Take Action: Protect Majority Black Schools from Closure 1/31/2022

Posted on by January 31, 2022

 

Our children’s future is OUR future

It does not matter where you live or where you work or your relationship to Prescott School or any Oakland school.

Below are a series of actionable steps to take over the next few days in response to the School Board’s proposition to close / merge Prescott and 15+ other schools.

NOTE: On January 12th, the school board approved Board Policy 3077; this policy exempted the district from conducting community engagement, an equity impact analysis and greenlit the process to identify schools to close. 

The following actions are being shared from efforts among the Prescott School community and the Reparations for Black Students initiative. Please share widely. For more information, visit: https://reparationsforblackstudents.org/

RIGHT NOW – Monday, 1/31/22 

PUBLICLY OPPOSE AND COMMENT ON THE SCHOOL BOARD RESOLUTION TO CLOSE / MERGE 16 SCHOOLS – BEFORE MONDAY 1/31 AT 5:00PM

  • Go to https://tinyurl.com/4tn78cb7 , click “OPPOSE” and write your comments.
  • Comments may be very simple and to the point. What’s important is the presence and visibility of opposition to this plan. Silence is compliance.

TALKING POINTS
– Prescott is a historic neighborhood school with the highest growth in math and 3d highest in English Language Arts of any school in OUSD – you should be supporting our school, not closing it

– Half of our Prescott Elementary families live in the neighborhood and walk to school – closing our school means walking more than a mile across 32 lanes of traffic, including the busy Mandela Parkway

– Closing majority Black and Brown schools during a pandemic is not only racist, it is cruel. Our community and others in West and East Oakland have suffered the most during this pandemic

– There are hundreds of affordable family homes coming within blocks of Prescott Elementary, look to the future and support Prescott as we grow

– I am one of many supporters of the Reparations for Black Students Campaign. The passing of the Reparations for Black Students Resolution in March of last year was supposed to be OUSD’s incentive to invest in Black students and repair generations of harm. Yet here we are not even a year later and the discussion to identify schools for closures continues. OUSD has closed 16 schools since 2004 yet these closures did little to improve the achievement gap of marginalized students. As a result of closures and continued disinvestment OUSD has seen massive enrollment decline in Black Students and has done nothing to rectify anti-Black racist policies and structures. This district’s failure to adequately resource schools will not be resolved by further school closures. Protect majority black schools from closure.

SIGN THE PRESCOTT COMMUNITY LETTER

THIS WEEK

MONDAY JANUARY 31 6pm to 10 pm: School Board Meeting On Zoom. You don’t need to stay tuned the whole time. Open the zoom and leave it open in solidarity. You can also make public comment by raising your hand to speak, but there will likely be so many speakers that not everyone will be called on. It is less important for you to speak than to just be on the zoom.

  • The link for the Zoom meeting is here: https://ousd.zoom.us/j/83102020408
  • Please upload the Reparations for Black Students icon as your Zoom profile image. The board members will see that you stand with Oakland’s students against school closures.
  • Remember, even if you are busy making dinner or whatever, open up the zoom window so that the Board sees that all of Oakland cares about our kids

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 2, 1:30 PM: Prescott School campus cleanup and Art Build.
We will be having a campus cleanup and Art Build with children and families in preparation for both our 4 pm meeting with Board members and Saturday’s 4 Peace rally and community walk

  • Starting at 1:30 pm, we will be at the side gate on 10th Street between Peralta and Campbell to make posters and banners to hang on the outside fences and for Saturday’s 4 Peace rally and community walk (see below).
  • We will bring all materials needed for the art, just come in comfy clothes that can get painted on!
  • We will have water and some after school healthy snacks available
  • We could also use some help sprucing up the campus. Thank you to those who have already volunteered to do so. Picking up trash around the outside of the gates can happen at any time, and we will have trash grabbers available at 1:30 for any who want to use that opportunity.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 5, 10 AM TO 1 PM: Citywide 4 Peace Rally and Community Walk starting at Prescott School 920 Campbell Street

  • This community walk is a project of the 4Peace Community Coalition of Faith Leaders, the Community Ready Corps and Councilmember Carroll Fife and was already on the books; Councilmember Fife invited us to join as a rally to save our public schools (Thank you Carroll!)
  • We will be gathering in the big yard (enter at 920 Campbell St or on Peralta near 8th Street) for a Rally in Support of All of our schools, followed by a Community Walk in the neighborhood.
  • Please outreach to anyone who cares about our children in Oakland and ask them to come and bring a friend
  • Please outreach to any organizations you know of and ask them to send at least 5 representatives
  • This will be a family welcoming event, children are welcome with parent supervision.
  • Masks and social distancing ++++
  • Flyer attached

Please share this with any others who have a connection and care for Prescott Elementary, West Oakland, and Oakland students.
More information: https://reparationsforblackstudents.org/

 

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