1/8 Rally, Hearing to Stop Closure of 13 Oakland Schools

Rally and Hearing to Stop State Administrator Randolph Ward's Attempt to Close Oakland Schools
Thursday, January 8th:
4:00 pm Protest
5:00 pm Public Hearing
OUSD Administration Building: 1025 2nd Ave//E. 10th St. (across from Laney College)

The Education not Incarceration Coalition (http://www.may8.org) will be having a major presence with banners and signs. Wear orange and we will try to have orange armbands.


A Shortened Version of My Op Ed Piece got printed in today's Oakland Tribune.. http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E1762%257E,00.html (scroll down)

Announcement from the Equal Opportunity Now Caucus...

Educators, students, parents, and concerned community members must act now to stop State Administrator Randolph Ward's plans to shut down 13 Oakland schools:
Burbank Elementary, Burckhalter Elementary, Emerson Elementary, Foster Elementary, Golden Gate Elementary, Howard Elementary, John Swett Elementary, Longfellow
Elementary, Santa Fe Elementary, Toler Heights, Elementary, Washington Elementary, Carter Middle School, and King Estates Middle School. Some of these schools recently won awards for improved academic performance. Ward is threatening to close other schools as well.



Building a mass campaign now to defend our schools can put a brake on Ward's attack. The schools slated for closure are small with large proportions of black students. The budget crisis in Oakland and the state cannot be solved off the backs of black and other minority students! School closures will also lead to increased overcrowding in other schools, layoffs, and even more cuts.



Ward plans to rent shut-down schools to charter schools! Ward's attack is a thinly veiled attempt to privatize education. Ward is acting as an unelected, unaccountable overseer for the state to try to strip down, degrade and privatize education in Oakland. If Ward gets away with it here, he will take his plans on the road and threaten public school districts across the state.



Educators, students, and parents together can defeat Ward's plans. The recent
victory against Proposition 54 and the Supreme Court victory upholding affirmative action show that when mass, integrated mobilizations are built, defenders of equal, quality education can win. Now is the time for Oakland to mobilize and make
the fight for our schools!

In addition, State administrator Randolph Ward has announced a terrible plan to fundamentally attack our schools' funding. He is proposing a corporate-style plan that would divide schools against each other like franchises. Each school's funding would be based on student attendance instead of enrollment, and the site administration woul d have only this limitted budget to pay for all school expenses, including teachers' salaries. Staffing decisions would be made for economic expediency rather than educational quality. For example, school administrators might decide that veteran teachers are too expensive and try to staff the school with only newer teachers.



Staffing levels would no longer be guaranteed based on the number of students at the school, and could also decrease as a result. Contrary to Ward's claims that this plan would be an incentive to increase student attendance, it would do the opposite, and create a self-fullfilling prophecy by reducing the number of students attending as the number of teachers fell, too.



There will be a protest this Thursday, January 8th at 4:00 pm and a public hearing at 5:00 pm about the proposed school closings at the downtown school administration building at 1025 Second Ave. Mobilize everyone you can to be there to
stop this attack on Oakland education!



For more info. contact the Equal Opportunity Now Caucus (EON) and Tania Kappner at 510-435-7375 or Yvette Felarca at 510-502-9072.
Jonah Zern, 510.654.8613, jzern1 [at] yahoo.com Education not Incarceration Coalition (http://www.may8.org)