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OAKLAND, CA — Oakland’s school board has gone rogue and intends to close 24 schools in the face of massive community opposition. Out of the last 18 schools they closed, 14 opened as charters. Proposed closures are in the impoverished Flatlands where Oakland is opening more than 16,000 new market-rate residences.
School board members are controlled by corporations and billionaires Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg, major charter school supporters. They spent phenomenal amounts to win school board control, far more than most races for state assembly. Who knows what other dark money was involved?
Oakland has families who have had to change schools three times in the last couple of years due to school closures. The entire community wants to keep every school open. When they protest at school board meetings, board members cut the mic if they think you are not on “their topic.” They shop online and look at email, but never, ever respond. Then they call the cops and run off to a secret room to make illegal decisions in private.
This is what corporate dictatorship looks like! Both the school board and city government regularly disregard the law in order to implement a real estate plan that is dispossessing the city of families that have lived here for generations.
The school district does not save money by closing schools. In fact, it loses $57 million a year to subsidize charters. At the same time, the district regularly runs a budget surplus, partly because it refuses to spend dedicated revenue in the classroom! This alone is a criminal act!
By being “broke on purpose,” the school district has the excuse to continue the privatization of school properties. Oakland was seized by the state of California in 2003 and is still under state-imposed supervision by a public-private corporation. So we see the state, the school board and the city government working together to destroy public schools for their developer patrons.
Organizations like Oakland Public Education Network, Oakland’s Not For Sale and Bettering Our School System are demanding that no schools be closed in Oakland until after the 2020 November election. Propositions on the ballot may provide far more money to California schools. In the same election, four of seven school board seats are open. The people of Oakland intend to seize back control of the school board and compel local government to be accountable to the people, not to corporations.
Steven Miller is a retired Oakland science teacher who taught for 25 years in Flatland schools. His two boys went through Oakland Public Schools.
