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Michigan: Students and Board Members Fight to Save Benton Harbor High School

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2019 //
31

 

Governor Gretchen Whitmer was elected in Michigan last fall as a progressive Democrat. She promised to reverse the destructive anti-public school policies of her predecessor Republican Rick Snyder.

But Governor Whitmer announced plans to close Benton Harbor High School, over the objections of school board members and students. They say that Governor Whitmer made her decision without listening to their voices. Whatever happened to democracy?

Governor Whitmer, I call upon you to meet with the elected Benton Harbor school board and student representatives.

School board member Patricia Rush wrote this letter:

Hi all –

Things have hit a new high of chaos with the Benton Harbor Schools.
From the School Board perspective, we thought we were making great progress – straightening out the budget, establishing a strategy for building repairs, increased teacher pay, etc
UNTIL Friday when Governor Whitmer (a newly elected progressive Democrat) – pulled the rug out by announcing her unilateral decision that the State is closing Benton Harbor High School in 2020 and dispersing the students to a new Charter School and 9 local, predominantly white school districts.
So the past 3 days have been extremely chaotic.
Attached is our Press Release and an Open Letter to the Governor opposing the State’s moves.
The state completely under-estimated the pushback from the Community – not just BH but across the State.
Also the State not only did not consult the elected local BH School Board but excluded also the State School Board (which is 40% minority).
The State also refused to hold open public hearings and tried to get our School Board to meet with them in small groups which sidesteps the Open Meeting Act.
See this video written, produced and performed by the High School students – which they have been working on PRIOR to the current mess.
The school board of Benton Harbor released these statements.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


From the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board (BHAS)


May 27, 2019


Contact: Steve.Mitchell@bhas.org or Joseph.Taylor@bhas.org
Benton Harbor Area Schools Board and the Community Demand Reconsideration of Governor Whitmer’s Plan to Close Benton Harbor High School


BENTON HARBOR, Mich. – On Tuesday June 4, 2019 at 6pm – the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board will hold the first of several Open Public Meetings at the High School Public Commons to discuss the future of Benton Harbor High School and the entire K-12 school district. Students, families, teachers, and community members are strongly encouraged to participate.
We are urgently requesting that Governor Gretchen Whitmer appear in person at our June 4 Public Meeting – and fulfill 3 of her campaign promises: to support public schools, especially in high-poverty communities, to fight urban poverty, and to hold government accountable. Please see Whitmer’s campaign website: https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com/issues/.

Attached is the Board’s Open Letter to Michigan Governor Whitmer. We respectfully request that all news media PRINT OUR ENTIRE LETTER TO WHITMER – and display on your website.

As has been widely covered in the media over the past few days, Governor Whitmer’s Office, Michigan Treasury, and parts of the Michigan Department of Education have proposed a unilateral plan to close Benton Harbor High School in 2020 with re-distribution of BHAS high school students to a proposed charter school under Lake Michigan College and nine other local school districts.

Parts of the story not reported in the media:

– Governors Office and Michigan Treasury did NOT consult the elected Trustees of the BentonHarbor Board members prior to their unilateral decision. The two BHAS Board members who were briefed in the State Capital Lansing on Friday 5/24/19 were told by the Governors Office staff that this decision to exclude the elected Benton Harbor Board was intentional.


– Likewise, on 5/23/19, the elected state-wide Trustees of the Michigan Department of Education were informed that the Governor’s Office had also excluded them from giving input into the fate of Benton Harbor High School.

– On 5/24/19, the Governors Office informed the two Benton Harbor Board members attending the Lansing meeting that the Governors Office had not held an open public meeting for community input – and did not plan to do so. Instead, the Governors Office met with undisclosed community members that the Governor felt were “representative.”

– The BHAS Board were told that the Governors Draft Plan is a “Yes – or – No Decision with no opportunity for negotiation.” BHAS Board was told it must decide by close of business Friday June 7 to accept the Plan or risk that the State may elect to dissolve the entire Benton Harbor Areas Schools district at any time.

