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Lessons From Lakeview: Families and Students of Color in Crisis
This editorial explores the crisis Oakland students of color are experiencing, in light of recent school closures.


Additionally, OUSD has left the Adams Point neighborhood with only one public elementary school near the area. In deciding to close Lakeview, OUSD is complicit in local government-sanctioned gentrification. Students of color who live outside of Adams Point have been barred from the community, and current residents who have children (or will have children in the future) will have no choice but to pay more money to transport their children to schools that are further away, or enroll their children in private schools.
OUSD has acknowledged that black male students in our city are in crisis. Chris Chatmon leads OUSD's African American Male Task Force - a project designed to formulate different strategies that will help raise the achievement of black males in our schools. We must wonder what Chatmon would have to say about the displacement of hundreds of black male students from the five elementary schools that recently closed. How will their needs be addressed for the 2012-2013 school year to support their success in their new schools in new communities? On a related front, The Urban Strategies Council has reported upon absenteeism and suspensions in Oakland's schools, and how these factors affect black male students. Lakeview, among other schools slated for closure, was one of eleven elementary schools that boasts low suspension rates for black boys. It is a school that engaged students in the classrooms, and created a sense of community - something that even OUSD admits in its defense of the decision to close Lakeview. In theory, OUSD has shown interest in interrupting the school to prison pipeline, but in practice, the school closures push our youth out of the schools and onto the streets.
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