22-0243 Adoption by the Board of Education of Resolution No. 2122-0030 - School Consolidations for Fiscal Years 2022-23 and 2023-24.
· Presentation by the Superintendent of Schools of recommendations for School Consolidations for Fiscal Years 2022-23 and 2023-24
· Public Comments on proposed School Consolidations
· Discussion of the Board by and between Members and/or the Superintendent of Schools and/or designee(s)
· Action by Board on Resolution No. 2122-0030
My niece attends Emerson. She loves her current and former teachers and her school community. I know there are students like her at every one of the proposed closure schools. Her future middle school is part of the closures.
A decision to close community schools is too major a choice to go without community engagement. The very fact that this board passed legislation that exempted themselves from conduction community engagement nor an equity impact analysis is downright disrespectful to the students, families and teachers this board is supposed to serve. Find alternative ways to balance the budget.
The average distance a student/family would have to travel to get to these proposed welcoming schools is over 2 miles. Some of these welcoming schools are in completely different neighborhoods, some require our students to walk across dangerous high traffic streets and intersections. The safety of our children was not considered at all in this district's planning. Hands off our schools!
Poverty is a form of violence. Education should be the key to create an equitable community. Our students need more resources and smaller class size to equal the resources of the average white middle and upper class students who are not getting their schools closed. Taking out a school will only increase poverty and crime in that local area as the school provides a safe haven for community events, after school programs and sometimes daycare. The real issue is why are we supporting charter schools when there is no evidence they provide better schools than our smaller school model. READ Charter School Operations and Performance report by RAND Corp. In order to be equitable we need to provide smaller class size to low income people so they have more of a level playing field than communities that can afford tutors and summer training programs. You want to defund public schools and keep charter schools. There is no objective evidence that charter schools do a better job.
There is a recent Instagram campaign that OUSD is promoting, #MentalHealthisHealth... How? How are you all declaring this but want to close schools and impact thousands of children's mental health? These kids have endured enough with a pandemic and now you want to uproot them, furthering the decline of their mental health. Also, you all said that it takes 304 students to make a school financially viable, and a projected 299 kids attending Westlake, you want to close a school for five less children? Please make it make sense! I have four children, 1 at Oakland Tech, 1 at Westlake and 1 at Cleveland, I applied to send my youngest to Munck nexxt year for TK. Oe closure/merger impacts all the children in Oakland. These schools are our children's communities! Westlake is filled with resources, programs and staff that treat my child with nothing but love, compassion and respect. Please don't close our schools!!!
A message from my kindergartener: "justise, not racism".
And a message from me: these closures, with no dialogue from the community (open comment is not dialogue nor cooperation), belie your own resolution from last year of equity for Black students. Teachers, staff, and families deserve to feel valued and supported by the board and district, instead of constantly in fear of being next in line for disruption and breaking up of communities. I can't help but notice that it's not the well-to-do schools in danger of closure -- finances are important, yes, but by making this decision AND in the way you're doing it, you are sending a clear and long-lasting message about who matters, and that message will stay with everyone impacted for their entire lives.
I am an Oakland native and a proud graduate of Horace Mann Elementary School. I am a member of the Horace Mann School Alumni group. My son will ascend to 6th grade next year in the Westlake Middle School neighborhood. I am angry at your willingness to systematically target Back and Brown families and children with these closures in the middle of a pandemic. This strikes me as deeply racist and opportunistic. We are all still reeling from this pandemic, not to mention decades of systemic racism here in Oakland. You have other choices. You can consider putting resources into enriching these schools, recognizing the hard work of the teachers and staff at these schools. If the argument is that there are too many schools, then why not trim on the charter side rather than disemboweling the District, by shutting its core OUSD schools? I implore you to listen to what you are hearing universally from public comment. No to school closures!
I’m in Oakland resident and pay property taxes on two properties here. It’s important to me that my tax dollars go to fund the schools in our community. I’m highly concerned that predominantly black schools which are important to our communityand long-standing pillars of education are being disproportionately targeted for closing. Clearly we are living through challenging times but must rise to the occasion to overcome these temporary obstacles and ensure the trust and confidence of the community that education is our Paramount priority. Please keep the schools open. Thank you, Luke
We should be discussing investment in Oakland public school systems. Kindergarteners to 12th graders shared their concern of how this will have negative impact on their mental health and their relationship to their peers, teachers and community. We must maintain a stable school community for students to thrive and recover from the impacts of the pandemic. Listen to the students, educators and parents.
