They say Kaiser’s culture of acceptance and inclusiveness can’t be easily replicated
Blog note: this article references a grand jury report.
OAKLAND — Although it won’t happen for another year, students at Kaiser Elementary in the Hiller Highlands neighborhood are fretting over the fate of their beloved school, which could close after the upcoming school year.
“All the teachers are really nice and fun, and I like all my friends here,” said Grace Johnson, who attended kindergarten there and starts first grade in the fall.
For decades, Kaiser has built a reputation for being an inclusive, small school, where students know just about all of their classmates, and bullying is rare. It’s also known for having a culture of acceptance of LGBTQ students and staff, said Grace’s mother, Alicia Johnson. Families from all over the city enroll their kids in the school; 268 students attended last year, and the building has a 283-student capacity.
But as the Oakland Unified School District heeds the demands of the Alameda County civil grand jury and state overseers to close and consolidate schools in the wake of a more than 30 percent enrollment drop from 54,000 to around 37,000 students over the past 15 years and a multi-million dollar budget crisis, district officials are eyeing Kaiser as one of the the next to close. The school board will vote in September on a plan for 2020 to merge Kaiser with Sankofa Academy, a larger campus about four miles away on 61st Street and Shattuck Avenue that’s built for 336 students but only had 187 enrolled last year.
Though the district has pitched the merger as an opportunity to offer more students a higher-quality education, parents of Kaiser students are pushing back, and are even considering suing the district to stop the move. Many of them sought out a school like Kaiser after their children were bullied elsewhere, or struggled in a larger classroom environment. They fear their children will be subject to the same experiences if the schools combine.
“My daughter has thrived here. My son, who is a complicated lad, has done great here as well, and it’s just such a beautiful, warm, welcoming community that you really become a part of,” said Steve Young, whose son is going into third grade and daughter was just promoted from Kaiser.
Young said it isn’t the curriculum that makes Kaiser such a welcoming place, it’s the school’s unique culture.
Alicia Johnson, said her son Mickey was “subject to all this chaos” at a charter school she had enrolled him in; his teacher quit four days into the semester. But at Kaiser, her family immediately felt at home, she said. Mickey’s teachers helped him acclimate to the new school, and he quickly made friends.
“We just thought this is where we want to raise our children,” Johnson said. “My son adjusted right away, and felt so much love in the first week here at Kaiser.”
School board member Jody London, whose district encompasses Kaiser and Sankofa, said the intention of the merger is to reduce the overhead of operating two campuses so that more money could be spent on the students themselves. She said the students, faculty and other staff who want to go to the new school will be able to. The merger doesn’t pose a threat to teachers’ jobs at either school, she said.
London said she believes parents’ fear of the merger stems from a natural fear of change, and that the new school could also foster the type of environment that Kaiser did.
“I understand there are a lot of families at Kaiser who believe their child has special needs, which can be accommodated in a school with more kids,” London said in an interview.
Families who don’t want their children in Sankofa can opt to enroll at other schools.
The potential merger of Kaiser and Sankofa is part of the second phase of closures, consolidations and expansions under the district’s “Blueprint for Quality Schools” plan to right-size the district. The first phase included the strongly contested closure of Roots International Academy, a middle school in East Oakland. That first phase also included merging Alliance Academy and Elmhurst Community Prep School as well as Futures Elementary School and Community United Elementary School.
Plans for the second phase has not been completed, but the district also is considering some kind of merger involving Manzanita SEED, Oakland SOL, Manzanita Community School and Fruitvale Elementary. District spokesman John Sasaki said the district is not considering merging all four into one.
Johnson says she wishes “it could be true, that you could just pick the campus and go,” but doesn’t think it is likely. If the merger goes through, she plans to enroll her kids at Mills College Children’s School, a private alternative school at the Mills College campus in the hills.
Clarence Hunt, whose son is going into second grade, is also considering putting his son in a private school if Kaiser is to close, though he said he thinks a lawsuit would keep it open.
If Kaiser is to close, the district has not yet determined what will happen with the property. London said she thinks the site would be a good location for teacher housing, “given the residential nature of the neighborhood.”
The Kaiser parents speculate the property would be sold or leased to a charter if the school were to be shut down.
July 15, 2019
The Mercury News
By Ali Tadayon
No comments:
Post a Comment