Everything You Need to Know About the Proposed Oakland School Closures (Part 1 of 3)
They disproportionately affect black and brown students, they’re driven by privatization, and we have until August to get organized.
By Katie Ferrari
The 2019 Oakland teachers’ strike was a referendum on the future of public education in the city. The teachers and the community movement that united behind them fought for and won important concessions from the district, but everyone ended the strike knowing the battle against austerity in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) was far from over. This summer the school board will present more information about its plan to shutter 24 public schools, a blow that could lead to the entire district being privatized and charterized in the very near future.
In this three-part series, we’ll examine the long history of school closures in Oakland leading to the current crisis, the district’s faulty justifications for closing schools, and the real reason school closures are being pushed: to dismantle and defund traditional public schools, making space for charter schools that funnel public money and resources away from unionized workers and working families and into the pockets of billionaires. Or, to put it concisely, to turn a profit on children.
What Do Billionaires Have to Do with School Closures?
Billionaires control the Oakland school district in many ways, including directly funding local charter schools, as Bill Gates and the Walmart heirs have done; buying the school board through billionaire-funded pro-charter front groups like GO Public schools and its related PACs; and installing a revolving door of superintendents who hastened the district’s financial decline, many of whom were trained by billionaire Eli Broad’s pro-charter Broad Academy.
Why do the ultrarich care so much about closing Oakland public schools and replacing them with charters? The main reason is that teachers’ unions are one of the last strongholds of organized labor in America, and organized labor is one of the biggest threats to the power of the capitalist class. Charter schools are rarely unionized and are an effective tool to weaken unions. Charter schools, run by private corporations for private profit, also help weaken our collective sense that public necessities (like healthcare and education) should be provided outside of the market and that provision of these necessities should be democratically controlled.
A History of Displacing Black and Brown Students
Oakland has a long history of attempts to shutter public schools in accordance with the billionaires’ privatization agenda. In every instance, including this year’s proposal, the CONTINUE READING: Everything You Need to Know About the Proposed Oakland School Closures (Part 1 of 3) | East Bay Majority
