Education

Parents Ask: ‘Who’s Behind Roots School Closure?’

Published

6 years ago

January 22, 2019

The Oakland Unified School District is moving full throttle with the closing of Roots International Academy, even though the proposal has not yet been approved by the Board of Education and though the district so far has not ventured to say how much money closing the school would save, if any.

Nor does the district answer why the up to 24 schools that are being considered for closure are in flatland East Oakland and West Oakland neighborhoods. None of those affected are Oakland’s 44 charter schools or schools that serve more affluent students.

Studies from the wave of closures across the country, which have hit predominately Black and Latino schools, indicate that school districts save no money and that long-lasting effects are detrimental to the education of displaced students and those who attend the receiving schools.

A big question about the closing of Roots, located at 66th Avenue and International Boulevard in East Oakland, is one about democracy: Who made the decision to close the school if it is not the elected school board?

School district officials say they have to move ahead quickly, so Roots students will have other schools to attend in the fall. The board is scheduled to discuss the issue on Jan. 23 and make the final decision Jan .28 at a special meeting.

According to OUSD spokesman John Sasaki, “Staff is making a recommendation, and the school board will make the final decision.”

However, the administration seems to have decided the issue without waiting for the board to act on its recommendation. Supt. Kyla Johnson- Trammell met with the Roots community the week before the holiday break to notify teachers and parents about the closure.

The district has already started counseling students and parents about the need to enroll now in new schools for next year.

And Coliseum College Prep Academy CPA, the more favored school that shares the campus with Roots, called a meeting this week about what to do with all the extra classroom space once Roots shuts down.

“Parents are invited to give input about CCPA’s expansion plan. Roots is scheduled to close next year, and CCPA is planning to grow to serve more students in the community,” according to a CCPA newsletter. CCPA administration told parents the school is not willing to take more than about a half dozen current Roots students.

As of Thursday, pressure from the school community forced the meeting to be cancelled.

“What’s the real deal? Who made the decision?” asked Sylvia Ornelas, a parent leader at Roots.

“We’re not getting any answers,” she said. “Who are really the key players here? It appears the board members don’t have any control.”

The Oakland Post this week filed a Public Records Act (PRA) Request with the district asking for communications related to Roots and other school closings.

In addition to communications and reports by district officials, the PRA request said, “The documents should include exchanges with the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT), the Alameda County Office of Education, Oakland’s state-appointed trustee, representatives of the State Department of Education and state legislators and representatives of GO Public School, Educate78, New Schools Venture Fund and the California Charter School Association.”

Asking why the district objects to sending current Roots students to CCPA, which would minimize disruption of the tightknit Roots school community, Sasaki answered that the merging of the two adjacent schools would have a harmful impact on students.

“Merging the two schools was not an option as that would have been too disruptive for all the students, families and staff,” he said

Presumably, displacing Roots families to schools around East Oakland – Elmhurst Community, Greenleaf, Madison Park Upper and Urban Promise Academy – would not disrupt the educational stability of those schools or the displaced students.

Sasaki said the reason for closing Roots has to do with saving money and efficiency:

“All the changes the district is looking at are aimed at making the district function more efficiently with better schools while saving money. The changes for Roots have to do with declining enrollment and problems with staff retention.”

However, Sasaki says the district still does not know how much will be saved by closing the school.

“The district is still working to determine what the savings will be with the closure of Roots,” according to KQED, citing an email from Sasaki.

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 weeks 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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Bay Area

Election Day Across the Bay: “Oh, Thank God, It’s Over!”, Anxious and Hopeful Voters Share Their Thoughts

Millions of people across the country stood in long lines and sat around their TVs waiting to see what the fate of the next four years would look like. In the Bay Area, college students, residents young and old, and hopeful voters shared feelings of excitement, but also a sense of dread.

Published

4 weeks ago

November 6, 2024

Oakland Post

The Post visited polling sites and election night parties to talk to voters about how they felt after a whirlwind election cycle.

By Magaly Muñoz

Millions of people across the country stood in long lines and sat around their TVs waiting to see what the fate of the next four years would look like.

In the Bay Area, college students, residents young and old, and hopeful voters shared feelings of excitement, but also a sense of dread.

The Post visited polling sites and election night parties to talk to voters about how they felt after a whirlwind election cycle.

These reactions were taken before the presidential race was called and Donald Trump was declared president-elect.

First Time Voters

At UC Berkeley, students piled into a cramped building, Eshleman Hall, to cast their votes in between classes.

Outside of the hall, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) were handing out free pizza and “Go Bears. Go Vote” stickers to students who proved they submitted their ballot.

“We want to make sure that there are reduced barriers to entry for people who may be voting for the first time or challenge themselves to get to the polls. We want to make sure that people are rewarded for being civically engaged,” Carmen Berry, ASUC student, said.

Berry, who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, said this was her first experience voting in a presidential election and she’s kept in mind all there is to lose, such as reproductive rights, should Donald Trump win.

“We need to vote for ourselves, and we need to vote for the America that we want to become,” Berry said.

Katie, a Business and Cognitive Science major, told the Post that being from California, a traditionally Democrat state, makes her feel like her vote doesn’t actually matter because she knows the results will sway Harris’ way regardless.

She’s also worried about reproductive rights, and the future of the Department of Education, a department Trump has vowed to end when in office.

“My brother is special needs. He’s on IEP and without the Department of Education, he would not have been able to graduate high school. So, for me, it’s definitely personal,” Katie said.

Long Lines at Oakland Public Library

At 6 p.m. on election night, the Oakland Public Library on 14th Street had a line of voters wrapped around half the building. People toward the front of the building said they had been waiting for nearly an hour to get inside and cast their votes.

Nakia White, an Oakland resident, said she voted against the recalls for Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price. She thinks the entire recall process has been a waste of time and money, though she acknowledges the recalls will likely succeed because of the big pockets backing them.

“I feel like the people who are funding [the recalls] are doing this so they can get someone in who will let them buy up all the property and raise property values, which means local residents will not be able to afford to live here, as we already can’t,” White said.

Mark A, a recent Oakland resident, said he voted for Harris because she fits more into the mold of the progressive policies he supports. Being Latino, he said that Trump’s negative rhetoric turned him off as a voter.

Mark said that if he had to choose one word to describe the current election cycle, it would be “chaotic”.

Election Parties Start to Show Loss of Hope

Fluid510, a bar lounge across the street from Oakland City Hall, started seeing trickles of voters in the early evening as they kicked off their election party.

The location was adorned with “Bay Area for Harris/Walz” signs and red, white, and blue decor. Patrons were giddy with excitement until voting results started piling in on the big screen around 7 p.m.

ReAnn Scott, a Berkeley resident, told the Post that watching the NBC coverage was starting to scare her. There was too much red, signifying the states where Trump was winning, on the screen.

But she’s enthusiastically said she’s glad the election cycle has ended. She’s tired of all the political messaging that’s been forced on people for months now.

“Oh, thank God, it’s over!” Scott said.

Over in San Francisco, Manny’s, a civic and political event space, hosted a block party with a huge screen outside on Valencia Street and a packed venue at their 16th Street location.

Speakers attempted to talk down the crowd as more votes started to skew toward a Trump win. Those in attendance had weary faces and conversations were starting to show doubt that Harris could pull through and win the presidential race.

“I’m just so pissed,” one patron said as the CNN electoral map filled with red state wins.

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

4 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.