This one-sided decision-making by Michigan State officials is unacceptable. We, the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board are going to hold our State government accountable.

In April 2019, the BHAS Board unanimously voted to support the Fresh Start Resolution petitioning the State of Michigan to reexamine public school accountability and finance systems, calling for a system of improvement strategies developed collaboratively by all stakeholders – to ensure all students and teachers have a voice and receive the opportunities and support they deserve.

The State bears direct responsibility for a significant portion of the BHAS debt. The legacy of this debt should be transparently reviewed and addressed – but the High School cannot be held hostage for the State to agree to debt forgiveness.

The fate of the Benton Harbor High School and the entire School District requires careful planning by all involved parties – especially the opportunity of full community input plus input from both the state and local School Board Trustees who were duly elected by the community to represent them.

//
The BHAS Board OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR WHITMER Follows immediately


We respectfully request that all news media PRINT OUR ENTIRE LETTER TO WHITMER and display on your website.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board (BHAS)
May 27, 2019
Contact: Steve.Mitchell@bhas.org or Joseph.Taylor@bhas.org


OPEN LETTER TO MICHIGAN GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER FROM THE ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD OF BENTON HARBOR AREA SCHOOLS, BENTON HARBOR, MICHIGAN.


Dear Governor Whitmer –


We respectfully and urgently request that you visit Benton Harbor in person to meet in an Open Public Meeting with the community and the elected School Board trustees regarding the future of Benton Harbor High School and the K-12 District as a whole.

The School Board is hosting an Open Public Meeting at the Benton Harbor High School Student Commons on Tuesday June 4 at 6pm. We would love to host you and let you hear the full story.

Hopefully you are aware that representatives from your office, Treasury and the Department of Education are claiming that, on your behalf, a unilateral decision has been made to close Benton Harbor High School in 2020. The Board was told by your representatives that a decision was made by your office to intentionally exclude the elected School Board trustees and exclude open community input from the decision-making process. Honestly, we are completely shocked and dismayed by this action. Our Board has been working in good faith with both Treasury and Education to address issues at BHAS including an outline for a new Strategic Plan, submitted to Treasury, but upon which your departments have taken no action.

We also want to openly confront the many “elephants in the room” that neither your staff nor the news media have addressed:

• The land upon which the Benton Harbor High School sits with its athletic fields and adjacent School Board properties are the LAST MAJOR UNDEVELOPED WATERFRONT PROPERTIES in Berrien County, Michigan. Is this just a coincidence, given that your office just told our Board representatives on 5/24/19 that your plan to close Benton Harbor High School has major (but unnamed) supporters in the nearby business community?

• The Draft Plan from your office is explicitly a transfer of wealth from an overwhelmingly poor and black community (Benton Harbor) to nearby white, more affluent communities. Under your Plan, that transfer of wealth will occur through the loss by Benton Harbor of its school facilities and use of school land, transfer of state funding from Benton Harbor to the adjacent nine school districts where you plan Benton Harbor students to be redistributed, and loss of jobs for local teachers and staff of all levels.

• The contention by representatives of your office that hiring a single staff person to act as a “Cultural Dean” to smooth over “discomfort” that the displaced 700 black students might feel when transported out of their community to predominantly white schools is an appalling insult to our youth and the community. Such insensitivity to the painful history of racial segregation, unsuccessful past desegregation efforts, and continued State-sponsored dis-investment in Benton Harbor calls for a swift and strong response.

We call upon you to meet with us – to hear the students voices and the expertise of our teachers.


We call upon you to fulfill your 2018 campaign promises to support public schools, especially in high-poverty communities, to fight urban poverty, and to hold government accountable.

BHAS needs balanced, constructive leadership from you, your office and all State agencies.

