Does school relocation = closure?
By Katy Murphy
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 at 7:46 pm in elementary schools, school closures.
Speaker after speaker, parents who came to an Oakland school board committee meeting this evening delivered this message: Kaiser Elementary School is a place where children and families who don’t fit into neat little boxes can be safe and accepted — and thrive, academically. That it’s an option for families across the city (those who manage to get in) who don’t consider their neighborhood school to be a good place for their kids.
The official school closure recommendations don’t come out until Friday, but Kaiser appeared on an early list for possible consideration. And comments made by two school board members on the committee, Jody London and Alice Spearman, seemed to suggest that the school was unlikely to remain open, even though it’s filled to capacity and financially “in the black” — in large part, because it’s not a neighborhood school.
Ninety percent of the kids who go to Kaiser travel from outside the attendance boundaries, and the criteria for school closure places a great emphasis on neighborhood schools and densely populated areas with the most need for a school.
“What I am interested in doing is preserving your program and moving it into another area of town…” board member Jody London told the group. She suggested that they talk to the principal at Emerson Elementary, a school in North Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood that is under enrolled, but she didn’t complete her thought. The parents did not take the idea well.
What do you think about the idea of moving a school from one location to another (where another school already exists)? Where has it happened successfully? What would it take to make it work?
Note: I tried to embed the video of the board members’ comments, but I’m not sure it worked. Let me know!
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September 20th, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Moving the school is closing the school. There would be no guarantees that we could keep our principal or our teachers because of seniority within OUSD. Emerson has very limited afterschool care, which would be a huge issue for many working families, and there isn’t the culture of support around LGBT famlies. I know of at least one transfer from Emerson to Kaiser in the last two years because of family safety issues related to LGBT. Whatever the site, it is reasonable to expect that many families would be wary and not willing to believe that OUSD would ‘make it right’ for families in the transition, and would choose a different plan for their families. If they see the value in keeping Kaiser, then they should keep Kaiser.
September 20th, 2011 at 11:05 pm
This is heartbreaking and so indicative of the idiocy of the OUSD school board. Kaiser has relatively high test scores, demographics that are very representative of Oakland, excellent achievement by African-American students, and one of the highest parent approval ratings in the OUSD. It is the ONLY school in then entire OUSD that is actively and openly welcoming of LGBT families. As far as I can tell, the board wants to favor their ‘small school’ pet projects which are failing, and in order to do so they need to get rid of schools that are doing their job.
Here’s the real deal. Kaiser’s test scores don’t quite match those of the other ‘hill schools’, so it’s an easy target. Most of the hill schools have a relatively wealthy and entitled parent base, so the school board wouldn’t dare threaten them. Kaiser is small and diverse. Many/most of Kaiser’s students would be in ‘flatland’ schools, but their parents have chosen Kaiser. But in many people’s minds, Kaiser is a ‘hill school’. The main criteria that the school board is using is whether a school has a significant population from its neighborhood. Kaiser doesn’t. It’s the school of choice for many families that don’t have a good option. Many of Kaiser’s parents drive their kids across Oakland to get to school. You don’t see that kind of commitment at Joaquin Miller, Thornhill, Hillcrest, Montclair, or other ‘hill schools’. At those schools, the neighborhood parents have taken over and successfully gentrified their OUSD school to the point that the OUSD pretty much doesn’t touch them. Kaiser isn’t gentrified, so Kaiser is a target.
September 20th, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Ann,
You are absolutely correct, downsizing staff is a big money saver(that’s the idea). You are also right that seniority is going to play havoc with the school communities that have been nurtured, especially the successful ones. Parents are about to get a firsthand look at heavy-handed union mandated rules, and their effect on the communities they are supposed to be serving. I would advise all you concerned parents and taxpayers to watch the union situation unfold closely, this is going to be an eye opener and a reality check. You are going to have teachers being bumped around and it’s going to cause a chain reaction. It has happened in another district and parents were so absolutely livid that the super ordered the next year everyone was to stay put(no more bouncing around).
September 20th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Kaiser Elementary is hands down the best school community in OUSD! The students, families, teachers, staff and administrators, both PAST and PRESENT represent what a community of “the BEST of Oakland diversity” is supposed to be about.
ALL families are honored and respected. ALL students are welcome and included. I began my association with Kaiser in 2002 and there are NO serious or notable discipline problems on the campus that I can recall hearing about in the past 9 years. Our students excel and work together to achieve. Our parents volunteer regularly and are in classrooms and participating in the school community on a regular basis, despite having to drive all over town to get to “their school (of choice)”. Our teachers work together and know ALL the families and the students. It doesn’t matter who the Principal is or which teachers have come and gone….. the COMMUNITY of Kaiser Elementary School simply welcomes the new..and keeps including the old… and remains unified and successful in providing the highest levels of public education to students and families who most likely could not afford a private school and would otherwise be forced into lower performing OUSD schools.
So, of course….. OUSD will again try to fix what is NOT broken…. and probably destroy our school and devastate the lives of 270 kids who are not fortunate enough to live in the Kaiser neighborhood. Shame on the Board members who vote to close this school. I trust that wise Oaklanders will demonstrate their disapproval by voting out of office, any OUSD Board member who votes to close Kaiser Elementary School.
September 20th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
I find it difficult to believe, let alone understand, Board Member London’s and Spearman’s comments. If they, and other board members, are in fact interested in preserving the Kaiser school program and moving it into another area of town, why haven’t they visited Kaiser School or approached the PTA to try to organize people in that way. Closing the school isn’t moving the school, it’s killing the school.
Obviously as a parent, invested in the community at Kaiser, I don’t want to see the school closed. I am not objective. I can’t be. Yet the Board seems to be inconsistent in expecting people to trust them, in terms of transferring programs from a succeeding school with a wait-list to an under-enrolled one, just because the board votes to close Kaiser.
I would expect that there are no “guarantees” in terms of moving faculty and programs from Kaiser to another site, Emerson for example as cited in Ms. London’s comments. How then can the Board members expect that people will simply follow their lead?
I want good things for Oakland. I understand that there isn’t enough money to fund everything. I understand that some schools have to be closed. I understand that I am relatively privileged. What I don’t understand is how the school board vote can expect me to trust that they will preserve the program at Kaiser which my family – and many others – have supported with numerous volunteer hours, money and relationships. Who’s to say that should the Kaiser community “move” to Emerson, that next year, with undoubtedly more budget cuts to come, they won’t close that school too?
Kaiser is a model school community of collaboration between students-parents & teachers in a large highly dysfunctional city that I love. If it is that easy to transfer the model from one school to the next, why hasn’t the district done it before?
I can’t afford to flee to Piedmont or Orinda or a private school. I am proud to be part of OUSD and yet I feel as if my school district is dishonest with me; asking my family indirectly to sacrifice a school program we’ve helped to develop in order for us – and many others – to go and build up another struggling one elsewhere in the city because the district has failed to develop other successful school sites. We repeatedly seem to wonder why people of all ethnicities, socioeconomic levels and families structures flee Oakland and OUSD and yet closing or “moving” (as Ms. London might call it) a successful, multi-racial, funded school merely fans the fan of flight from OUSD to private, charter and other school districts.
If the Board is hopeful that Kaiser school – or other similar communities – will move to other school sites, then they should do more than simply encourage desperate families to contact the principal to ask for permission. The Board should actively be facilitating such creative restructuring. The district should intervene and pave the way for new solutions to familiar problems. Otherwise it seems like empty promises and unrealistic visions, which will only serve to increase the private school attendance at the expense of continued decreasing of the OUSD attendance population. I struggle to see how this closure is good for OUSD and Oakland in the long term.
September 20th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
@ J.R. I am a union member as are all of the teachers at Kaiser Elementary. Please do not use OUR school and our students’ financial hardship of not being able to afford to live close to their school of choice as a platform for your union bashing diatribes. This is about our kids and their right to the highest quality public education that we can offer them. This is not about YOU.
September 21st, 2011 at 1:14 am
Relocation is not equal to duplication under any circumstance. The plan as set forth presently provides no guidelines, nor guarantees, that parents would find an equally high –achieving program in a new location. Any merger would automatically lower our API scores and it would take years to bring them back up, effectively taking our children and making them “the experiment”. The plan provides no guide-lines of how a move of Kaiser would “spread” our success, without our faculty nor our principal, both critical linchpins what makes Kaiser a success story. The plan provides no details on how our hard-working two-income parent community will be supported with adequate before and after-school care, enrichment programs, and inclusion of curricula that at Kaiser are for everyone not just who can afford it, and that OUSD does not provide.
