poniendo un alto a las escuelas de calidad, se solucionan con hechos. Si todas las escuelas de Oakland fueran escuelas de calidad no hubiera la necesidad de tener acceso a un sistema con opciones. Ya basta, aquí los que importan más en la conversación son los niños.
The Board should vote to allow ERES to expand. ERES families are highly satisfied with their experience, as evidenced by the fact that they have chosen this school for their children. OUSD should not take this power away from them. Nor should it deny an opportunity to the hundreds of students on the waitlist. Why wouldn't OUSD want to encourage the growth and expansion of a school that is working for Oakland families, and that other families want to take advantage of? When so little is going right in the district, we should be lifting up solutions that are working, not squandering them.
I fully support the expansion of ERES! As a parent looking for a pre-Kinder to 8th grade school in my neighborhood that provides a high quality education there is no other choice but ERES. I was disappointed to learn that they were expected to close due because OUSD playing politics. I toured Horace Man & Global Families in early 2020, my neighborhood schools, and then comparing to ERES, there was no contest when looking at the community ERES built and also the test scores. It disappoints me to see Oakland educators commenting here that didn't do the research and are telling lies to save their jobs. My husband and I studied our options when looking for where to enroll our child. ERES tests better than any other school in the Fruitvale K-8 with kids of color, and racially ERES is identical to Horace Man & Global Families so saying it doesn't rep the Fruitvale is a FLAT OUT LIE. Be honest about where you are and that you're not a quality option and then maybe you can actually improve!
Aspire ERES Academy IS a quality school that deserves to remain open to continue to serve its students and families and give students on the waitlist an opportunity to an excellent education. It is the job of elected board members to listen to families and advocate for ALL students in Oakland. Their actions demonstrate that they are putting their political preferences above serving ALL students and families. My traditional district neighborhood school performs in the red, that isn't an option for my children and as a result, OUSD Board Members are confining my children and all of ERES's students from quality education and their true potential to succeed and create a better future for themselves and their families. This is an INJUSTICE to our community and we're going to call you out!
I oppose the expansion of this charter school. I am a parent of a student at Manzanita SEED in Fruitvale. Instead of supporting the expansion of another charter school in our neighborhood, please support our current and existing public schools that work so hard to support our students and families.
Former After School Educator in OUSD and parent of students in OUSD and charter schools. I'm disappointed to see OUSD educators turn to this rhetoric of us vs. them regarding charters. It doesn't reflect the attitude of the great teachers I've seen working in OUSD over the years. As teachers, I think we all care about seeing our students succeed. Sometimes we have to surrender that the best place for students to succeed isn't always in our school, or assigned school by the district. I feel OUSD's pain on enrollment and the struggle that comes having to do more with less, but charters aren't the enemy. District accountability is the enemy, the State of California is the enemy. Blaming charter schools is a quick fix to a problem that was there when I started elementary school in Oakland in 1991. Charters are required to renew every 4 or 5 years and have to meet a minimum criteria to exist - in that sense OUSD schools have less accountability than their adjacent charter school.
I encourage the board to deny Aspire ERES' petition for material revision of its charter to more than double its enrollment. Allowing it to do so would harm public schools in the Fruitvale neighborhood -- many of which are excellent -- and would harm Oakland public schools overall. This charter school clearly does not serve its entire community, as evidenced by its demographics. The standard for material revision established by AB 1505, the new charter law, makes clear that this petition should be denied.
Aspire Eres does not serve our WHOLE Fruitvale community, and in particular they underserve African American students and students with IEPs. I have been teaching at United for Success Academy, an amazing neighborhood middle school for 13 years. It is a problem that in the same neighborhood, 15% of UFSA students are African American, whereas only 2.8% of Aspire Eres students are. Similarly, 18.4% of UFSA students have IEPs, whereas at Aspire Eres it is 13.4%.
Charter schools in our community (EPIC and Lodestar, for example) have consistently disrupted our schools and students’ educations. Expanding Aspire Eres will affect our ability to continue providing the best education possible. They threaten extra academic support and electives (for example- our math support classes with a 4:1 student teacher ratio, reading support, ELL support, music, art, computer science). Invest in Fruitvale’s existing public middle schools: UFSA, UPA, Life. Please vote NOT to expand Aspire Eres.
If a public charter is a better school, families have a right to that option. This entire argument about OUSD loosing money to charter schools because of enrollment money is BS! The money follows the kids! Period! Does OUSD condemn private schools for taking away enrollment dollars when kids leave OUSD to go to Saint Elizabeth’s or Bishop? Asinine! What entitles OUSD to any claim to student enrollment money? When OUSD says they’re a “family choice school district” what they really mean is “we’re family choice, as long as you choose OUSD!” What a bunch of hypocrites!
