Oakland Parent Jane Nylund Writes a Letter to Governor Gavin Newsom
Dear Governor Newsom:
It is with profound disappointment that I heard that your office was responsible for essentially gutting the main features of these charter reform bills. While I can only speculate on the reasoning for essentially caving to the charter industry (besides Ann O’Leary and the task force espousing all kinds of charter-friendly platitudes), I can say that as a California native, public school graduate (1983), advocate, and 16-year parent/volunteer (two sons in Oakland Unified), and now employee of Oakland Unified, I am well familiar with the education landscape in this state, particularly the damage being done to schools in Oakland. I’m also familiar with what happens when districts don’t have local control over the schools for which they are responsible. You and I have something in common-we both attended well-resourced public high schools. You went to Redwood High School in Marin, and I attended Miramonte High School in Orinda, located in what is now one of the wealthiest suburbs in the East Bay. Lucky us.
The irony regarding your potential alliance with privatization groups like CCSA is that, because of your severe dyslexia, you would have been rejected by the same schools that are now being touted as “high quality seats”, aggressively marketed as superior to real public schools because of test scores. According to the bio I read, you were rejected from a private prep school and enrolled in your local public high school instead. So you have first-hand experience with the idea that real public schools enroll CONTINUE READING: Oakland Parent Jane Nylund Writes a Letter to Governor Gavin Newsom | Diane Ravitch's blog