And, frankly, I’m getting sick and tired, of the conversation being framed and re-framed by this self-serving board with covert allusions of “elitism” and “shame on us” for being neighborhood parents/kids. By taking these positions they are not only perpetuating the stereotypes they purport to want to eradicate but, are doing a disservice to their constituents, who, despite any help from OUSD, have managed to provide a financially viable, safe, highly challenging, diverse and tolerant environment for all students, and are not being adequately represented. And really, someone please answer me why can’t any child from any part of Oakland come to a school in the hills? Why not? We have 285 students that do that every day, regardless of where they live.
The reality is that OUSD agreed to take moneys from the Gates Foundation in the early 2000s, split up a number of schools that were under performing and increased the number of schools for the district without a clear plan on how to sustain the increase in capacity. Throughout this Kaiser has been in its location for over 40 years, never burdening OUSD or running a deficit, and providing the quality educational choice that parents have been searching for and demanding. The present strategic plan for the district takes a model from Harlem and “plunks it” in Oakland. It is a model that will fail, and no transference of physical location is going to maintain the success that is Kaiser at a different location. The model is flawed when applied to Oakland, and it will inevitably deepen the divisions of race, financial status and gender identity, by creating small “enclaves” of like-minded parents. Isn’t this what we want to remove!
Kaiser is the “sacrificial lamb” because of where it’s located, and only that reason. Which, begs the question: for all of the constituents in Ms. London’s District 1 should be asking themselves: how much money has the OUSD estimated the land’s value of the school property to be? And, what is she getting out this? And is this why she’s so intent on eliminating a successful school? What other schools in her district will be on the list next year? And what other public office is she planning to attain?
This is about dollars for land not about success and achievement or walking distance from school or misperceived lack of community.
Shame on the OUSD for being misleading, unprepared, uninformed, unreceptive, and perpetuating the stereotypes and social divisions in Oakland that this school has worked so hard and managed so well to eliminate within it’s class-rooms walls.
September 21st, 2011 at 1:37 am
You stated in the article that the official school closure recommendations come out of Friday. That is certainly news to me! The group who came and spoke to Santa Fe staff said nothing would be decided until after the September 27th meeting.
I am pleased that Jody London met with Kaiser parents and staff, but where is the equity when all other schools on the initial closure list are not invited to speak about their particular concerns?
I hope it’s not too late, on September 27th, to remind the board that Sankofa falls between Santa Fe and Peralta geographically. Sankofa tried and failed to be a K-8 school, so why would it succeed now when it was closed down in 2007?
Is Claremont really on the closure list? If so, there will be several schools who will need to go K-8 to absorb their 400+ students. If Claremont remains open, is it reasonable to encourage Sankofa to go K-8 and syphon off middle school students from Claremont?
As mentioned on another thread, Santa Fe has a newly renovated yard and fencing ($700,000 of taxpayer dollars going to a new charter site?), a newly stocked computer lab, and a heater/boiler system that was overhauled just last year. Wouldn’t a superior site, in a better geographical location, be a better choice?
Moving Sankofa’s staff to Santa Fe, instead of the current reverse proposal, would not mean closure for Sankofa. It would be transplanting their vital group to a better physical location. Should a flawed criteria for closure supplant the obvious better choice?
September 21st, 2011 at 6:05 am
Ms. London seemed bound and determined to close our school! Thats some representation. I’m sure she’s entertained the fantasy of re-creating what Kaiser does in the flats of North Oakland. Who can blame her after watching the success of Peralta which was once struggling (and is full of kids from within the Emerson boundries, btw).
She and Ms. Spearman know they can’t simply pick us up and move us five miles away. Its too far probably half our school and we would lose too many teachers. What she and members of the board who have seemingly already decided want is to not only close the school, but to MAKE MONEY off its closure. They want to lease the site or sell it. This has been said now a few times.
But would they really be making enough money to justify the closure? So many families at Kaiser willl simple leave OUSD. So many families would not enter OUSD without this OPTION. Over a couple of decades, thats several thousand children lost from the district. Aren’t they trying to prevent that?
So what if Kaiser is a small school? It costs the district less money per child than many, many much larger schools. They have several small schools that share campuses and yet have more administration PER SCHOOL than any of the high performing schools. And they are not performing well! All that top heavy administration isn’t working. Why not consolidate a few schools that are shariing the same campus? Far less disruptive for those families—they would have the same campus, same teachers, just ONE office.
September 21st, 2011 at 6:11 am
A recommendation to close Kaiser will become one more public relations nightmare for OUSD and Oakland. Often, Oakland and OUSD are the unfair objects of derision by those that have neither care nor understanding about either. Not this time. A decision to close a financially stable, full capacity, high performing, multi-cultural, LGBT welcoming, safe, OUSD school of choice should, and will, be met with utter astonishment and outrage by any logical thinking person. Kaiser exemplifies all that is best about Oakland. The fact that it would be sacrificed because of a formula that ONLY takes into account the distance most of our families live from the school and subjugates all the above factors is incomprehensible.
Success can be a delicate balance, a product of many factors, independent of each other and interdependent with each other. Which part of the mix is crucial? Which would not be transferable? It’s really impossible to say, isn’t it?
So the real question is: Why has OUSD decided it is crucial to their Strategic Plan to mess with success?
September 21st, 2011 at 6:25 am
A successful program like the one at Kaiser School should be emulated not shut down. It takes years to build a thriving educational community. This, again, sheds an unfavorable light on the districts ability to attend to important details rather than global “criteria”. We are a performing school of nearly 300 students. We enroll to capacity and come out “in the black” every year. We are a truly diverse school. We are a progressive school that provides a haven for the LGBT community and gender variant children. Closing down Kaiser will come at a great cost. And it WILL NOT be a savings to the district. According to figures provided by OUSD at a recent meeting, if 80 students left AND THEY WILL LEAVE that would negate any savings to OUSD from closing our site. If students leave, that means teachers would be shut out. Relocation is just another word
for closure.
September 21st, 2011 at 7:21 am
Kaiser is the sacrificial lamb on the closure list. It is the only hill school, allowing the decision makers to deflect outcries of closing only flatland schools.
Question: Since opening all the small schools is partly what got us into this mess, why are none of those schools being closed (with of course the exception of Manzanita Community, which is being slashed under the guise of folding into Seed)? Instead those small schools (under-enrolled) are being given the chance to switch to a K-8 model, and are not even on the list. #7 mentions Sankofa becoming the site that displaced Claremont students would enroll. Anyone who has been around for a while knows that successful K-8′s are grown, and not formed instantaneously by shifting one school population into another school. When Carter was closed, those students were shifted to Sankofa. It was a disaster, and lasted only two years before OUSD put everyone out of their misery and turned it back into K-5. Sweeping “reforms” are part of OUSD’s sad history, with the kids being the victims.
OUSD used to have a mainly neighborhood school policy, followed by magnets opening in some under-enrolled schools. Then we went to opening dozens of small schools, and instituted a more open enrollment “options” approach. Now we are penalizing a school who has successfully blended all of the edicts over many years, and offers a quality education to kids across the city, saying “You are not filled with neighborhood children, and have to be closed.”
While I have very mixed feelings about closing schools, the criteria that are being used make no sense. Schools that are doing well and have decent enrollment should not be closed. Just because a school is willing to go to a K-8 should not excempt it from the closure list. How many back-room deals were brokered on this?
September 21st, 2011 at 7:23 am
Oops, exempt not excempt in #9. My new keyboard and I haven’t quite gotten in synch.
September 21st, 2011 at 8:40 am
Seenitbefore,
Oh the irony, rather this is not about YOU, this is about the kids. Adults are not the primary concern, and kids are why schools exist not the adults. As I said parents are about see union politics in action,rather than just hear union rhetoric. Believe what people do and not necessarily what they say, we will see and find out where priorities are.
September 21st, 2011 at 8:49 am
Here’s the timeline: The superintendent’s recommendations are supposed to be released sometime on Friday. They will be presented to the school board at the Sept. 27 meeting (this coming Tuesday). And on Oct. 26, the board is expected to make a decision about school closures/mergers/restructuring.
September 21st, 2011 at 9:18 am
J.R.