I have worked for both ASPIRE and OUSD. ERES should be allowed to expand on the condition that the school's population and teaching staff mirror that of the surrounding community. ERES (and all of ASPIRE and OUSD) needs to better serve Black/ African American students in particular. If the board chooses to not let ERES expand, then it should not close ERES and allow them to move to more suitable facilities for the safety and learning needs of students. Many students and families value the community and education that ERES has created for them over the years. Take families' and students' perspectives into account before everything else.
If OUSD were a business, they'd be out of business. Without the safety net of the State gov't, in a market economy, OUSD would not survive competition. Simply look at the abysmal rate of graduates with A-G met, or the number of incoming freshmen make it to senior year with college eligibility - why would parents choose to send their kids there unless forced? No other business is provided a guaranteed, compulsory (by law), customer base that is assigned to them for 12 years in perpetuity. As a result, OUSD, like most bureaucracies, has never had to compete for its existence and the OUSD board reflects this carelessness and aversion to evolution because they have no incentive. When a charter school provides better results with more efficiency than OUSD, this disrupts the status quo. And, as the gatekeepers of charter schools, OUSD gets to be the pitcher, catcher and umpire of the game and "fix" the outcome as they go - maintaining pretense of progress, when it's just more of the same.
Schools are not supposed to be in competition with each other. Nor is education a product. Nor are schools businesses. That Mason Marangella sees it that way is one of the biggest problems with Charter schools.
I'm a former OUSD and I can tell you for a FACT that any of the issues regarding enrollment, funding, or underperformance in OUSD predates the existence of charter schools by decades. OUSD, has historically FAILED students! Charter schools are easy targets and provide a scapegoat for OUSD to obfuscate their ineptitude whilst putting blood in the water for OEA, distracting from the real issue: PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE OUTPERFORMING DISTRICT SCHOOLS! This is not an opinion, this is a FACT! Head to the CA Dashboard and the numbers are all there for us to see. Even OUSD Charter office admits this in their staff report with the school in question, ERES. Instead of OUSD partnering with charter schools and learning from them, they've condemned them and moved to monopolize school choice because they DON'T WANT TO COMPETE! Parents, you're getting an inferior product from a business that is unwilling to adapt even when shown a better way. Oakland kids deserve a quality school, charter or not.
ERES' data shows that we provide a high quality program: the doubling number of students reading on or above grade each year, the double digit growth in SBAC ELA and Math scores, significant reduction of our rate of suspendable behaviors, and the elimination of disproportionate outcomes for our students with IEPs. The Material Revision staff report recommends denial, even though OUSD acknowledges that ERES is performing better than the district at serving economically disadvantaged Hispanic students. OUSD Directors need to honor their word to the Oakland community by increasing our enrollment to ensure we remain a high quality option. ERES is in danger of closing because this board is emphasizing politics over student socio-emotional well-being and learning. Prioritizing money and preservation of broken systems, over students and families. On the OUSD website, it states that the first priority of the district is “quality community schools”. ERES IS A QUALITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL.
I support ERES because it is the small school where my oldest son graduated and I currently have my youngest daughter, the teachers and all the staff are very kind to everyone and the academic level is higher than the schools near my home. They shouldn't close because ERES is one of the schools in my neighborhood where they help children a lot.
I oppose the expansion of this charter school. I am a veteran teacher at International Community School in the Fruitvale. Instead of supporting the expansion of another charter school in our neighborhood, please support our current and existing public schools that work so hard to support our students and families.
Charter expansion stations fine from already-underfunded public schools! Many, many community groups and families oppose this expansion. ERES is not a particularly high performing school and there is no reason for it to expand besides the bottom line of its parent company, Aspire
The union (OEA) is an INTEREST GROUP in service of teachers, not students. Their misinformation narrative to teachers and the public reflects the preservation of a broken system that has undermined student outcomes with its actions - defending failure and insulating its membership from accountability. ERES is outperforming its OUSD neighbors by a large margin, the CA Dept. of Ed. shows this clearly. Yet, if ERES mirrored the performance of its OUSD neighbors, they'd have been closed, not having met the charter renewal criteria. If only OUSD held its own schools to the same standard as its charters. Fruitvale, Allendale, H. Mann, Global Fam. fail kids year after year, yet get green-lit every August for a new school year. Even if OUSD had the courage to be good stewards of our kid's education beyond their own political aspirations, OEA would never allow teachers to be held to a high standard of performance where there were consequences for mediocrity and incentives for excellence.
As an OUSD parent and an educator within District 5, I oppose the expansion of Aspire ERES. We need to invest in quality public schools, and not continue to drain resources from the district and its families!