We need complete transparency. We need State and local leaders to stop sensationalizing limited
facts about Benton Harbor in the media and on the Michigan.gov website created by your office to
promote your Plan to close Benton Harbor High School. Our community needs to feel that our
youth are respected, valued and worth meaningful investment so that they may achieve their
tremendous potential. The students, their families, our teachers, and our community deserve that.


Sincerely, Steve Mitchell, Trustee and Board President
Joseph Taylor, Trustee and Board Vice-President
Patricia Rush, Trustee and Board Secretary
Denise Whatley-Seats, Trustee and Board Treasurer
Matthew Bradley, Trustee
Lue Buchana, Trustee
Michelle Crowder, Trustee
//

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Democracy, Democrats, Michigan

NYC: Parents and Activists Win Battle to Keep PS 25 Open: A Victory for Resistance!

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
5

 

The NYC Department of Education wanted to close PS 25 in Brooklyn to make room for a Success Academy charter middle school, but parents and activists fought them in court. Yesterday the Resistance won.

PS 25 will stay open!

PS 25 is a high-poverty, high-performing school.

It has small classes, and Leonie Haimson says it demonstrates the importance of class size. 

Leonie and her small-but-mighty organization Class Size Matters was in the thick of the fight, supporting the. parents of PS 25 against the Powers of the city, the DOE, and Eva.

Leonie writes here on the NYC Parents blog:

Today we won our fight to keep PS 25 open!  DOE had tried to close the school last year, despite the fact that it is an excellent zoned neighborhood school in Bed Stuy that gets stellar results despite a highly disadvantaged student body: 27% kids with special needs, 18 % English language learners, 92% Black and Hispanic, and a 96% economic need index- which combines measures of poverty, public assistance and homelessness. And yet the school performs as well as the citywide average in ELA (46% proficient vs. 46% citywide) and far above the city average in math (71% proficient compared to 47% citywide), according to the DOE’s performance dashboard.

Last year, as I pointed out in my open letter to Chancellor Carranza, published in the Washington Post, the school had the fourth highest rating of any elementary school in the city according to it’s “impact score”, which measures achievement and attendance compared to schools with students of a similar demographic background.  And yet under Carmen Farina, the DOE tried to close the school anyway because of its low enrollment.

At the same time, it was as a result of its low enrollment that PS 25 students had the benefit of very small classes, ranging from 10 to 18 per class – which was one of the main reasons for its success, along with excellent, experienced teachers and a collaborative principal. This year, class sizes at PS 25 are even smaller: 8 to 16 students per class. In essence, the school has served as a natural experiment in class size, showing the heights at which disadvantaged students can achieve if given the right conditions and a real opportunity to learn.

Yet despite the great track record of the school, in February 2018, at the recommendation of then-Chancellor Farina, the Panel for Educational Policy voted 8-5 to close it, with the eight mayoral appointees all rubber-stamping the proposal.  The following month, I helped PS 25 parents file a lawsuit to prevent its closing, with the assistance of Laura Barbieri, our pro bono attorney from Advocates for Justice.

Our primary legal hook was that the Community Education Council in District 16 had never voted to approve closing the school,  which would be required according to NY Ed Law section 2590-E and Chancellor’s regulations A-185, since PS 25 is a zoned school and the district CEC has to pre-approve any changes in zoning.  On May 24, Judge Katherine Levine of the Kings County Supreme Court granted the parents a temporary restraining order, and said the school should stay open for at least year, while she examined the legal issues more closely.

The Judge scheduled another court hearing today, May 16 at 11 AM, nearly a year later.  Right before hand, yesterday afternoon, the city’s attorney called our attorney Laura Barbieri.  She asked Laura to agree to a postponement of the hearing.

Then unexpectedly, the city backed down and agreed to keep the school open for at least another year.

The charter vultures will have to settle somewhere else.