Be careful in blaming unions for being “heavy-handed”. While it is true that some Union mandates are counter-productive, particularly those relative to seniority, it is the collective bargaining power of this same union that allows talented teachers to make even an average income. Without it Kaiser would likely not be the school it is. The bottom line; OUSD alone is responsible.
September 21st, 2011 at 9:28 am
Emerson is making progress. More and more parents are getting involved. HOWEVER, there are so many behavior issues with the students at the school.
For Ms. London, or others who think combining the schools and the students is a good idea, I STRONGLY suggest that person visit both schools while students are on the playground. The parents who send their students to Kaiser would not tolerate the roughness and behavior that is routine on the Emerson campus. The parents would simply move their children out of the district.
To the families at Emerson that are working to make a difference: You are making a difference! The students are better behaved than in previous years. Please keep it up. This is an example of where a school needs to remain on the smaller side for a while until the behavior limits can be established.
I have witnessed first grade students punching each other in the face with a fist for “messin’” with them.
I have watched fourth and fifth grade students wait for other students just outside the school fence boundaries to beat them up and steal their money and their iPods. Yes, I did report what I saw to the police and to the school.
This is simply not the behavior we see in Kaiser students – this is not a color or ethnicity issue. This is an issue of a school culture. Emerson is working to change theirs – Kaiser has done the hard work and it shows because their culture has already changed.
September 21st, 2011 at 10:20 am
What if, rather than “merging” with another school, Kaiser were picked up lock stock & barrel–principal, teachers, other staff, students–and moved to the site of another school on the closure list that could accommodate a modestly larger number of students and be closer to being a “neighborhood” school? Wouldn’t that allow the school’s positive aspects to continue while being available to students in that neighborhood who might not have any way to get to Kaiser’s current location? Is there any reason that couldn’t be done?
September 21st, 2011 at 10:21 am
The Oakland School Board is sending a strong message to families of color in Oakland: you don’t belong in the Oakland hills. How many top-performing schools in Oakland reflect the city’s actual demographics (30% African American, 20% Latino, 25% white, 15% Asian)? ONE: Kaiser Elementary. The other top performing elementary schools are disproportionately white and disproportionately upper middle class. Kaiser Elementary school demonstrates that racial and economic diversity go hand in hand with high achievment. Why in the world would OUSD close the school that best demonstrates equity and achievement?
There is no such thing as “relocation.” Relocation means closing Kaiser, losing teachers, the principal, the family community, and the school culture.
September 21st, 2011 at 10:44 am
I am so dismayed as I read this thread. If I was a Kaiser parent I would be frightened and livid. I hope that Kaiser is not on the final list of schools to be closed. The Kaiser community has come together to build a thriving school. Its success should be celebrated not snuffed out.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:03 pm
C.B.,
Although OUSD may be foolhardy and inept(look at the track record), there is no way that anyone can seriously state that they are solely responsible for the long list of problems(parental apathy is a big problem).The Unions do plenty of damage to the “state constitutionally given” rights of students to have a quality education.Here is a brief synopsis of the case and the judges ruling.
“The Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to a settlement that halted seniority-based layoffs at dozens of vulnerable schools, including the plaintiffs’. The local teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which the court had ordered to join the suit as a co-defendant, rejected this resolution as a violation of the union contract. But the court wrote, in its approval of the settlement, that “[u]nder no circumstances can [the school district] bargain away students’ constitutional rights.” In mid-August, the union filed an appeal”.
The union should not even be able to insist that students rights may be infringed. We the taxpayers are not supposed to be financing a jobs system, but rather an educational system.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:22 pm
“it is the collective bargaining power of this same union that allows talented teachers to make even an average income”.
This is a contradictory fallacy, because of step and column every teacher(regardless of merit or ability)is awarded increases so that pay and benefits are very heavy on the back end, and in the case of OUSD(too many schools equal too many teachers)thus requiring the cuts of LIFO. As we are seeing now, cutting junior teacher won’t be enough(school closures are testament in part due to this,but of course nobody raises this issue) because the cost of pay and benefits for the top most senior and admin are increasing geometrically. We are in a unsustainable position, and it is going to get even worse(the people that make the big money are also the people that make the decisions, and they will never fire themselves)just the same as the honchos in the union.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:34 pm
C.B.
To focus more on the point, Oakland teacher beginning pay is dismal which lowers(mathematically)the computed average teachers salary. The truth is we couldn’t even begin to pay beginning teacher more because all the money is on the other end. It’s just a game with the numbers, and the kids and their taxpayer parents are losing.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:47 pm
My apologies for the thread jack(although it is related), but I had to respond to C.B.
Back to the thread:
My heart goes out to the parents/students of Kaiser who are being placed upon the PC altar, about to be sacrificed to the false god of equity. You’ve done a great job but that apparently doe’s not matter at all.Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
September 21st, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Jenna-
That’s good news! I think Emerson has the potential to be a great school. It has so many advantages already where it is located with Studio One and the pool across the street. I wonder if a student to student Big Sister/Brother program could be implemented with students from Tech?
So tell me, how would the staff at Emerson feel about having a bunch of their staff removed and replaced by Kaiser teachers and other displaced teachers from across the city? How would you like a bunch of displaced–and traumatized—children from Kaiser and from other closed schools? Sounds like OUSD is offering Emerson and the district petri dish. Won’t it disrupt all the improvements and strides toward success the students and staff at Emerson have made?
Why schools that have shown NO improvement year after year and have empty classrooms near other like schools are exempt makes no sense.
September 21st, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Gail,
Where? It may not seem like it, but Kaiser is ideally located to serve the neighborhoods that do not have a high-performing, neighborhood school. People who live far down 580 come on 13. People from the flats and West Oakland come on 24. People in North Oakland drive up Broadway and hop over the freeway to go up the hll. For the most part, the access is not bad. There is usually no freeway traffic at all for pick up. It is actually very well located on a clean, well cared for plot of land with a 3 bridge view (which we all wish wasn’t there so they’d leave us alone!).
There is no freeway access near Emerson or the site that Sankofa sits on. All the families (about half the school) down 580 would have their commutes more than double. It’s not feasible.
So even in a perfect world of picking us ALL up (including our stellar after-school program run by Suzanne Plunkett and a staff that is phenomenal in their dedication) isn’t feasible because of how the school was encouraged by OUSD to be enrolled for the last 20 years.
Why can it not be OK to have some neighborhood schools and some schools that are magnet/commuter schools? Why would it EVER be ok to close a high-performing school? Even after the fire, they let Kaiser stay open.
September 21st, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Over a dozen years ago, wasn’t Kaiser considered to be a magnet school? When did that change? It seems really ludicrous to me to shut down successful schools that are operating at capacity. Also ludicrous is to shut down successful schools that have a waiting list and could be operating at capacity like Manzanita. It makes more sense to try to replicate their successes at other sites instead of thinking that the whole population could be transferred. It seems like OUSD is again shooting itself in the foot. . . .
It scares me to think OUSD is considering 6-12 schools. Developmentally, the difference between 6th and 8th graders is huge, as is the difference between 9th and 12th graders. To me, K-8 makes more sense, as long as 6-8 or 7-8 is somewhat segregated from the younger kids.
September 21st, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Kaiser Mom,
I don’t know where; I just know that since several schools have to be closed there will be empty sites. I’m not advocating this; I’m just asking why it wouldn’t be a possible solution. Kaiser’s location, confirmed by your description of how students get there, does make it pretty clear that for students whose families don’t have cars the school isn’t an option. It still seems to me that moving Kaiser as a whole to a different site could accomplish 2 positive things: keeping a successful school community together and making a good school available to more students.
Again, maybe there are reasons that wouldn’t work. I don’t know; that’s why I posed the question. But there’s no question OUSD has to close schools and figuring out how to do it in a way that causes the least harm is devastatingly hard. I encourage everyone not to refer to school board members as idiots unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
September 21st, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Emerson is located in the Temescal area, a neighborhood which is dominated by upper-middle class, mostly white families. The vast majority of the families in that neighborhood send their children elsewhere, and thus Emerson is not a ‘neighborhood school’ either. In the best scenario, if Kaiser and Emerson were to merge and Emerson became successful, people in that neighborhood would start sending their children there and the school’s demographics would start to resemble the ‘hill schools’ and African-American students would once again be pushed out of a successful school. In the worst scenario, the violence on the playground (which I have witnessed first-hand and can confirm exists) and uninvolved parents would drive Kaiser families away to other schools. Who loses? Lower-income students.