OUSD needs to sue the State of California to recover the debt, most of which was incurred under the edicts of state appointed OUSD Superintendents.
FCMAT is an appointed board driven by the neoliberal, privatizing, austerity policies favored by corporate interests. The state of CA can and should be allocating to OUSD the full funding needed to best educate our students. The state of California facilitated the explosion of charters in Oakland. Under prop 39, the district wasn't legally allowed to evaluate charter applications based on the charters potential to siphon millions from the district every year.
I'm a retired teacher who studied how to "close the gap" in the test scores of our urban, low income students. Countless studies show that small community schools with small class sizes can best provide the attention and support our students need. Gavin Newsom, Nancy Skinner, Tony Thurmond need to put our state tax money where their mouth is.
No OUSD School Closures!
STOP the closures of the schools - there was no community involvement in making this decision and the students that will be most adversely affected have no reasonable options.
I have been a teacher, coach, etc for 25 yrs at Brookfield Elementary and we are tired of being terrorized every year with the threat of school closures. This has been happening for the past decade and has had an adverse effect on student learning. We've been sabotaged and starved for resources and support and despite that, we always seem to make large improvements and growth according to the data you provide us. Despite being neglected, we have gone out on our own to create the school we want for our community. we build a whole entire forest to combat the pollution from the freeway and airport (which boarder our campus). We have build a huge vegetable garden and a fruit Orchard for our community. This past year we got $100k from the NBA to build a STEM lab for our students and less than a year since it's creation, you want close it and take the equipment and tech that WE earned for our community. It is truly shameful. If this passes, you can no longer claim to be serving children.
I oppose school closures. Stop the harm to our kids. It’s about our kids do right by them. Listen to their words, this is harmful . How can they thrive with constant changes in their community. No school closures without time to look at viable solutions. It’s a pandemic.
It is totally unacceptable for the school board to even consider passing this resolution. There is no reason for OUSD to close schools, especially during a pandemic that has already traumatized thousands of our young people. This entire process has been a sham. There has been no community process. For the school board to try and ram this resolution in just a couple weeks since the plan was announced is insulting. Shame on yourselves. Vote no on this resolution.
We know that smaller neighborhood schools work better, and are usually less expensive in the long run. This will adversely impact majority black schools. We need to fight for more funding, not sacrifice more students.
As a Oakland resident, I am concerned about the impact of the proposed school closures on equity and student well being. Please keep students’ and teachers’ preferences in mind and vote against school consolidation.
I am a parent of an OUSD elementary age student and I oppose the closing of schools with majority Black enrollment. I support the Reparations for Black Students Resolution.
My name is Marianne Barlow. I'm an Oakland resident and partner of an OUSD teacher. I can't tell you how vehemently I oppose the proposed closures and consolidations of schools. What happened to the Reparations for Black Students Resolution, which you passed in 2021? Was that just for show? How can you pass a resolution about reparations for Black students and then turn around and plan to close several majority-Black schools? During Black History Month for an extra slap in the face!?!!? Maybe the district needs money, but it CANNOT take it from the students that are already the most vulnerable, in historically oppressed, historically under-resourced communities. There MUST be another way to help solve the budget problems. CHILDREN are the NUMBER ONE reason that the Oakland Unified School District exists. Children's education and futures are at stake! How can you sleep at night, knowing that you will be negatively impacting so many hundreds of already vulnerable children? SHAME ON YOU.
The five board directors supporting school closures have a very different agenda from those of us on the other side. Yes, there are sides here, and these five board directors have been bought and paid for by those who do not support quality public education for all students, especially working class students of color. Check out this presentation of Gary Yee's subservience to the billionaires.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13umQ-BEHPnV2383mj2xhZngUvq4fCTuV/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116434745704232065709&rtpof=true&sd=true
I am a 4th grade teacher in my 4th year here in OUSD. You say that you’re closing these schools based on lack of enrollment, however that is a problem you yourselves have caused by discouraging families from enrolling into your schools and encouraging enrollment into charter schools. That logic does not make sense. Please find another way to fix it without harming Oakland families. Why don’t you try investing in your schools? Instead of throwing these school communities away, you should be doing the jobs you signed up for and investing in your schools. The schools on this list deserve nothing but love and support, but here I am watching you try to eliminate them, as if the communities in them are disposable and can be wiped out without consequence. There should be no conversation about closing schools.