Categories Closing schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Breaking News: California Charter School Will Close Its Doors Tomorrow, Not Waiting for End of School Year

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
11

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote the following note:

The Summit Preparatory Academy Charter School will be shutting down tomorrow. Like so many charter schools, financial mismanagement is the reason for the closure. The school raised funding with a “Go Fund Me” drive, but they are not waiting till the end of the year to shut their doors. 

California teacher, Martha Infante is a Fulbright teacher, and the past-president of the California Council for Social Studies. She emailed me about Summit and this is what she wrote: 

“My last year at L.A. Academy M.S. our school was devastated to lose significant space to a fly by night charter school, Summit Preparatory Charter School. Schools such as these offer free uniforms, laptops, and the promise of a superior education to woo parents away from public schools, knowing these humble parents are seeking the best education possible for their children. Nothing, I mean nothing, is worse to me than lying to immigrant parents who have sacrificed so much to get to this country, to give their children a better life.”

Martha is horrified that the school is closing abruptly. She said,

“Where will those kids go? What will their families do? It is time to fall out of love with the charter school panacea and re-commit to revitalizing the schools we already have. 

If the parents have the wherewithal to re-enroll their children in a local public school, that school will be impacted by the new enrollees without the commensurate number of additional teachers. In other words, class sizes will skyrocket because districts don’t hire teachers in May. The disruption of so many lives is reprehensible and charter companies should be held responsible for this.”

I am horrified too. The charter experiment with its churn, instability and disruption has to end. The children who attend the Summit Preparatory Academy Charter School and the public school children whose classrooms will be packed once the displaced children arrive deserve better than this. 

Summit Preparatory Academy received over a half million dollars from the federal government’s Charter School Program as “seed money.” We will add one more closed charter school to our list of California charter schools that received federal grants that never opened or closed. The total in wasted funding for California alone is now $104 million.  

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Philadelphia: Closing a Historic High School to Benefit Developers and Gentrification

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
8

 

City leaders in Philadelphia, as in Chicago and other cities, have decided to sell off or give away some of their most beautiful and historic school buildings.

In Philly, the school district closed Germantown, one of the city’s elegant buildings, on the eve of its 100th birthday, in 2013.

After months of neglect and thousands of dollars of unpaid taxes, the historic pillared building at 40 E. High St., as well as an elementary school sold that year, is going up for sale again.

“After the schools were closed, the city had a responsibility to ensure efficient disposal and redevelopment of these properties,” said Emaleigh Doley, an organizer for the Germantown United Community Development Corp. “How is it possible that today, Germantown High School is up for sheriff sale, and both the high school and Fulton Elementary School sit vacant?”

In fall 2012, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission voted to close 23 schools to save money. Months later, buildings that once welcomed thousands of students were emptied, shuttered, and sold.

Some were revitalized as charter schools. Roberts Vaux High School became Vaux Big Picture; Stephen A. Douglas became Maritime Academy. Some were redeveloped into neighborhood mixed-use spaces like University City, or community and commercial centers like Edward Bok Technical.

Others, like Germantown, weren’t so fortunate….

In September 2013, the Maryland-based Concordia Group began negotiations to purchase Germantown High, as well as nearby Fulton and three other shuttered school buildings: Charles Carroll High School in Port Richmond, and South Philly elementary schools Walter G. Smith and Abigail Vare.

The schools were packaged for quick sale, but the purchase agreement shows that they sold for widely varying amounts: Vare and Carroll for a little less than half their assessed value; Smith for nearly twice its market assessment; and Fulton for one-tenth. Germantown was the lowest-priced of all five schools at $100,000 — a far cry from the value of $11 million listed by the city’s Office of Property Assessment.

Then, another twist. Before the sale could be completed, a group of Point Breeze community members filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court opposing the closure of Smith and saying the schools were being sold below value. The deal came to a halt.