Alice Spearman’s district includes schools like Acorn-Woodland. You would be blown away at how much money has been poured into that school. A beautiful building, computers, brand new books, special programs, plenty of supplies. The results? Minimal gains.
I guess Ms. Spearman and Ms. London’s philosophy is if it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.
September 21st, 2011 at 6:12 pm
To your point about Acorn Woodland: The school’s API is 843 out of 1,000 — up 36 points from the year before (and 42 points below Kaiser’s).
About 72 percent of the students at Woodland are English learners, and 90 percent qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
September 21st, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Fair enough…I haven’t worked there for a while and should have researched before spouting off an opinion. The API was 668 in 2005, so obviously big changes have occurred. I also see that their African-American enrollment has dropped from 24.3% to 12.5%.
Do you have information about or links to individual school budgets? I’m curious about which school are in the black.
September 21st, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Gail,
Again it would not work for Kaiser families because:
Emerson is not large enough to absorb even half of Kaiser families and the population it already has. The only proposals made so far has been Emerson (and only in passing by London who represents both schools). This is probably because Sante Fe was dabbled and they realized that one of the main reasons Kaiser parents love their school is it is SAFE. And that means inside and out. Emerson is in a safe neighborhood, *lightbulb* how about there? Yeah, except you could only accommodate maybe half, half of whom would go for it, so that’s 60 kids you could get it in and how many of the 12 teachers? Between OUSD and OEAS, maybe 4? And goodbye to the after school program?
2) For the 60 that are left, there just isn’t feasible access to Emerson for a large majority of folks that live down 580. It would add a substantial amount of time to their commute.
And I’d like to point out, who walks their kids to school anyway? You know who? Stay at home parents. Even parents that live close to their schools drive…because they’re on their way to WORK. Obviously, public transportation to Kaiser would be a most welcome thing. Unfortunately, AC transit just cut the only line up there this year. A bus from the Bart station in Rockridge would be a most welcome thing. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where it is safe to put your young school child on any form of public transportation by themselves.
If I lived near Emerson, I wouldn’t let my child walk there and no neighborhood has transformed more in Oakland than Temescal.
September 21st, 2011 at 7:53 pm
Referencing the great series of articles by Scott Johnson in the Tribune (see oaklandeffect.com) about the effects of violence and trauma on Oakland’s young people really describes the heart of the differences between school cultures being discussed here. Families of all races and ethnicities are trying to protect their children from exposure to community violence, from having “fight or flight” experiences become normalized, which results in the brain adapting to those cues and young people becoming very reactive and not able to think through their responses. We need to offer the right support for the families stuck in the norm of living with community violence. Then we will not see this huge divide between schools where students, teachers and families can function and those where all three are struggling to be successful.
September 21st, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Wow, I thought I’d made it quite clear that the question I posed had nothing to do with Emerson. My question was about moving Kaiser to the SITE OF A SCHOOL THAT’S ON THE CLOSURE LIST, which as far as I know does not include Emerson. If a lot of Kaiser students live “down 580,” Maxwell Park is “down 580″ and it’s on the initial list. Please don’t put words in my mouth; I never suggested Kaiser students move to Emerson but rather asked whether they might move to a school site scheduled for closure.
September 21st, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Kris,
This is Crazy logic…you do not send your children to lower performing schools and hope That school does better. You keep HIGHER performing schools and send, or keep children there.
Let us call it like it is. My money is on this scenario:
Montes de Oca has a vested interest in charters.
Close Lakeview and give it to a charter school called “Urban Montessori”.
Close Burckhalter and give it to a charter called “Waldorf”.
Kaiser…well I am still trying to figure out that one…but SOMEONE has something to gain , AND IT IS NOT THE CHILDREN OF OAKLAND.
Shame on the school board if this goes through. Shame on Tony Smith.
How will his African American Male Task Force be able to look people in the eye, how will Mr. Smith be able to EVER utter the word “Equity” again?
September 21st, 2011 at 9:42 pm
The criteria placing ANY emphasis on neighborhood schools for neighborhood kids goes against the way Oakland interpreted NCLB with “OPTIONS”. And now they want to PUNISH the people who utilized the option to go to another school.
The Center on Education Policy is an advocacy group for Public Education. My guess is that no one would even suspect that Oakland Unified School District would be closing schools that are doing well and then moving them to lower performing schools. Contact these people and give it a shout.
Center on Education Policy
1001 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 522
Washington DC 20036
Phone (202) 822-8065
Fax (202) 822-6008
September 21st, 2011 at 10:00 pm
@Gail According to the article above, Jody London mentioned Emerson. Just to clarify where that idea came from.
@Lisa C Yes, it is crazy logic. I’m glad that came across in my post. I’m curious about this charter school connection. What is Montes do Oca?
September 21st, 2011 at 10:24 pm
David Montes de Oca. Coordinator, Office of Charter Schools at OUSD
also the architect of the criteria used to close our schools.
It was carefully crafted so that the schools left to close would be the schools needed for charters.
They COULD NOT use the academic success criteria, or Achievement gap success as a criteria, because the schools that are not successful in those areas are not in neighborhoods the charters want their schools.
Eliminate academic achievement and they can close down any schools they want.
They are banking on no noise from parents.
They are banking on no fuss from the school board.
just sayin’
September 21st, 2011 at 11:31 pm
Thank you Lisa.
They came to Santa Fe, took down all of our questions, responded obliquely to only a few, and we’ve heard nothing back from them.
David Montes de Oca and crew also seemed surprised that we had not been provided with any parent letter, and promised one the next day.
Well, we had our Back to School Night tonight, and our new principal wasn’t able to offer any information beyond what we have been discussing on this blog. Where is the transparency? Where is the equity? Where is the honest communication about motivations for the current criteria?
I’ve been encouraged to not question the integrity of the architects of this debacle, but it becomes more and more difficult….
September 21st, 2011 at 11:56 pm
We, the teachers of Kaiser School, were shocked and saddened to see our school on a list generated by a set of criteria adopted by the OUSD school board. We understand that this list is an initial step in a process being implemented this year to close schools. Closing Kaiser School—one of the four most successful schools in the entire district as regards African American achievement—would be an egregious error that would harm our school district both fiscally and academically.
Kaiser is a school where kids can be who they want to be. We are a welcoming environment for mixed race families, two-mom families, two-dad families, immigrant families—if you have a family that wants to be a part of an appreciative, accepting community then Kaiser is the school for you. A glance at our excellent ratings in the area of student safety on the “Use Your Voice” surveys from previous years will confirm this. Don’t tell the parents at Kaiser that we can close this school and offer them an equivalent program at another school because it isn’t true and they know it.
Kaiser is a cost-effective school. Every year we get our ADA (Average Daily Attendance) money from the state and every year we finish in the black. OUSD implemented Results-Based Budgeting in 2003-2004, a program under which the central office keeps some of the money and then the school gets what it’s allowed to spend and the principal and School Site Council have to figure it out. It isn’t always easy but we have figured it out, unlike many other, larger schools that have had to be bailed out by OUSD. Since this is the case, how can we be labeled as not economical, or as too small to be cost-effective?
Kaiser is a diverse school. Kaiser School’s student body breaks down as follows: 16% multi-racial, 35% African American, 27% White, 10% Latino, and 10% Asian. Kaiser shows what a truly diverse, integrated school can achieve. We are not a flatlands charter school that imposes militaristic discipline that no middle class parent would stand for. We’re not a hills school with token minority representation. We are a school that demonstrates what Oakland can achieve when all are included, when all are welcome.
Kaiser is one of the top 4 African American public schools in Oakland. Only four schools have an African American student population over 33% and an African American API over 800. Kaiser School is one of them. Admirably, OUSD is trying to make the achievement of young African American men a priority. Keeping Kaiser School open would be one of the most effective ways to sustain African American male achievement in the short-term.
We understand that the list that has been generated is only a preliminary list at this time. The criteria applied resulted in several surprising names (not only Kaiser’s) on the list for possible closure. We hope and we trust that the OUSD school board, upon your recommendation and with your support, will take another look at the criteria applied, and remove schools that have a proven track record of success from the list for possible closure.