A recent commenter wrote:"The entire argument about OUSD losing money to charter schools because of enrollment money is BS!” Actually, this “BS” is a fact that has been confirmed repeatedly (look up the objective third party fact-finder’s report from the strike and it is fairly common sense once you understand how school funding works). To break it down: Charters take money from the district while not inheriting any of the legacy costs of traditional public schools -- costs that go up as enrollment goes down. As a result, charter schools have higher per-pupil funding. This huge increase in enrollment takes even more funding from high performing public schools, many of which outperformed Aspire over the past 4 years, which then lose programs like reading and art. Another commenter complained about the "disappointing rhetoric of us vs them”; what they really mean is “don’t think about anyone EXCEPT us.” Please think about the whole community and do the right thing.
Con que derecho se sienten los individuos aquí de decir que todas las escuelas del distrito en el área de Fruitvale son buenas o que deberían ser opciones para todas las familias. Como madre de familia y con hijo que asistió a Manazinta Seed puedo confirmar que cada niño es diferente y ocupa cosas distintas algo que no todas las escuelas pueden ofrecer. Y tal cual, como mama y la primera maestra de mis hijos conozco y se lo que es mejor para ellos. Los problemas de un presupuesto no se solucionan poniendo un alto a las escuelas de calidad, se solucionan con hechos. Si todas las escuelas de Oakland fueran escuelas de calidad no hubiera la necesidad de tener acceso a un sistema con opciones. Ya basta, aquí los que importan más en la conversación son los niños.
The Board should vote to allow ERES to expand. ERES families are highly satisfied with their experience, as evidenced by the fact that they have chosen this school for their children. OUSD should not take this power away from them. Nor should it deny an opportunity to the hundreds of students on the waitlist. Why wouldn't OUSD want to encourage the growth and expansion of a school that is working for Oakland families, and that other families want to take advantage of? When so little is going right in the district, we should be lifting up solutions that are working, not squandering them.
I fully support the expansion of ERES! As a parent looking for a pre-Kinder to 8th grade school in my neighborhood that provides a high quality education there is no other choice but ERES. I was disappointed to learn that they were expected to close due because OUSD playing politics. I toured Horace Man & Global Families in early 2020, my neighborhood schools, and then comparing to ERES, there was no contest when looking at the community ERES built and also the test scores. It disappoints me to see Oakland educators commenting here that didn't do the research and are telling lies to save their jobs. My husband and I studied our options when looking for where to enroll our child. ERES tests better than any other school in the Fruitvale K-8 with kids of color, and racially ERES is identical to Horace Man & Global Families so saying it doesn't rep the Fruitvale is a FLAT OUT LIE. Be honest about where you are and that you're not a quality option and then maybe you can actually improve!
Aspire ERES Academy IS a quality school that deserves to remain open to continue to serve its students and families and give students on the waitlist an opportunity to an excellent education. It is the job of elected board members to listen to families and advocate for ALL students in Oakland. Their actions demonstrate that they are putting their political preferences above serving ALL students and families. My traditional district neighborhood school performs in the red, that isn't an option for my children and as a result, OUSD Board Members are confining my children and all of ERES's students from quality education and their true potential to succeed and create a better future for themselves and their families. This is an INJUSTICE to our community and we're going to call you out!
I oppose the expansion of this charter school. I am a parent of a student at Manzanita SEED in Fruitvale. Instead of supporting the expansion of another charter school in our neighborhood, please support our current and existing public schools that work so hard to support our students and families.
Former After School Educator in OUSD and parent of students in OUSD and charter schools. I'm disappointed to see OUSD educators turn to this rhetoric of us vs. them regarding charters. It doesn't reflect the attitude of the great teachers I've seen working in OUSD over the years. As teachers, I think we all care about seeing our students succeed. Sometimes we have to surrender that the best place for students to succeed isn't always in our school, or assigned school by the district. I feel OUSD's pain on enrollment and the struggle that comes having to do more with less, but charters aren't the enemy. District accountability is the enemy, the State of California is the enemy. Blaming charter schools is a quick fix to a problem that was there when I started elementary school in Oakland in 1991. Charters are required to renew every 4 or 5 years and have to meet a minimum criteria to exist - in that sense OUSD schools have less accountability than their adjacent charter school.
I encourage the board to deny Aspire ERES' petition for material revision of its charter to more than double its enrollment. Allowing it to do so would harm public schools in the Fruitvale neighborhood -- many of which are excellent -- and would harm Oakland public schools overall. This charter school clearly does not serve its entire community, as evidenced by its demographics. The standard for material revision established by AB 1505, the new charter law, makes clear that this petition should be denied.
Aspire Eres does not serve our WHOLE Fruitvale community, and in particular they underserve African American students and students with IEPs. I have been teaching at United for Success Academy, an amazing neighborhood middle school for 13 years. It is a problem that in the same neighborhood, 15% of UFSA students are African American, whereas only 2.8% of Aspire Eres students are. Similarly, 18.4% of UFSA students have IEPs, whereas at Aspire Eres it is 13.4%.