In 2017, after an appeal from the School District, the court approved the sale of the five schools. But the Concordia Group no longer seemed so sure. It flipped Smith to Philadelphia developer Ori Feibush, who was building in Point Breeze. Carroll is in development under Philadelphia-based developer High Top, while Vare is still listed as an active project under Concordia…

The Department of Licenses and Inspections has tracked 15 violations for vacancy, weeds, and trash at the Germantown High address. And property taxes haven’t been paid since the 2017 purchase. The high school is listed as on four lots, according to city records; combined, that’s $595,306.93 in overdue taxes. Fulton, just across the street, is on two lots and has racked up just under $250,000 in back taxes.

“It definitely affected the community,” said State Rep. Stephen Kinsey, a Democrat who represents the neighborhood and graduated from Germantown High. “Two or three businesses closed as a direct result of the lack of traffic. There was more illegal activity around the school, more police on the driveway.… To have a vacant building of that magnitude for six years, that changes the whole neighborhood….”

In March, Philadelphia-based real estate broker MSC Retail released a brochure that disclosed plans to replace the Germantown High school building with two large stores and 68 parking spots. Residents were shocked and outraged. Germantown United CDC and activist interfaith group POWER called an emergency community meeting.

City Councilwoman Cindy Bass, who represents the neighborhood, said at the meeting that she planned to arrange a dialogue between the community and the company planning to develop Germantown High School, High Top. But a spokesperson for High Top says it’s not currently involved with the project. Meanwhile, MSC Retail has removed the brochure from its website. A spokesperson for MSC declined to comment on the property but said the company had no current plans for redevelopment….

According to the Sheriff’s Office, if a property owner fails to pay utility bills, school taxes, or city taxes, the property may be auctioned at a tax delinquency sale so the city can collect what it’s owed. The opening bid on Germantown High next month is listed as $1,500. 

So a city-owned property once assessed as worth $11 million has been flipped from developer to developer and is now on the auction block for $1,500.

There is something unspeakably sad about the demise of a historic building that once rang with chatter and laughter and student orations and plays and life.

Categories Closing schools, Philadelphia

Andre Perry: Betsy DeVos’s Support for Charters Makes Democratic Charter Supporters Uncomfortable

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2019 //
14

 

I have said it before and I will say it again. Betsy DeVos is the most effective weapon against corporate reform, because she activates resistance and personifies noblesse oblige.

Former New Orleans charter leader Andre Perry has become a thoughtful critic of charters, and he points out that DeVos has become a major cause of a widespread charter backlash. 

As Perry puts it, Betsy Devos’s support of charter schools “spells disaster for their Democrat backers.” How can charters be, as their billionaire supporters say, “the civil rights issue of our time” when DeVos and every Red State governor supports them?

The fact that she wanted to cut the Special Olympics by $18 million at the same time she proposed to increase charter school funding by $60 million sent a loud message about what matters to her. Choice above all else.

The teacher strikes in many states specifically protested the introduction or expansion of charters because they drain money from public schools. In Los Angeles, striking teachers demanded a moratorium on new charters, and the state is now considering legislation to rein in the voracious industry.

In Milwaukee, a slate backed by the Working Families Party and the teachers’ union swept to victory in a recent election.

The drumbeat of scandal and failure haunts the charter industry, and DeVos’s warm embrace is a flashing danger sign.

Perry notes that charter teachers tend to be less diverse than those in public schools.

The price of “reform,” he writes, is steep:

As a former charter leader in New Orleans myself, I’ve seen black and brown communities have to make trade-offs like losing political control, teaching positions, and funding in the name of educational reform. If people of color don’t realize direct economic, political, and educational benefits, then it’s not real reform. Consequently, we need reforms that empower people, districts, and students on the way to educational progress—and hiring and retaining people of color should be an explicit focus of reform.

