TODAY: School Board Meeting on Crisis in Oakland Schools

Please forward widely!

Tonight, 4-8PM at Oakland High School (1023 Macarthur Blvd) the Oakland School Board will hear commentary on Randy Ward's attempts to turn 13 Oakland schools into "internal charters" with undermined union rights. Parents and teachers at the 13 effected schools, as well as the 5 Oakland schools targetted have been extensively organizing and planning extensively for tonight's meeting. Here these groups will present an alternative to Ward's proposal.

Please come show your support for the powerful work being done by Oakland teachers and parents to counter Randy Ward's attempts to undermine our public school system. For those of you who really cannot come you can watch and learn on local access cable.

Three Ways you Can Join this Struggle

1. School Board Meeting to Determine School Closures and Potential Privatization/Charterization of 13 More Schools: Wednesday, January 12, 4-8PM, Oakland High School, 1023 Macarthur Blvd.

2. Martin Luther King Day Rally and March: beginning at Noon, Monday, January 17th at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway in Downtown Oakland,

3. Community Meeting at the Oakland Education Association office, 272 East 12th Street (at 3rd Ave), 5-8PM, Wednesday, January 19th (Dinner will be served!! Childcare also available; please email Jonah Zern at jzern1 [at] yahoo.com with your name, organization, phone # and address to RSVP)

Critical Commentary on the Oakland Schools

How is this in the Best Interests of Children?
By 3 Oakland Teachers

On Thursday, January 13, at Castlemont High, at 5:30 pm, BayCES will host one of their Small School Network meetings. It will be addressed by the State-appointed Administrator Dr Randolph Ward.

Ward is instituting vast changes in Oakland's public schools. These range from closing schools against the community's wishes to instituting unequal funding for schools. These controversial changes are being implemented virtually without any public discussion at all. They jettison many of the standards for education that have been established only after years of community struggle. This step too is taken without any public discussion or review.

As classroom teachers, we are bound to assess every decision around public schools to determine whether or not they are educationally sound. We are the only professionals who are legally required to speak in the children’s best interests and to use this standard to measure educational reform. This is our promise as teachers to the community.

In this light, here are some fair and honest questions.

Fiscal Responsibility

Dr Ward was sent to Oakland to put the school district on a sound financial basis. This was his charge. FICMAT - the state appointed-monitoring body - has noted that Dr Ward is responsible to produce a Fiscal Recovery Plan to the state and to the people of Oakland. He has promised this twice, since arriving in Oakland in June, 2003, twenty months ago. There is still no financial plan.
Dr Ward, where is the accountability for this. Your book, Improving Achievement in Low-performing Schools (2004), talks quite a bit about accountability. Are you making financial decisions without a financial plan?

Furthermore, the Central Labor Council of Alameda County adopted the following position about the Oakland school crisis on January 28, 2004: "There must be financial transparency with facts and figures that show the costs, savings and net benefit to the District to justify any proposed closures".
Dr Ward, there is plenty of room to rationalize educational delivery in a district that has been neglected for years. But will you produce exactly the facts and figures that demonstrate you are producing a net benefit to the District?

Oakland has the 18th largest gross metropolitan product in the nation with a $100 billion a year economy. OEA is calling on the city's biggest corporations to pay their fair share to eliminate the DIstrict's debt. They should also pay for the resources needed to support quality education for all students.

Dr Ward, will you join with the OEA and call on Oakland's corporations to pay their fair share?

Undercutting Education in the Classroom

Dr Ward, in your book, page 8, you write: "A school staff must be provided with the freedom, training and motivation to make informed decisions as capable employees who are then held accountable for the results of their work."
Dr Ward, when you came here almost two years ago, you eliminated the teachers' power to make decisions for their school. You have even threatened teachers who supplement your phonics reading program when the students find it boring.Is this really in the best interests of students? How exactly does your elimination of Site-Based Decision-Making achieve these goals?

