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Stop the Closure of Oakland Schools: Steps You Can Take

by Jonah
Actions You Can Take to Stop the Closure of the
"Oakland 5" Elementary Schools..
Information on School Closures:
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E1726%257E1934427,00.html?search=filter
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E28434%257E1917895,00.html?search=filter
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E28435%257E1920063,00.html?search=filter

1. CALL O'CONNEL AND BROWN
State Superintendent Jack O'Connell
California Department of Education
1430 N Street
Sacramento, California 95814
Phone: (916) 319.0800 Fax(916) 319-0100.
joconnell [at] cde.ca.gov

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown
510-238-3141
jb [at] oaklandnet.com

2. SEND A LETTER TO THE EDITOR (helpful speaking
points are below). LTEs are essential for us to stay
in the public eye and convince people of our
position!!

Oakland Tribune: triblet [at] angnewspapers.com, call to
follow-up on your letter: Katherine Pfrommer, 208-6409

SF Chronicle: letters [at] sfchronicle.com

East Bay Express:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/feedback/index_html?author_email=feedback [at] eastbayexpress.com


3. SPEAK OUT
Thursday, 7PM, Randy Ward will visit OCO at the
Eastmont Mall 7200 Bancroft Ave. to encourage OCO to
support Measure E. Join the Coalition Against School
Closures at 6:45 to participate and speak out against
closures.

3. MEETING with Perata and COMMUNITY PICKET: Friday,
10AM, State Building

A delegation of 15 people will meet with Senator
Perata on Friday, February 13th at 10AM to discus the
need for Perata to take action to stop the closure of
our schools. There will be a community picket outside
this meeting at 1515 Clay Street (the State Building)

*********************************
SOME TALKING POINTS FOR LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...

(1) The closing of the five schools will put 1001
students on the street. For many, there is no close,
comparable school to attend. Without transportation,
students will have to cross some of Oakland's busiest
streets to get to their new schools.

(2) According to Ward's own figures, closing the five
schools will save just $1.28 million. This figure does
not include the costs of closing schools and keeping
them secure, nor does it take into account the losses
of revenue from students leaving the district or
lowered attendance. Many students will not attend
school as regularly if they have to walk a mile or
more to their new schools.

(3) The $600,000 grant for the Burbank school garden
project, which will be lost if Burbank is closed, is
equal to about one-half of the projected savings for
all five schools.

(4) The District's current budget has about $13.0
million in unspent reserves. Instead of closing the
schools, the District can utilize one tenth of the
reserves to keep them open.

(5) The five schools on the closure list are all
improving academically. Toler Heights and John Swett
have API scores of over 600. Foster and Longfellow
have boosted their API scores by over 100 points in
the past three years. Burbank's scores have gone up by
50.

(6) Contrary to what many people say, Oakland does not
have too many schools for its population. In reality,
we should have more schools! Under the District's
small schools policy, elementary schools should have
no more than 350 students. To fully implement that
policy, we would need 72 elementary schools. Today
there are 63.

(7) The bottom line is that closing schools is not
financially necessary and will harm our children,
especially in the flatlands, by forcing them to attend
overcrowded, often dilapidated schools, far from their
homes.

(8) Schools targetted for closure are in low-income
predominately African-American communities, who are
already being under-served by California's schools.









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Robert Gaebler
Fri, Jan 14, 2005 5:56PM
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