Should communities of color be required to lose political control and teaching positions in exchange for charters, which may or may not survive, and may or may not get higher scores than the public schools they replaced?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Peter Greene Explains Why Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Care About How Many Charters Closed

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2019 //
81

 

Peter Greene puts his finger on the reason that Secretary DeVos is unmoved by charter failures. In her ideal free-market model, failure is a feature, not a bug.

in the free market, businesses open and close all the time. Where is Eastern Airlines, Braniff, TWA? Gone.

Stability, in her view, is not desirable. Disruption and churn show that the market is working well.

Thats why she is not at all disturbed to learn that one-third of the charters funded by the U.S. Department of Education either never opened or closed soon after opening. That’s music to her ears. The market is working!

He writes:

“This is one of the area where choicers have a fundamental disagreement with public education advocates. For public schools, stability is a basic foundational value. The school is a community institution, and like all institutions, part of its values comes from its continuity, its connections to tradition, the past. It means something to people to see their children and neighbors all passing through the same halls, having the same teachers, being part of a community collective that stretches across the years. For free market Reformsters, anything that gets in the way of their idea of free market mechanics is bad; there should be winners and losers and the market should judge their worth, ruthlessly culling the weak and undeserving.

“Reformsters know they have a hard sell. That’s why they don’t try to use this as a selling point (“Don’t forget– the school your child chooses could close at any time due to market consitions! Isn’t that awesome!”) That’s why they are adamant about calling charters “public” schools– because it lulls the customers into believing that charters share some of the fundamental characteristics of public schools, like stability and longevity. They (e.g. Governor DeSantis of Florida) also want to hold onto “public” because the change to privately owned and operated market based schools is the end of public education as we know it; it truly is privatization, and almost nobody pushing these policies has the guts to publicly say, “I propose that we end public education and replace it with privately owned and operated businesses, some of which will reserve the right to refuse service to some of you, and all of which may not last long enough to see your child from K through 12.”

“The person who almost has the guts to almost say this is, ironically, Betsy DeVos– the person charged with taking care of the public system that she would like to kill. What a wacky world we live in. So don’t expect her to be moved by all the waste of tax dollars paying for failed or fraudulent charter schools; every time a charter school closes, a free market reformster gets their wings, and Betsy is a-fixin’ to fly.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Testing

Leonie Haimson: Why Is NYC Chancellor Carranza Sending Struggling Schools into a Death Spiral?

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2019 //
13

 

Leonie Haimson questions why NYC Chancellor Carranza sent a letter to every parent in schools rated CSI (Comprehensive Support & Improvement) by the state to let them know that they could transfer to another school. 

Although he claimed otherwise, he was not required to do so.

Some schools are on the list because of opt outs.

Carranza is destroying schools instead of supporting them. No school ever improved by closing it.

After I wrote this, I heard that Carranza “might” withdraw his threatening letter. True or not, why was it his response and Commissioner Elia’s response to threaten schools instead of helping? Why do they think that any school needs threats and intimidation? Where do they get these attitudes? Was NCLB their textbook?

Categories Closing schools, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), New York, New York City

Arkansas: Please Help the Resistance Fight the Corporate Takeover!

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2019 //
6

 

I have recently been in touch with residents of Arkansas who are fighting the Waltons effort to destroy public schools in poor black communities. It is an uphill battle, to be sure, and they need our help.

Minister Anika Whitfield has been working with parents, teachers, and fellow clergy to forge grassroots opposition to resist the onslaught of the Wal-Mart empire.

Pastors are forming their own Pastors for Arkansas Children to defend the principle of public education.

Jitu Brown of the Journey for Justice Alliance will soon be in Little Rock to offer strategic advice. Jitu and J4J led the successful Dyett hunger strike, which blocked theclosing of the last open admission high school in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville neighborhood. As a result of a 34-day hunger strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel reversed his decision to close the school and instead invested $15 millioninrenovating it into the Walter Dyett School of the Arts.