Dr Ward, how does this jibe with an your "Memo to the Principals' Meeting", dated 12-5-2003, page 6, which says that one objective is to "create greater and broader autonomy for decisions and results"?

Why do you propose to eliminate class size restrictions in new and small schools? Or eliminating counselors across the District? How are these steps in the interests of children?



Voters passed Measure E (bringing $90 million to OPS over 5 years) expressly to "recruit and retain teachers".
Dr Ward, why are you opposed to using Measure E money for teacher salaries?



Charters and Small Schools




Dr Ward, you propose to close up to 34 "failing schools" schools and re-open them as small schools with new names. Some will be charter schools. You claim that NCLB demands these steps. According to the current edition of the District's publication, Transformations (Winter 2004) these steps are mandated in 6 years. That would be 2007.
Why are drastic changes being proposed two years early? What has the District done to support these schools in the meantime, so they don't have to be closed? Aren't there steps to support schools that are mandated by law?



In your book you stress that schools must be data-driven and based on research (p 17, p 96, p 98). There is, however, abundant research that shows that charter schools do not educate students any better that public schools. See, for example, "Charter Schools Fall Short in Public Schools Match-up" NY Times 11/23/04. They also drain resources and ADA away from the schools.
Dr Ward, where is your research to show that charter schools succeed better than public schools? And, why, if your mission is to make the schools solvent, do you establish charters, which will lose ADA for the District? Is this financially sound?



Charter schools are, less accountable, by law, than regular public schools. They don't, for example, have to take children with learning disabilities.


Dr Ward, why do you support accountability for public schools and a lack of it for charter schools?



The Oakland Tribune, 12-15-4, has quotes from Gary Larson of the California Charter School Association. He states that Oakland must make sure "skilled educators" (quotes added) at new charter schools have enough independence to make their own decisions. *Dr Ward, why do you oppose independence for current teachers in public schools?


In your book, you write on p 88, "Young and impressionable school leaders may be very effective in sustaining institutional change in urbanized schools because they (a) are still idealistic about the favorable impact of their diligent efforts; (b) typically have less distractions to their personal life, still have flexible lifestyles, and can work longer hours…."


Dr. Ward, what is the research that shows that replacing teams of veterans with beginning educators leads to better results?



Equity



In the same Memo to the Principals' Meeting, mentioned above, page 6, you state that one objective is to "distribute resources in a more equitable manner".


Dr Ward, how does this jibe with your statement to the Montclarion,
6-27-2003, where you announced "I don't think we need five-star programs for everybody"?



Under your Results-Based Budgeting plan, principals are free too cut classes and/or services. They can cut the educational program, eliminating French or libraries for example. Such steps have already happened in many schools.
Dr Ward, how does this guarantee equity?



The Oakland Hills have some of the best elementary schools in the state. Dr Ward's new funding plan - Results-Based Budgeting - funds schools based on attendance, not enrollment. This will inevitably penalize schools where poverty leads to lower attendance. Bi-lingual students, for example, often have to miss school to translate for their parents. Under your plan these schools will receive less money.
How does this jibe with your book, page 3, where you state that school policy should "Eradicate racial and economic disparities for students"?



School districts have addressed under-served students by devising a "weighted student formula" to provide more money to a school with underserved students.
Dr Ward, what exactly is the District's weighted student formula? Can you document how this will guarantee equity?





Bigger Questions



In your book, on page 1, you write: "An effective process for improving a school culture includes empowering diverse stakeholders to rebuild relationships that will instill a staff's commitment to support student success in highly challenged school communities." (Emphasis added).
Dr Ward, how can you empower stakeholders when you enforce a state law that formally denies all stakeholders their civil rights to make binding decisions on schools?



The educational reform that has shown by far the most consistently positive impact on student achievement is class size reduction to levels of 20:1 and lower.
Dr. Ward, what is your plan to significantly reduce class size in Oakland?





Steve Miller, OEA Site Rep at Life Academy

Craig Gordon, OEA Site Rep at Mandela High

Jack Gerson, OEA Site Rep at Leadership Prep