OUSD are now making pretty clear noises about moving our school rather than closing it. Unfortunately, this is neither practical nor acceptable. It is simply closure by another name. We would be combined with another school that would have their own strengths, weaknesses, program, staff, and their own set of things on which they are focusing. According to facts shared with the teachers by OUSD staff at a meeting after school yesterday, if 80 students left OUSD after Kaiser was closed or consolidated with another school, this would entirely offset any savings to the district. This is the worst kind of business-model school governance. It looks like it might make sense if you look at teachers, families and students as cogs and widgets, but we all know that a school is not a business, and neither is a school district.
September 22nd, 2011 at 7:13 am
Katy, I have little hope of receiving any answers from OUSD. I believe you have the basis for a real investigative report. I hope you might ask some of these questions of OUSD staff and board members.
The following questions and requests for information were submitted by the Kaiser Community to the Facilities Committee on September 20 in order to understand the objective, transparent process involved in closure recommendations. It is unlikely a rational decision can be made that does not take into account the following.
What are the projected savings from each specific school site if closed?
What is the school-by-school ranking of additional fiscal assistance given to school budgets by the district in 2010-2011? Where does Kaiser rank?
What is the school-by school ranking of capacity vs. enrollment at each school? Where does Kaiser rank?
What evaluation was made of the viability, practicality, and potential success of the “restructuring” plans of schools before they were removed from the list?
Is there an estimate for the cost of potential lawsuits for the failure to protect children from bullying because of their parents or their own sexual identities?
What is the actual census number of school age children in the attendance areas?
What are the estimated costs involved in moving personnel and materials from closed schools to different locations?
Why isn’t achievement and success part of the criteria at all?
Why were Secondary Alternative Ed programs (at least 10 across the city) not considered for consolidation?
Why were all the schools in West Oakland not considered? (Could not the STEM plan be put into action, despite the number of schools involved?).
How was the criteria established? Upon what research was the criteria based?
How did they translate research towards justifying the weight given to each of the six steps of the study?
How was it determined that neighborhood schools are more important than successful, community schools?
Was it considered how many families would be returned to neighborhood schools that are also on the closure list? (We have calculated the number at 25% for Kaiser families.)
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:08 am
Not to hijack this thread, but I had never seen these “Live/Go” maps before. Take a look at these two maps:
http://web.ousd.k12.ca.us/sarc/Docs/LiveGo%20Map/2010-2011/English/157_LiveGo1011.PDF
http://web.ousd.k12.ca.us/sarc/Docs/LiveGo%20Map/2010-2011/English/127_LiveGo1011.PDF
Can someone explain this to me? I was told that Thornhill was literally 100% full, meaning that some neighborhood kids actually couldn’t get in. Meantime, I see that kids from down by the coliseum are attending Thorhill?
The same does not appear to be the case for Hillcrest. Why do they get a pass?
And, for a chuckle, take a look at the map for Montera:
http://web.ousd.k12.ca.us/sarc/Docs/LiveGo%20Map/2010-2011/English/211_LiveGo1011.PDF
That last picture is literally an exact depiction of why my house value will never go up.
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:14 am
Why is that picture a depiction of why your house value will never go up? Are you saying a school located in a nice area needs to be more exclusive to neighborhood families for that to happen?
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:34 am
Katy -
I didn’t make the world. I just live in it.
And yes. The evidence is Piedmont.
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:42 am
One of the key issues that is being ignored in this discussion is that Kaiser Elementary is essentially being punished by OUSD for being the most successful example of the possibilities of OUSD’s Options program.
We came to Kaiser 7 years ago in the lottery because of the dismal failure or our local schools. OUSD had the previous year closed our truly awful neighborhood school, and we had been reassigned to the very underperforming Laurel Elementary. Because of Laurel’s designation as a Program Improvement school, we had a genuine option presented to us with the lottery. We found Kaiser somehow and encountered at that time an arts-focused, warm, child-centered environment. It was a school capable of accepting families into it precisely because it was remote and had a small neighborhood population. It had room to accommodate those who needed to be served under the Options program. Seven years later Laurel is still underperforming and still not somewhere I will be sending my second child if the closures go through.
Like everyone at Kaiser, we fought hard for years to make the school work. Every day the travel to the school is a struggle that we all undertake willingly to have the opportunity to provide a better option for our kids. We volunteer for everything from classroom assistance, to weekend gardening, to working registration at fundraisers. When OUSD cuts the budget, we dig deep in our own pockets to keep the school functioning. We as a community and as a PTA pay for a music program for all upper graders, computer lab, library, and PE because we know that’s what makes for a rewarding environment for our children. We make the effort as a community to make this school work and OUSD apparently cannot see that as a model of success to be emulated or even preserved. Kaiser Elementary is the Options program in action, and it has worked.
September 22nd, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Fletch:
In the options process siblings of currently enrolled students have preference. Also, students who may have lived within the neighborhood boundary at one point sometimes move. It is my understanding, although it may be incorrect, that if you move you are not necessarily required to change school sites.
BTW, your point about the need for a high-performing middle and high school program such as Lowell in SF, or Boston Latin, Bronx Science, etc. is well made, but given your comments about how much you dislike Oakland–why did you purchase a house there? Did your real estate agent lie to you, or were you hoping that Montclair would be annexed to Piedmont?
To the Kaiser Families…keep on fighting.
September 22nd, 2011 at 12:45 pm
AC -
Regarding the Oakland/Piedmont thing, there are many reasons. Basically, I view the cost of private school as “worth it” because of the choices it gives me, and then I save money on the house.
On Thornhill, I hear your point, but then why does Hillcrest not have the same situation? Does no one ever move out of the Hillcrest attendance area?
Also, I kind of doubt people are moving from Montclair to some of the spots in that map.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard stories of kids getting into Thornhill through corruption in OUSD. Who knows if this is true.
Final point (not directed at AC Mom): I always think it’s funny that people suggest Piedmont as a way to escape OUSD. Frequently those are the same people that oppose magnets and care a lot about “diversity.” How come no one ever yells about the fact that Piedmont’s school system has basically no blacks?
September 22nd, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Fletch: Why would anyone yell at the fact that “Piedmont … has basically no blacks?”
Buying a house – or renting – In Piedmont involves the same cost/benefit analysis as getting a Plug In Prius. Personal appraisal of how the future will play out with the basic needs (in this case) of housing and education.
First of all there are a limited number of blacks who make the stable income needed to service Piedmont residency. Piedmont residency is VERY expensive. For the same cash flow you get much more square feet in the relatively few good neighborhoods of Oakland.
Those limited number of blacks would have to decide that the trade off in number of bedrooms, age of residence and parking spaces, etc they give up is worth the trade for the Piedmont Schools. In other words they’d have to have sufficient children and plans for their children (ie Ivy League schools) to make the proposed residence pay off. So that tends to exclude those high income blacks who have no or few children, or children not of school age. And if you do have say 3 or 4 or more children of school age and you’re black – you may tend to be in the lower income stages of your career.
Again, demographics is destiny. The high earning blacks I know in the East Bay tend to have few children and working professional mothers. If you only have 1 child of school age, you just might use the money for a more handsome home in the better neighborhoods of Oakland and pay the cost for private school for your black child. Moreover, there are some such high earners who may not want to put their black child in a completely white environment – again this pushes them to private schools where they can pick and choose.
The cost benefit analysis might change if the child is Black/Jewish mix for example. Mixed marriages could have a different dynamic of income, age of parents and related earning power at that stage, occupation and earnings (Jews make more) and future orientation (blacks are lees into that). And the choices go on.
So you are not about to have any significant population of blacks in Piedmont, or buying Priuses. Too bad, so sad. But people always do what they want not what other people want them to do. There have been blacks in Piedmont – but not many and not in the middle of it. Too many demographic issues. The hard core of Piedmont are multi generational residents with family businesses and inherited wealth. Nowadays even they are moving to Danville and other parts through the tunnel. Are there any Knowlands left there?
The Jewish families there used to be limited. Wonder what the German Jewish percentage of that school district is nowadays? Look at their demographics – family size, income and occupation.. This question is a no brainer.
Piedmont and towns like it exist for a certain demographic. The other demographics and not about to spend their limited funds this way for reasons that make sense to them. Perhaps they prefer to have a bedroom for each child rather than bunkbed them so they can go to Piedmont Schools. Perhaps they aren’t worried about the academics because they have no illusions that their children will qualify or want to qualify for Ivy League.
But there are blacks in Piedmont and in the schools. Just not many.