Please join me in helping the Resistance fight the Waltons and the Corporate Takeover of the state’s public schools by sending a check to:

Grassroots Arkansas

Arkansas Community Organizations

2101 South Main Street, LR,  AR 72206.

It is registered as a charitable organization by the IRS and is tax deductible.

 

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Privatization, Resistance, Walton Foundation

Oakland: OEA Members Vote to End Strike

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2019 //
8

It seems as if the only way for teachers and students to win gains from the boards that allegedly protect and serve them is to strike.

 

BREAKING BAY AREA NEWS: Oakland Education Association members have voted to ratify their new contract and end their seven-day strike, the union announced tonight. Educators will return to their classrooms Monday. See the news release below….

 

Mike Myslinski

Headquarters Communications

California Teachers Association

1705 Murchison Drive

Burlingame, CA 94010

650-552-5324

408-921-5769 (cell)

www.cta.org

 

NEWS RELEASE

March 3, 2019

 

Oakland Education Association

272 East 12th Street

Oakland, CA 94606

510-763-4020

www.oaklandea.org

 

Contact:

–Mike Myslinski with CTA on cell at 408-921-5769, mmyslinski@cta.org

 

On Twitter: @oaklandea, #Unite4OaklandKids, #WeAreOEA, #RedForEd, #WeAreCTA

OEA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTRACT APPROVED BY OEA MEMBERS

Strike Ends, But Fight for Public Schools Will Continue

  

OAKLAND – Members of the Oakland Education Association voted today to approve a new contract and end their seven-day strike. Educators will be back in their classrooms Monday, knowing that students will benefit from the gains won in smaller class sizes, more student supports, and living wages that will help halt the teacher retention crisis in Oakland.

 

While applauding the gains made with the agreement, educators vowed to continue their fight for fully-funded classrooms, an end to school closures in Oakland’s Black and Latinx communities, and a moratorium on charter schools that are draining the school district of resources.

 

“We look forward to being in our classrooms again after having to strike to bring our Oakland students some of the resources and supports they should have had in the first place,” said Oakland Education Association (OEA) President Keith Brown. “This victory, accomplished through our collective strength on the picket lines with Oakland parents and students, sends the message that educators will no longer let this school district starve our neighborhood schools of resources. Our fight is not over, though. Oakland educators spoke clearly today at our ratification vote that this agreement will not be the end of our struggle, and we will continue to fight in Oakland and Sacramento for the schools our students deserve.”

 

A summary of the significant gains made by striking, and the full agreement, are on the OEA website: www.oaklandea.org. The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) school board must now ratify the agreement.

 

OEA members met at the Paramount Theater downtown today and voted to approve the two tentative agreements that comprise the new contract. The first tentative agreement, which deals mostly with the 3 percent retroactive bonus for 2017-18, was approved by a vote of 64 percent yes, 36 percent no, or 1,269 to 701. There were five abstentions.

 

The second tentative agreement was for the rest of the contract, including salary increases, for the  2018-19 and 2020-21 school years. It was approved by 58 percent yes votes to 42 percent no, or 1,141 to 832. There were four abstentions. Only a simple majority vote was needed to approve each of the two sections of the overall contract agreement.

 

The strike brought gains on every one of OEA’s demands:

 

LIVING WAGES: Already among the lowest-paid educators in the Bay Area, and facing an exodus of more than 500 educators per year, Oakland members made salary a key battleground to stabilize classrooms for students. It took a strike to force the district to invest in teachers. For the four-year contract, the 11 percent salary increase the union won, plus a 3 percent bonus, is considerably more than what the school district was offering pre-strike — only 7 percent over four years, and a 1.5 percent bonus – and leaps and bounds more than a take-away offer of no raise and one furlough day made by the district one year ago.

 

LOWER CLASS SIZE: The OUSD had pushed back against lowering class sizes, but OEA won a reduction in class size next school year by 1 in the district’s highest-needs schools, followed by a reduction in class size by 1 in 2021 at all schools. Educators know that lower class sizes improve student learning conditions and improve teacher retention.