I am very opposed to closing public schools. This is being proposed as a budget issue when there is no evidence that this plan will solve underlying systemic budget issues -- just kicking the can -- and there has been no racial justice analysis, particularly on the impact on black and native students, ELLs, and students with IEPs, who have consistently suffered the worst from "budget" driven decisions. Strong no. Please oppose.
My niece attends Emerson. She loves her current and former teachers and her school community. I know there are students like her at every one of the proposed closure schools. Her future middle school is part of the closures.
A decision to close community schools is too major a choice to go without community engagement. The very fact that this board passed legislation that exempted themselves from conduction community engagement nor an equity impact analysis is downright disrespectful to the students, families and teachers this board is supposed to serve. Find alternative ways to balance the budget.
The average distance a student/family would have to travel to get to these proposed welcoming schools is over 2 miles. Some of these welcoming schools are in completely different neighborhoods, some require our students to walk across dangerous high traffic streets and intersections. The safety of our children was not considered at all in this district's planning. Hands off our schools!
Poverty is a form of violence. Education should be the key to create an equitable community. Our students need more resources and smaller class size to equal the resources of the average white middle and upper class students who are not getting their schools closed. Taking out a school will only increase poverty and crime in that local area as the school provides a safe haven for community events, after school programs and sometimes daycare. The real issue is why are we supporting charter schools when there is no evidence they provide better schools than our smaller school model. READ Charter School Operations and Performance report by RAND Corp. In order to be equitable we need to provide smaller class size to low income people so they have more of a level playing field than communities that can afford tutors and summer training programs. You want to defund public schools and keep charter schools. There is no objective evidence that charter schools do a better job.
There is a recent Instagram campaign that OUSD is promoting, #MentalHealthisHealth... How? How are you all declaring this but want to close schools and impact thousands of children's mental health? These kids have endured enough with a pandemic and now you want to uproot them, furthering the decline of their mental health. Also, you all said that it takes 304 students to make a school financially viable, and a projected 299 kids attending Westlake, you want to close a school for five less children? Please make it make sense! I have four children, 1 at Oakland Tech, 1 at Westlake and 1 at Cleveland, I applied to send my youngest to Munck nexxt year for TK. Oe closure/merger impacts all the children in Oakland. These schools are our children's communities! Westlake is filled with resources, programs and staff that treat my child with nothing but love, compassion and respect. Please don't close our schools!!!
A message from my kindergartener: "justise, not racism".
And a message from me: these closures, with no dialogue from the community (open comment is not dialogue nor cooperation), belie your own resolution from last year of equity for Black students. Teachers, staff, and families deserve to feel valued and supported by the board and district, instead of constantly in fear of being next in line for disruption and breaking up of communities. I can't help but notice that it's not the well-to-do schools in danger of closure -- finances are important, yes, but by making this decision AND in the way you're doing it, you are sending a clear and long-lasting message about who matters, and that message will stay with everyone impacted for their entire lives.
I am an Oakland native and a proud graduate of Horace Mann Elementary School. I am a member of the Horace Mann School Alumni group. My son will ascend to 6th grade next year in the Westlake Middle School neighborhood. I am angry at your willingness to systematically target Back and Brown families and children with these closures in the middle of a pandemic. This strikes me as deeply racist and opportunistic. We are all still reeling from this pandemic, not to mention decades of systemic racism here in Oakland. You have other choices. You can consider putting resources into enriching these schools, recognizing the hard work of the teachers and staff at these schools. If the argument is that there are too many schools, then why not trim on the charter side rather than disemboweling the District, by shutting its core OUSD schools? I implore you to listen to what you are hearing universally from public comment. No to school closures!
I’m in Oakland resident and pay property taxes on two properties here. It’s important to me that my tax dollars go to fund the schools in our community. I’m highly concerned that predominantly black schools which are important to our communityand long-standing pillars of education are being disproportionately targeted for closing. Clearly we are living through challenging times but must rise to the occasion to overcome these temporary obstacles and ensure the trust and confidence of the community that education is our Paramount priority. Please keep the schools open. Thank you, Luke
We should be discussing investment in Oakland public school systems. Kindergarteners to 12th graders shared their concern of how this will have negative impact on their mental health and their relationship to their peers, teachers and community. We must maintain a stable school community for students to thrive and recover from the impacts of the pandemic. Listen to the students, educators and parents.
OUSD needs to sue the State of California to recover the debt, most of which was incurred under the edicts of state appointed OUSD Superintendents.