Brave New World.
September 22nd, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Gail,
If you see this late response, I apologize for not noting you took Emerson off the table.
The word is Maxwell Park is to merge with…I can’t remember and shouldn’t guess.
But even if it didn’t, what about the others who come from North Oakland, West Oakland and the Hills neighborhood where Kaiser sits?
You can’t pick up a student body and staff and plunk it somewhere else. Now, if OUSD has a bigger site somewhere near where we are already located, in an equally SAFE neighborhood (40 shots rang out 4 blocks from Sante Fe elementary in the middle of the day yesterday!) without the offering of a merge so we can keep our ENTIRE staff, then that would be something to consider.
Can we please have a real kitchen and a place to eat that doesn’t double as the theater and the room for the after school program?
September 22nd, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Nextset -
Good commentary, but I think you missed my point. My point is that I think it’s humorous that the equal-rights crowd doesn’t get up in arms about the fact that Piedmont gets its own segregated school system in the middle of Oakland.
This comes because of a historical boundary. But so did segregation. Why the respect for the Piedmont-Oakland boundary when it creates such obvious inequity?
September 22nd, 2011 at 7:11 pm
Nextset- please be careful about generalizing. It’s very offensive to read in your commentary that “Jews make more”.
September 22nd, 2011 at 7:29 pm
The families who are in the same neighborhood as Kaiser would most likely go to another nearby school.
I share some of the questions about the scoring process in the criteria. For example, if Emerson has a lot of unfilled space, is less fiscally well off, and has less grades, then how come it’s not on the list of schools to be closed? Why not merge them into Kaiser?
Now on the other hand if Emerson has more room to fit more people, and is close to a lot of people who go to Kaiser anyway, then it does make a lot of sense to move to Emerson. But to relocate a program means relocate the program. Families, principal, teachers, & similar facilities. OUSD has to show they mean it, or all they’re going to do is the school version Netflix.
PS. I also share the same question about small schools/charters. How many of those are on the list?
September 22nd, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Charters wouldn’t be on the list, I don’t think. The OUSD (or the state) can grant a charter to a private organization which then runs a school. State money gets paid to the charter school based on ADA, but I believe (and I could be wrong) that the OUSD takes a portion of the ADA money for its services. I’m assuming the OUSD would also collect rent for any schools that get converted into charters.
“Small schools,” on the other hand, are run by the OUSD but are exempt from a lot of the curriculum requirements and other districtwide academic program decisions that are made from the central administration rather than at the school site level, for example the hugely lucrative contract between OUSD and Harcourt (Open Court) and whatever math they’re doing. I’d throw Foss in there as well, but it’s actually pretty good and a lot of the materials get reused, recycled, or passed on to the next group doing the unit.
Anyway, that’s tangental. Small schools are pet projects for the upper administration. If they succeed, lots of glory for the person in charge. If they fail, it’s just a failed experiment…no biggee. Too bad the guinea pigs are children and their families.
I could be wrong with some of the above, so Kaiser teachers (or whoever) feel free to correct me. My bigger point is that the real issue here is $$$. There are so many games and schemes being played by folks in the OUSD central admin and on the school board. I don’t trust them a bit. Someone’s getting something out of this, and our kids are paying the price. Sorry to go all conspiracy theory, but this stuff is hitting our family personally now and I’m getting less rational.
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:03 pm
I was at Lakeview today for a meeting between the staff and some people the district sent to answer questions.There was a woman named
“Meghan” and Denise Saddler present. Questions were asked and “Meghan” did not want to answer because she was not sure of the answer. They wanted to go over the criteria, that was already approved, not really have any discussion or debate. We were also told in 5 days Mr. Smith will be submitting his decision to the board for approval. Some parents are not even aware this is happening.
The reasoning for pushing this through so fast is because they need to “prepare ” for these changes. I expressed that the inconvieniences to the district’s offices should be given less time than the parent- student side of all this. Parents need time. This is an outrage.
It is clear to me that what they really want is to give the buildings to charters. Of which our students would “not likely” be able to attend. The students who are out of the area from West Oakland will be sent back to “their neighborhood” schools. In an effort to make the STEM corridor more viable because ” West Oakland has been neglected for a long time”. True! But….what about OPTIONS. Doesn’t this fly in the face of options?
Won’t this further segregate our community? This sounds crazier by the minute.
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:07 pm
When you begin to connect the dots, it doesn’t smell very good.
Our principal of seven years rarely took any of our suggestions into her plans or implementation. The SSC approved our going K-8, but the principal nixed the idea. This would have saved us from the current closure list, as it did Sankofa.
Interestingly enough, the same well-connected principal landed a position at East Oakland Pride and suddenly left us the second day of this school year.
We came up short on many supplies and textbooks, and her comment as she waltzed out the door was “They are around here somewhere. Check the boxes in the book room.” There seemed to be little effort to make sure we had what we would need this school year.
We all seem pleased with our new principal. She was brought in from Philadelphia.
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:02 pm
J.R. wasn’t bashing unions. He was telling the truth. Last In First Out practices hurt kids and schools.
Union bumping is wrong. When Oakland closes schools because it is paying for too many administrators (and custodians and buildings and SSOs), there will likely be bumping with the most recent hired teachers–many of whom are great–getting laid off. Senior teachers, regardless of performance, keep their jobs.
Last In First Out hurts kids. It hurts schools. It’s bad policy and it’s shameful that teachers have jobs for life, regardless of performance.
Solution: change Ed Code, do away with LIFO, pay teachers twice the salaries they earn now and let site administrators actually make hiring / firing decisions.
J.R. – you’re a voice of reason in here. Don’t stop.
Dr. Smith, close the schools now. We’ll get past this.
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:20 pm
Ann Ferrari: Sorry Ann, Jews as a group have a significantly higher income than blacks (they also have higher rate of anxiety disorders it seems). No amount of beating around the bush can change that. So when you count the Jewish Students at Piedmont and compare that number to the Black students at Piedmont you are going to have a huge difference and it’s not because of ‘racism” or discrimination or any nefarious reason. It’s because of demographics (which includes factors in the next paragragh) – and the demographics are affected by generations of welfare policy encouraging reproduction of the dregs of society at the same time as tax policy encouraging smaller families by the brighter members of society (of all races). The different ethnics have the wealth and other such group differences BECAUSE they are different. And that difference is a lot more than “cultural”.
The different American ethnic groups have completely different averages and norms for family formation (including marriage and divorce), childbirth, occupations, education levels and yes, IQ. At least that is the data that comes from the Census and from the Military Draft datasets that go back a century. I didn’t make this happen – the stats are freely published and they are what they are.
The California teachers are on the receiving end of these truths as they look over their classrooms and turn in the standardized tests every year. The early puberty and single mother household factors lead directly to problems and the nearly 50% drop rate in the black group that is for the time being Oakland’s biggest student cohort. And yes, some of these differences are rooted in physical differences of the students – early puberty, early childbearing, early mortality, etc.
So let’s stop blaming or rewarding the teachers every time we have a new annual report of which group is doing whatever on the scores. The Piedmont teachers are not the (main?) reason their kids score where they do, and the Oakland teachers are probably not the reason their kids score where they do. And these annual changes we crow about are interesting but largely demographic driven.
The movement of students of the different groups into the different towns and different schools have everything to do with government policy especially the changes since the “great society” programs of the 1960s. throw in “divorce on demand” and the birth control advances and you have – Brave New World.
So our concern in this thread for school closure and relocation is interesting but it doesn’t really change what is happening with the racial stats. They are moving on their own with demographics.
There is no magic bullet of “new” instruction technique. There is no “closing the gap”. And this good teacher bad teacher thing isn’t the problem either. On individual basis we can push students higher in academics than they’d go on their own. We cannot do that on a large scale in order to favor one ethnic over another. We can waste a fortune trying as well as burn out our teachers.
The first thing to do in education is not to make things worse for any of the student groups. Schools should not get in the way of education by holding students back from progress they are making or are ready to make, but for chaos in the classrooms.
Piedmont has normal schools and has Continuation schools for the screw ups. They don’t tolerate disruption or insubordination in their normal schools. If only OUSD followed suit. I might add that their Continuation School appears to score higher than OUSD’s normal schools. That’s not a surprise either. Children already removed from normal schools because of behavioral problems tend to have mental problems – but that doesn’t mean they are particularly dumb. Residence in Piedmont and towns like it self selects for IQ, not always for emotional stability.