 

MORE STUDENT SUPPORTS: The OEA strike won a phased-in reduction in caseloads for counselors from a ratio of 600 students to one counselor to down to 500:1 by 2020-21 school year. Caseloads for speech therapists, psychologists and resource specialists will also be reduced. A new nurse salary schedule in 2021 to help recruit and retain nurses will include the contract’s negotiated salary increase plus 9 percent. In addition, nurses will receive a $10,000 bonus twice, in May of 2020 and 2021.

 

SCHOOL CLOSURE PAUSE: During the strike and well before, Oakland teachers blasted the district and school board for proceeding with a plan to close up to 24 of the 86 schools, mostly in African American and Latinx neighborhoods. After refusing to bargain over this issue for months, the strike forced Board of Education President Aimee Eng to commit to introduce a resolution calling for a five-month pause on school closures and consolidations, and more community input into the process.

 

This pause against closures is far from enough, said OEA President Brown. “This resolution is a direct result of the strike and OEA members lifting up the issue of school closures in Oakland and putting pressure on the school board. However, the OEA will continue to oppose any closures of neighborhood schools in our Black and Latinx communities. Oakland educators will continue to fight against school closures that hurt working-class neighborhoods in Oakland.”

 

CHARTER MORATORIUM: The proliferation of unregulated charters – many housed at neighborhood schools that were shut down by the school board over the last two decades – continues to disrupt Oakland. Because of the strike, the school board will vote on a resolution calling on the state to stop charter growth in OUSD. Charter schools drain the district of about $57 million a year, one key study found.

 

The strike drew national media attention for how billionaires and outside interests influenced the Oakland school board members who supported more privately-managed, publicly-funded charters, and for how educators are being priced out of gentrifying Oakland by its soaring housing costs.

 

Teacher and community solidarity grew each day of the seven-day strike. Tens of thousands of parents and allies walked picket lines and attended rallies and marches at City Hall. About 95 percent of OEA members remained on strike each day of the showdown, and student attendance plummeted to about 2 percent by the union’s estimate as parents kept their children home.

 

The strike erupted after two years of frustrating negotiations – the teachers’ contract expired in July 2017. The extraordinary documentation of the strike is on the OEA Facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

President Brown thanked the community, all educators and allies for their strong support. “We built power. We united the community during the seven days of the strike and we have won because of the power of parents, students uniting with the community and labor,” Brown said. “Through this powerful strike, the people of Oakland have spoken.”

 

Brown also thanked State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and Assembly Member Rob Bonta for their support and participation during negotiations.

 

OEA co-sponsored the Bread For Ed campaign that raised more than $171,000 to feed Oakland students in solidarity schools held at churches and city recreation centers during the strike in a district where an overwhelming number of children are low-income and depend on free or reduced-price meals during school. The OEA Membership Assistance Fund raised more than $85,000 through a Go Fund Me drive.

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The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Class size, Closing schools

Chicago: The Election Was “a Complete Repudiation” of Rahm Emanuel

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2019 //
8

 

 

Thanks to Fred Klonsky for alerting me to this analysis of the mayoral election in Chicago, in which two African American women are in a run-off, the establishment candidate William Daley came in third, and privatizer Paul Vallas got about 5% of the vote. Voters voted no to Rahm’s school closings and charter favoritism.

Curtis Black writes:

“The election that advanced two black women to the runoff for Chicago mayor is certainly historic. And voters who backed Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle were certainly demanding change.

“But the election was also a complete repudiation of Rahm Emanuel’s record as mayor of Chicago. All the candidates ran against Emanuel’s program. All of them rejected complete mayoral control over the school board, which has enabled wholesale school closings and charter expansion. All of them called for more investment in neighborhoods. The candidate closest to Emanuel ideologically, Bill Daley, even ran against the mayor with a slogan of “no more excuses.””

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm
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