Blog note: this article references a grand jury report.
The Oakland School Board voted to approve two school mergers at a meeting Wednesday night, an unpopular decision that sparked outrage from many parents, teachers and students.
At an emotional, and at times chaotic, seven-hour meeting, hundreds of people railed against the plan. Opponents waved signs, chanted and booed at the board, outraged that kids would have to endure the disruption of changing schools.
But the shuttering of schools is necessary, the Oakland Unified School District says, because it’s operating twice as many schools as districts of comparable size and faces ongoing budget woes.
“Long-term it’s about improving the quality of all the schools,” said John Sasaki, the district’s spokesperson. No teachers or staff will lose jobs as a result of the mergers, Sasaki said.
Kaiser Elementary and Sankofa Academy will merge at Sankofa’s campus. Separately, two middle schools — Frick Impact Academy and the Oakland School of Language — will merge on the Frick campus.
The school district estimates these closures will save more than $3 million over the next five years. The district has already merged three schools in the past two years as part of a five-year plan that could shutter up to 24 schools.
Over the past 15 years, the district has faced annual deficits between $20 million and $30 million, according to an August Alameda County grand jury report. Increased pension costs, a loss of students to charter schools and years of overspending have fueled the budget problems.
The district was in turmoil in March when it cut $21.75 million from the budget and negotiated an 11% teacher raise over four years in response to a weeklong strike.
“We are still in a position where we have to be extremely careful with how we spend our money,” Sasaki said.
Student enrollment has dropped by more than a third in the past 15 years, the grand jury report said. Operating schools with too few students is costly.
Oakland runs 87 schools for 37,000 students, while the Fremont Unified School District operates 42 schools for 35,000 students.
Board members were split on the merger of Kaiser and Sankofa Elementary Schools, voting 5-2 for it. Some felt an urgency to make a decision, while others backed off after intense pressure from the speakers.
Members of the board said they recognized that change is hard, but said the decision was necessary.
“We’re grappling with these multiple issues and trying to make the best decision on behalf of the whole city and the district,” said Aimee Eng, president of the school board.
But board member Shanthi Gonzales, who voted against the merger, argued “there's a right way to do this (to be) successful. We don't have buy-in to do this — without buy-in from teachers, I don't think this is going to work.”
Kaiser Elementary, which has a small North Oakland campus nearly at its 283-student capacity, will merge with Sankofa Elementary, which saw a 13% enrollment drop in the past five years that left its campus at half capacity with 189 students.
Sheila Hubbard, mother of a Sankofa fourth-grader in the special education program, cried at the podium.
“Sankofa has been his safe haven,” Hubbard said of her son, James. “He’s been traumatized enough — before you vote, think about the trauma he would have to go through if he went to another school.”
Dozens of kids marched to the podium to tell the board what they love about their schools.
Beatrice Kizziah, 12, a former Kaiser student, said her school community is like a family.
“If you take apart the communities, you are tearing apart families,” she said.
Lucy, a fifth-grader at Kaiser, admonished the board.
“It’s basically this room against you guys,” she said.
Critics of the middle school merger said at the meeting the decision was rushed. The teachers, students and families of the two schools said they needed time to offer input before moving forward with the decision.
The district has pointed out that the middle schools were under-enrolled. Frick struggled to fill nearly 500 empty seats last school year and has room to accommodate students from the School of Language, a small dual-language school.
Tied to the proposal to merge the two middle schools was an additional move. A high-demand school, Melrose Leadership Academy, will expand to the Sherman and Maxwell Park campuses since it has outgrown its space. This will cost nearly $750,000 in the next five years, the district said.
Opponents of the mergers reminded the school board of another unpopular closure last year: The Roots International Academy middle school shuttered after a similarly contentious vote.
Eli Kirshbaum taught seventh-grade math and science at Roots before it closed. He said the stress of moving schools, for him and his students, has made him doubt the career he loves.
All of the Roots students “are suffering after their schools were closed last year,” Kirshbaum said. “They have been thrust into classes where they don’t know their classmates, they don’t know their teachers … (some) are taking the bus over 30 blocks by themselves every morning.”
His former co-worker agreed.
“Last time you didn’t (listen to what people wanted), you harmed so many teachers and students,” said Quinn Ranahan, a former Roots eighth-grade math teacher. “It’s really hard to watch this happen again.”
The final outcome came after the board first voted down a measure to move Kaiser and Sankofa to the soon-to-be empty Santa Fe Elementary. Members of the crowd argued that it made no sense to uproot two schools, causing emotional distress to more students.
Instead, the board voted to approve its original motion to combine the two schools at Sankofa’s campus.
Karen Monroe, Alameda County’s superintendent of schools, said that Oakland Unified is “engaged in a process to position itself to better serve its students and community. ... OUSD leadership has considered extensively the number of quality schools needed across the district to support the success of every Oakland student and family. I support that process.”
She added that discussions around school closures are challenging, but are an essential part of the process.
“It was really painful watching those kids last night,” Sasaki said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make this transition as easy as possible.”
September 12, 2019
San Francisco Chronicle
By Anna Bauman
No comments:
Post a Comment