If OUSD is starved for funds they are going to close a lot of smaller schools and just run big education factories. When this happens the boutique schools will all be gone. You will see more automation in education and larger classes. Kind of like freshman year at UC Berkeley. And your racial stats are going to go into a free fall. The closures won’t be intended to screw one group or another, it will just be economics.
The best way to obtain social mobility – and I assume that is the real holy grail we are all after with our interest in education policy – is to identify the higher performing members of the student body regardless of wealth or parental lineage and bring them forward into a more rigourous academic track. At the same time the schools need to put the non academic students on a firm track to qualifying for military enlistment or vocational placement, neither of which is exactly easy nowadays.
It’s not enough to provide a happy home for students through age 18 and dump them into the cruel hard world with false notions of their own wonderfulness.
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:47 pm
Katy:
A couple of studies that demonstrate that home prices within the same city are directly tied to the performance of the neighborhood school.
http://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2011/06/BC_neighborhood-school.pdf
and
http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/labor/lap04/staiger-040506.pdf
Likewise, poor performing schools reduce home values. Both of these studies determine what many of us know – race is not the factor in home prices within a city, but neighborhood public school performance makes 10% to 20% difference in home values.
For many, many more studies Google “how neighborhood schools affect home values”
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:46 am
Everyone should read what nextset wrote there. Particularly the last paragraph.
I will never understand why journalists and parents — particularly those of color — do not stand up en masse and demand magnet schools.
Forcing smart kids to attend bad schools destroys mobility and crushes hope. I believe there ARE smart kids in East Oakland.
Let’s give them a chance to succeed.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:40 am
Nextset- thank you for your response, and I wholeheartedly agree with you that we, in Oakland, need ” to identify the higher performing members of the student body regardless of wealth or parental lineage and bring them forward into a more rigourous academic track.” One can only hope that they consider doing this with all the changes/relocations/closures.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:55 am
Thanks, Debora. I thought Fletch’s comment was more about the kids who attend his neighborhood school (and where they come from) than the school’s performance, which is why I asked about it.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 am
I would agree with Nextset on this lone point also, we cannot allow ourselves to be chained and held back by the PC equity crowd. If we concentrate on leveling the playing field the result is we all get left at the level of mediocrity(at best).
September 23rd, 2011 at 6:45 pm
I am not going to pretend to know what people’s motivations are for not advocating for more support for GATE programs, or for a truly rigorous 6-12 option for OUSD. All that I know is that it is sorely needed.
Fletch:
I gave Piedmont as an example due to its proximity to Oakland–census data (and my own two eyeballs)confirm its lack of diversity. I am not as pessimistic as Nextset about the future, but I agree that one needs to be adaptable, so to the more educational, recreational and social opportunities that I can provide the better.
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:27 pm
Kris-
Kaiser was and is NOT an experiment for OUSD (and certainly not Jody London, she seems to have a personal vendetta).
Kaiser has been there for 40 years and has the highest capacity it ever has.
And you’re dead wrong about the neighborhood not sending their kids there. Some don’t, a lot do. There are not a lot of school aged children up there RIGHT NOW. There are a lot of people 55+.
What is wrong with some big schools, some medium and some small? What works best in every realm of society you can think of is a system that is diversified.
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Kaiser parent,
You would be absolutely right if we as a district had the money to afford diversified schools, but we don’t. To make things even worse there will be more cuts because tax revenue almost assuredly will not meet projections. Don’t forget what WILL be increasing geometrically is the taxpayers pension burden, and it will eventually cripple the fake budget we have now.
http://www.cacs.org/articles.php?article_id=4
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:38 pm
JR AND CLOSE-
There are NO bumping rights for teachers in Oakland. Teachers from closed schools have first choice of open positions. They can not displace a teacher from a position that is filled.
Can we finally let go of this?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Hey Kaiser Parent,
Just to clarify my earlier statement, while Kaiser Elementary is definitely one of the smaller schools in the OUSD, it is definitely NOT a ‘Small School’. That’s a more recent term used by the OUSD for schools that are using an experimental model. Sorry for the confusion. You are absolutely correct that Kaiser is not an experiment, though it might have been in the years following the Oakland hills firestorm in 1991, which is precisely why it became a ‘school of choice’ and less of a neighborhood school. It is absolutely a success, and we need to bring that to the forefront of this discussion.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Trish,
Are you trying to say by state law and union contract, that there is no must hire list(seniority preference) in the event of a school closure? I think you need to read the relevant state law and teachers contracts. There isn’t any way(short of a judge’s order like in LAUSD) that a junior teacher will keep their position over a senior teacher(it’s all about date of hire). See section twelve.
http://publicportal.ousd.k12.ca.us/199410811175930900/lib/199410811175930900/OEA_Contract_05-08_-_CONTRACT_only_.pdf
http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2011/02/ousd-teacher-layoffs-why-los-angeles-matters-oakland-opinion
Bumping hasn’t been done because of turnover(that is not the case this time with multiple school closures).
September 24th, 2011 at 7:07 am
JR-
Bumping, in union terms, means one who’s position was eliminated, but is still employed, can take any comparable position of a lower seniority employee. Who then can do the same to someone lower than them in seniority. Teachers CANNOT do this in Oakland.
You are conflating lay off/rehire procedures with bumping.
ALL teachers of closed schools still have a guaranteed job for the following school year (unless they’ve been pink-slipped in an entirely separate and unrelated procedure). Seniority comes into play in that displaced teachers choose which vacant position they want in order of seniority.
The link to the OEA/OUSD contract is unnecessary, thanks. I helped write some of it.
And I will not respond to any post about seniority and lay-offs. That discussion is not relevant to this thread.
September 24th, 2011 at 8:49 am
Katy, can you look into the posibility of senior teachers from closed schools “bumping” new teachers who still have jobs. I’m hoping Ms. Gotham is correct in that no bumping could take place, but it certainly goes against the way it was explained to us when we were dealing with the possibility of pink slips last year. Is the difference that a pink slipped teacher has a different status than a teacher from a closed schools? Also, what about principals? I would really appreciate some clarification on this. Thanks.
September 24th, 2011 at 9:01 am
#69 just broke down the process. Pink slips (March 15) are not the same thing as a school closing.
September 24th, 2011 at 9:18 am
Trish,
Once again, all union related issues go by seniority, in many districts there is what’s called a “must place list”. Tacoma teacher’s just went through a strike, and guess what the only unresolved issue is? Teacher placement(read: seniority preference). The direct impact that seniority has on all school communities makes this entirely relevant. All the parents need do is watch and see union policies at work. Everyone watch closely and decide for yourself what is relevant, do not take someone elses word for it.
September 24th, 2011 at 10:11 am
@JR – Are you calling us liars?
There will be no “bumping” of junior Teachers, by senior Teachers, if there are closures. Tacoma is not Oakland. LA is not Oakland.
September 24th, 2011 at 10:32 am
We shall see……..
September 24th, 2011 at 11:17 am
Im very relieved to hear there wont be “bumping.”
Im stii a little unclear though. What if their aren’t enough open positions to absorb all the teachers from the closed schools? How can they be guaranteed positions?
What about the principals?
September 24th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Personally, I find the repeated insertion of union bashing annoying, hackneyed, and unproductive in this conversation. While the union contract and teacher bumping may be a factor, my concern is that the school board is playing politics with a functional, successful school that is a refuge for many different situations (GLB families, mixed race kids, working parents, families that want diversity AND academic success, etc).
While I will be very sad for the current Kaiser teachers if they get reassigned next year, I will be distraught that my own child will likely be put in a school where her family is not honored and she may not feel safe to be herself. The needs of the Kaiser kids and community should trump this political nonsense.
September 24th, 2011 at 11:41 am
OUSD Mom@70:
I am correct. The ONLY way any teacher can move from one position to another is if that position is VACANT.
in closures
in lay-offs
in transfers, voluntary and involuntary
Not one teacher was bumped in any of the previous school closures. Because it doesn’t exist.
It is not in the OEA/OUSD contract and OEA has never proposed that it be included. Doubters can try and cite the language that would allow for bumping rights.
It’s ridiculous on the face of it that teachers would advocate the disruption in our students’ lives caused by the pin ball effect of such a policy.
September 24th, 2011 at 12:55 pm
This discussion is NOT about teachers. It IS about children and families who have chosen to send their children to these successful schools.