Charter schools in our community (EPIC and Lodestar, for example) have consistently disrupted our schools and students’ educations. Expanding Aspire Eres will affect our ability to continue providing the best education possible. They threaten extra academic support and electives (for example- our math support classes with a 4:1 student teacher ratio, reading support, ELL support, music, art, computer science). Invest in Fruitvale’s existing public middle schools: UFSA, UPA, Life. Please vote NOT to expand Aspire Eres.
If a public charter is a better school, families have a right to that option. This entire argument about OUSD loosing money to charter schools because of enrollment money is BS! The money follows the kids! Period! Does OUSD condemn private schools for taking away enrollment dollars when kids leave OUSD to go to Saint Elizabeth’s or Bishop? Asinine! What entitles OUSD to any claim to student enrollment money? When OUSD says they’re a “family choice school district” what they really mean is “we’re family choice, as long as you choose OUSD!” What a bunch of hypocrites!
I have worked for both ASPIRE and OUSD. ERES should be allowed to expand on the condition that the school's population and teaching staff mirror that of the surrounding community. ERES (and all of ASPIRE and OUSD) needs to better serve Black/ African American students in particular. If the board chooses to not let ERES expand, then it should not close ERES and allow them to move to more suitable facilities for the safety and learning needs of students. Many students and families value the community and education that ERES has created for them over the years. Take families' and students' perspectives into account before everything else.
If OUSD were a business, they'd be out of business. Without the safety net of the State gov't, in a market economy, OUSD would not survive competition. Simply look at the abysmal rate of graduates with A-G met, or the number of incoming freshmen make it to senior year with college eligibility - why would parents choose to send their kids there unless forced? No other business is provided a guaranteed, compulsory (by law), customer base that is assigned to them for 12 years in perpetuity. As a result, OUSD, like most bureaucracies, has never had to compete for its existence and the OUSD board reflects this carelessness and aversion to evolution because they have no incentive. When a charter school provides better results with more efficiency than OUSD, this disrupts the status quo. And, as the gatekeepers of charter schools, OUSD gets to be the pitcher, catcher and umpire of the game and "fix" the outcome as they go - maintaining pretense of progress, when it's just more of the same.
Schools are not supposed to be in competition with each other. Nor is education a product. Nor are schools businesses. That Mason Marangella sees it that way is one of the biggest problems with Charter schools.
I'm a former OUSD and I can tell you for a FACT that any of the issues regarding enrollment, funding, or underperformance in OUSD predates the existence of charter schools by decades. OUSD, has historically FAILED students! Charter schools are easy targets and provide a scapegoat for OUSD to obfuscate their ineptitude whilst putting blood in the water for OEA, distracting from the real issue: PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE OUTPERFORMING DISTRICT SCHOOLS! This is not an opinion, this is a FACT! Head to the CA Dashboard and the numbers are all there for us to see. Even OUSD Charter office admits this in their staff report with the school in question, ERES. Instead of OUSD partnering with charter schools and learning from them, they've condemned them and moved to monopolize school choice because they DON'T WANT TO COMPETE! Parents, you're getting an inferior product from a business that is unwilling to adapt even when shown a better way. Oakland kids deserve a quality school, charter or not.
ERES' data shows that we provide a high quality program: the doubling number of students reading on or above grade each year, the double digit growth in SBAC ELA and Math scores, significant reduction of our rate of suspendable behaviors, and the elimination of disproportionate outcomes for our students with IEPs. The Material Revision staff report recommends denial, even though OUSD acknowledges that ERES is performing better than the district at serving economically disadvantaged Hispanic students. OUSD Directors need to honor their word to the Oakland community by increasing our enrollment to ensure we remain a high quality option. ERES is in danger of closing because this board is emphasizing politics over student socio-emotional well-being and learning. Prioritizing money and preservation of broken systems, over students and families. On the OUSD website, it states that the first priority of the district is “quality community schools”. ERES IS A QUALITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL.
I support ERES because it is the small school where my oldest son graduated and I currently have my youngest daughter, the teachers and all the staff are very kind to everyone and the academic level is higher than the schools near my home. They shouldn't close because ERES is one of the schools in my neighborhood where they help children a lot.
I oppose the expansion of this charter school. I am a veteran teacher at International Community School in the Fruitvale. Instead of supporting the expansion of another charter school in our neighborhood, please support our current and existing public schools that work so hard to support our students and families.
Charter expansion stations fine from already-underfunded public schools! Many, many community groups and families oppose this expansion. ERES is not a particularly high performing school and there is no reason for it to expand besides the bottom line of its parent company, Aspire