FCMAT is an appointed board driven by the neoliberal, privatizing, austerity policies favored by corporate interests. The state of CA can and should be allocating to OUSD the full funding needed to best educate our students. The state of California facilitated the explosion of charters in Oakland. Under prop 39, the district wasn't legally allowed to evaluate charter applications based on the charters potential to siphon millions from the district every year.
I'm a retired teacher who studied how to "close the gap" in the test scores of our urban, low income students. Countless studies show that small community schools with small class sizes can best provide the attention and support our students need. Gavin Newsom, Nancy Skinner, Tony Thurmond need to put our state tax money where their mouth is.
No OUSD School Closures!
STOP the closures of the schools - there was no community involvement in making this decision and the students that will be most adversely affected have no reasonable options.
I have been a teacher, coach, etc for 25 yrs at Brookfield Elementary and we are tired of being terrorized every year with the threat of school closures. This has been happening for the past decade and has had an adverse effect on student learning. We've been sabotaged and starved for resources and support and despite that, we always seem to make large improvements and growth according to the data you provide us. Despite being neglected, we have gone out on our own to create the school we want for our community. we build a whole entire forest to combat the pollution from the freeway and airport (which boarder our campus). We have build a huge vegetable garden and a fruit Orchard for our community. This past year we got $100k from the NBA to build a STEM lab for our students and less than a year since it's creation, you want close it and take the equipment and tech that WE earned for our community. It is truly shameful. If this passes, you can no longer claim to be serving children.
I oppose school closures. Stop the harm to our kids. It’s about our kids do right by them. Listen to their words, this is harmful . How can they thrive with constant changes in their community. No school closures without time to look at viable solutions. It’s a pandemic.
Vote no for the closure of these schools.
It is totally unacceptable for the school board to even consider passing this resolution. There is no reason for OUSD to close schools, especially during a pandemic that has already traumatized thousands of our young people. This entire process has been a sham. There has been no community process. For the school board to try and ram this resolution in just a couple weeks since the plan was announced is insulting. Shame on yourselves. Vote no on this resolution.
We know that smaller neighborhood schools work better, and are usually less expensive in the long run. This will adversely impact majority black schools. We need to fight for more funding, not sacrifice more students.
As a Oakland resident, I am concerned about the impact of the proposed school closures on equity and student well being. Please keep students’ and teachers’ preferences in mind and vote against school consolidation.
I am a parent of an OUSD elementary age student and I oppose the closing of schools with majority Black enrollment. I support the Reparations for Black Students Resolution.
My name is Marianne Barlow. I'm an Oakland resident and partner of an OUSD teacher. I can't tell you how vehemently I oppose the proposed closures and consolidations of schools. What happened to the Reparations for Black Students Resolution, which you passed in 2021? Was that just for show? How can you pass a resolution about reparations for Black students and then turn around and plan to close several majority-Black schools? During Black History Month for an extra slap in the face!?!!? Maybe the district needs money, but it CANNOT take it from the students that are already the most vulnerable, in historically oppressed, historically under-resourced communities. There MUST be another way to help solve the budget problems. CHILDREN are the NUMBER ONE reason that the Oakland Unified School District exists. Children's education and futures are at stake! How can you sleep at night, knowing that you will be negatively impacting so many hundreds of already vulnerable children? SHAME ON YOU.
The five board directors supporting school closures have a very different agenda from those of us on the other side. Yes, there are sides here, and these five board directors have been bought and paid for by those who do not support quality public education for all students, especially working class students of color. Check out this presentation of Gary Yee's subservience to the billionaires.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13umQ-BEHPnV2383mj2xhZngUvq4fCTuV/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116434745704232065709&rtpof=true&sd=true
I am a 4th grade teacher in my 4th year here in OUSD. You say that you’re closing these schools based on lack of enrollment, however that is a problem you yourselves have caused by discouraging families from enrolling into your schools and encouraging enrollment into charter schools. That logic does not make sense. Please find another way to fix it without harming Oakland families. Why don’t you try investing in your schools? Instead of throwing these school communities away, you should be doing the jobs you signed up for and investing in your schools. The schools on this list deserve nothing but love and support, but here I am watching you try to eliminate them, as if the communities in them are disposable and can be wiped out without consequence. There should be no conversation about closing schools.
I am very opposed to closing public schools. This is being proposed as a budget issue when there is no evidence that this plan will solve underlying systemic budget issues -- just kicking the can -- and there has been no racial justice analysis, particularly on the impact on black and native students, ELLs, and students with IEPs, who have consistently suffered the worst from "budget" driven decisions. Strong no. Please oppose.