I am a teacher who was formerly at Burbank when it closed and Trish is exactly right.
But this is not about us. It is about successful, largely African American schools closing, and sending them to their neighborhood schools that they have “opted” out of.
So having “Options”, the “Strategic Plan”, the concern over the achievement gap, the African American Male Task Force are all a farce.
September 24th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
I personally think the “options” process should be eliminated for elementary school.
September 24th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Katy, Can you establish an Open Thread for subjects not on topic that people still want to talk about?
Fletch, Options is one way of implementing federally mandated programs of equal access (from the civil rights movement), and is an alternative to busing. Either we have Options or we get the San Francisco system of having no right at all to neighborhood schools. So either you’re at the far left or the far right of the spectrum, and in this respect they start to sound the same.
Why do you keep throwing off-topic comments, on subjects you know little about, when you don’t even believe anybody should go to OUSD schools? How are these continuous negative, simplistic, and ignorant comments about difficult topics relevant either to the subject at hand or the entire spirit of this blog?
September 24th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Livegreen -
I’m pretty surprised the federal government would require that even at the elementary level. Also, I think it’s pretty funny that Piedmont is completely exempted from it. Just shows you how arbitrary and wrongheaded such policies really are.
To your other comments, essentially trying to censor me, all I can do is shrug. I’ve read these forums long enough to know that I’m not as far off topic as you imply. It’s not like I’m on here ranting about Iraq. All my comments are topical to OUSD. And, I think at least one of my suggestions (an honest, serious discussion of magnet schools) is directly on point with the spirit of this blog.
September 24th, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Livegreen -
I did a bunch of searching online to try and find something clearly delineating that something like the “options” process is required by the federal government at the elementary level. I failed.
Can you please provide a link to substantiate your claim? I’d like to read up on it.
September 24th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Fletch – Google “NCLB transfer policy”.
September 24th, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Hills -
I’m familiar with NCLB. I wasn’t aware that NCLB was “from the civil rights movement” (Livegreen’s words, not yours).
I’m still left wondering why Hillcrest and Piedmont are exempted from this. I understand there are technicalities involved. Just reminds me of most of what I see out of government — arbitrary and stupid policies.
September 24th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Hillcrest is not exempt from the the NCLB policy. Yes, there are few students from outside of the Hillcrest neighborhood (less than 10%). The proportion of a school that is from out of the neighborhood is directly related to the neighborhood demand. Hillcrest is a high demand school among neighborhood families; as a result, there are few spaces available for transfer requests.
The NCLB law applies to districts and mandates they set up systems to handle transfer requests *within* their districts. So if Piedmont had program improvement schools it would be required to set up an options-like program to serve Piedmont students.
September 24th, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Hills -
My recollection is that Thornhill had to turn neighborhood kids away last year and maybe the year before. Yet, the school still seems to have tons from far outside the attendance area. And, I seriously doubt all of those are going to Thornhill because of NCLB.
Somehow, Hillcrest seems only to have kids from other hills neighborhoods. How come they don’t get kids from East Oakland like Thornhill does?
I understand the technicalities of the Piedmont situation — they’re a separate district. Makes you wonder whether the Klan types in the south could have kept the black kids out by simply opening new districts.
Point being, I find it strange and wondrous that people are so willing to be fine with Piedmont just because of some totally arbitrary legal artifice. If Piedmont High has space, why not make them take some transfers from Oakland High?
September 24th, 2011 at 10:20 pm
Fletch, are you serious? Who do you propose should “make” Piedmont do this? The federal government? The state of California? I’m trying to take you seriously but you are not making it easy. Neither the federal government or the state will force districts to take students from outside their district when they don’t force districts to accommodate families’ transfer requests *within* their districts. Do you know anyone who has been through the OUSD options process? There are SO many people who get their requests denied because demand exceeded supply at the schools they chose and are assigned their neighborhood school.
If you are so curious about Thornhill then ask the district for data on the # of seats available per grade, # of requests from the neighborhood, # of requests from outside the neighborhood and final enrollment numbers from both inside and outside the neighborhood. Given that neighborhood demand in the hills schools has increased dramatically in the last five years I would predict that the ratio of neighborhood to non-neighborhood kids is changing with each passing kindergarten cohort, with the share of neighborhood kids increasing among kindergartners. As someone mentioned above, OUSD has a sibling priority policy in place so yes, families from out of the Thornhill neighborhood who got in when there was space at Thornhill will have priority over neighborhood kids but I predict that Thornhill’s ratio (as well as other hills schools) will eventually look like Hillcest’s ratio as long as neighborhood demand stays strong.
September 24th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
Actually Hills Mom, Piedmont is getting a lot of pressure from the state to accept out of dstrict transfers of students from under-performing schools. There is a bit of under enrollment there too and they were going to consider taking that have grandparents in Piedmont, but now they have to take kids from neighboring communities.
September 25th, 2011 at 12:43 am
Fletch – Piedmont is a separate city from Oakland (incorporated in 1907)and has a separate school district. A school district is not required to take inter-district transfers – you might as well as why Orinda/Acalanes HS District (another district that is next to Oakland) are not required to take inter-district transfers.
About Thornhill – if you look at the LiveGo documents that you referenced earlier, 90% of the students that live in the neighborhood go to the school (this is not broken down by grade level. The two largest groups of outside students come from Montclair and Joaquin Miller. If you read the document that you referenced, very few students from East Oakland go to Thornhill; would you suggest that the document is inaccurate?
Hillcrest has 89% neighborhood students – outside students mostly come from Chabot and Montera Middle.
Also, how do you know there are large numbers of students at Thornhill from out of the area?
September 25th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Fletch, Your comments have something to do with OUSD but not the “school relocation” topic at hand. You said earlier “Not to hijack this thread”…and then you did.
When others are posting both the ins-and-outs (all sides) of hard work going into both their schools & the District you repeatedly post misleading, ignorant and false statements to show how bad they are (including some PROVEN excellent OUSD schools). When you’re taken to task and confronted with the facts you conveniently ignore them and answer glibly that you’re being censored.
You are, by design or not, an internet Troll.
September 25th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
I woud like to thank all who expressed support for Kaiser and Burckhalter. I hope we both are given full support from the district to expand our successful programs to more Oakland students.
September 25th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Livegreen -
I wish life were simplistic enough for me to say things like “a school was PROVEN excellent.” I just don’t think life works that way.
Fair point that I hijacked the thread — though, people could just choose not to respond if it’s that irritating.
Anyway, it sounds like you guys are all earnestly trying to make the best of a bad situation. Good luck with that. As you knew would happen, I’ll be keeping my kids in private school.
September 25th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Proven excellent is Thornhill has API’s equal to or better than averages in Piedmont or Orinda. Hillcrest and others too…
September 25th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Livegreen -
As I mentioned, I don’t view API scores as the end-all be-all of education measurement. I’m sure many here agree with that.
As I also mentioned, I think the issue with Thornhill is not the here-and-now, but the fear that somehow OUSD will act to mess up what’s working well there. I never said I thought Thornhill was a bad school at present.
The closest I think you can get to a “best” way to evaluate schools is how the kids do later in terms of college admissions. I do not know these numbers for Thornhill vs. Orinda and Piedmont. Do you?
September 26th, 2011 at 7:03 am
How do you think the expansion could happen, Trish? Both Kaiser and Burkhalter have fairly large asphalt playgrounds. More portables? I can’t imagine them cramming too many more kids into the classrooms at Kaiser. Burkhalter seems to have a fairly large building, but maybe that’s just an optical illusion.
At any rate, the announcement is good news…even if it’s only a stay of execution.
September 26th, 2011 at 9:57 am
As far as closing schools, as part of any process, I appreciate the reminder that it is indeed sad and painful. I remember when Peralta was closed after arsonists set it on fire 5 1/2 years ago. We all moved and set up shop at the campus at Webster and 45th in Temescal, which had recently closed its doors as Carter Middle School. Over the course of 3-5 days, the Peralta community transformed that campus from cobwebs and dust into a vibrant, relatively beautiful, functioning school-site.
I kid you not… it was a matter of days. Sad as the situation was, it illustrated something very important…
These successful school sites and campuses grow from a community of dedicated, hard-working people, well-directed by passionate, experienced and visionary staff and leadership. We’ve all experienced this in one way or another — the PEOPLE at the school make the school.