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On1 effects save without exiting6/1/2023 ![]() Vilma Serrano, a kindergarten teacher at Melrose Leadership Academy, who also serves on OEA's executive board, said Friday's strike was about fighting for the rights of all students in the district, not just those who will be immediately affected. That disparity prompted the ACLU this month to urge California's attorney general to investigate the district's closure plan, alleging it violates the rights of Black students. Black students also are overrepresented, accounting for more than 40% of the student body at the schools, almost double the district-wide average. The vast majority of students at the targeted schools - some 93% - are considered either lower-income, English learners or foster youth. ![]() It also plans to merge RISE Community with New Highland Academy Elementary and eliminate grades 6-8 at La Escuelita Elementary and Hillcrest Elementary. Under a plan the school board approved in February, the district is slated to close Community Day School and Parker Elementary at the end of this year, and five more schools - Brookfield Elementary, Carl Munck Elementary, Grass Valley Elementary, Korematsu Discovery Academy and Horace Mann Elementary - next summer. We're going to do something about it,' that has been so powerful for me." "But then to see the students come together, to see the staff come together, to see the area come together and say, 'We are not taking this. "Usually when things like this happen, it's already decided," he said. Demi Johnson, 8, daughter of Moms 4 Housing co-founder Misty Cross, speaks at a rally on April 29, 2022, protesting school closures in the district. An ordained minister originally from Washington, D.C., Seawright said he's been inspired by the outpouring of community support. Munck Elementary School in the Oakland hills, handed out donuts to his colleagues picketing in front of the school Friday morning. Matthew Seawright, a first-year early literacy tutor at Carl B. That union, which opposes the city's effort to move the Oakland A's ballpark to Howard Terminal at the Port of Oakland, has joined forces with OEA in a campaign against privatization efforts. After picketing at individual school sites, teachers and their supporters marched from Lake Merritt to Oakland City Hall, where a rally was held in partnership with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10. ![]() "They are choosing to destabilize communities and take away critical resources from our children at a time when they need resources the most," Brown said.Įducators approved Friday's walkout by a 3-to-1 margin - a move affirming their right to bargain over school-closure decisions. The consolidation is estimated to save anywhere between $4.1 million and $14.7 million, according to the school board's projections. But there is always a choice."īrown, who led a weeklong teachers' strike in 2019 over a new contract, said the district's plan will directly harm its most vulnerable students and families, without actually recouping that much money. "They told us that there isn't any money to keep our community schools open and that we have no choice. "We find ourselves facing a majority school board that has gone back on its written promise to us educators and that promise was to never again ambush a school with a last-minute closure," Keith Brown, president of the Oakland Education Association, told the roughly 25 teachers on the picket line Friday morning outside Parker Elementary School in East Oakland - one of the schools on the chopping block. Hundreds of parents and community members spoke out forcefully against the plan during a series of marathon school board meetings, and two teachers went on an 18-day hunger strike. The district says the cuts are necessary to address declining enrollment and major budget shortfalls projected for the coming years, and pledged to redirect some of the savings to its larger neighborhood schools.īut many teachers and families say the district moved forward with its plan without the requisite community input, and argue that the closures will disproportionately affect students of color, particularly Black students and students of color with disabilities. Chanting "Save our schools! No cuts, no closures," scores of Oakland teachers, parents and students hit the picket lines Friday morning in a one-day strike protesting the district’s controversial plan to shutter some of its schools.Įven though most schools in the Oakland Unified School District remained open on Friday, the district said it didn't have enough substitutes and other staff to safely hold classes, and asked families to keep their children home for the day.įriday's labor action - the second teachers' strike in just three years - comes in response to the district's decision to close seven of its small schools and merge or shrink four others over the next two years as part of a cost-savings measure.
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