Education

Community Reacts to Proposed Wave of School Closures

Published

6 years ago

January 3, 2019

Ken Epstein

Students in a social studies class at Roots International Academy in East Oakland

The announcement that the Oakland Unified School District is planning to close up to 24 schools in the next few years, starting with Roots International Academy in East Oakland in June, is stirring concern throughout the city.
“We need to protect and strengthen our public schools, including to protect neighborhood schools for the areas being proposed disproportionate closures,” said Councilmember-at-Large Rebecca Kaplan.
Though names of most of the schools facing closure have not yet been released, they are all located in poorer neighborhoods in East and West Oakland. None are located in the more affluent Oakland hills, and none are charter schools.
Councilmember Noel Gallo, who represents the Fruitvale District in East Oakland, says the school district needs to do a better job of improving performance and marketing its schools to the local families.
“I know we’ve got to balance the budget, but we have to be very selective in what schools we choose to close – because we are going to lose more families. I’ve seen that in the past,” said Gallo, who served 20 years on the school board before being elected to the City Council.
Newly elected Councilmember Loren Taylor represents District 6, which is where Roots Academy is located, is reaching out to learn more about the issue.
“I know there are some financial realities, but it’s important that we look at the needs of the community in all the planning,” said Taylor. “I’m in the process of meeting with school board members and members of the school community so I can have a fuller perspective on what’s going on.”
Esther Goolsby, a community leader and longtime East Oakland resident, says she is deeply concerned that OUSD is closing public schools, promoting charter schools and preparing to sell public school property to private investors.
“What do they want to do with this land?” she asked. “I’m sure they already have plans. They want housing for the new people with the new money.”
“Who are the people (in the school district, the city and the state) who are making these decisions? What are their morals and their values?” she asked. “They talk about an Oakland Promise, but none of their actions change this cycle (of school neglect) that has been happening for years.”
The only way to change the situation will be through community organizing, said Goolsby.

Roots International Academy students

Pamela Drake of the Wellstone Democratic Club and the Block-by-Block Organizing Network said she has seen the district close schools and cut educational programs for years.
“Year after year, the parents go begging for schools they love and the teachers the love,” said Drake. “I hate to see a school closed that teachers and parents care about. It seems a real tragedy.”
Sylvester Hodges, a former school board member and president of the McClymonds High School Centennial Alumni Committee, says the school board and district administration are betraying their responsibility to the public.
“They are giving up on public education,” he said. “They are selling or giving up on public schools. They are helping to destroy the school system that was designed for the public.”
The growth of charter schools nationally and locally represents a “reversal of integration,” creating a new school system that is “separate and unequal,” he said.
“School officials are contracting out their responsibilities,” Hodges continued. “I think they should all resign from their positions. They are not qualified to handle the problems facing the Oakland
schools.”
The teachers’ union, the Oakland Education (OEA), says school closings are a threat to the continued existence of public education as the district moves into high gear in its merger with charter school organizations, noting that Oakland is now in danger of following in the footsteps of New Orleans.
“The privatizers on the New Orleans school board handed the very last public school in the city over to a charter company (in December). There are no more public schools left in New Orleans,” according to statement on Facebook released by the OEA.
“Wonder why OUSD is threatening to close 24 public schools in the flatlands when our city’s population is growing? The same people who privatized New Orleans schools have their sights set on Oakland and are trying to push our public school system past the point of no return,” the OEA statement said.
“We won’t let them privatize our schools. We will fight for justice, equity and democracy. We will fight for the schools our students deserve.”
By the Oakland Post’s deadline, Mayor Libby Schaaf, a charter school supporter, did not respond to request for a comment on school closures.

Ken Epstein

Posts by Ken Epstein

Activism

LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST

Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?

Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.

STREAMED LIVE!
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/PostNewsGroup
YOUTUBE: youtube.com/blackpressusatv
X: twitter.com/blackpressusa

Oakland Post

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Art

Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

Oakland Post

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California Black Media

On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.

If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.

California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.

“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.

Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.

“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.

Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.

“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”

A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.