SOUTH OF THE 10 - Parents in the Oakland Unified School District are reaching out to Inglewood parents to stop school closures attached to emergency loans the districts took out to remain solvent.
A zoom meeting will be held this evening with more information.
The common theme in Inglewood and Oakland is the lack of public notice given to the community, about the closures, and the money being dangled to administrators to do it.
Members of the Oakland organization spearheading the effort spoke to 2UrbanGirls on the importance of uniting across the state.
We got involved when our kids’ school was shut down in Oakland. The more we protested and investigated the situation, the more we learned a sordid history of state takeover of majority Black and Brown districts, forcing these districts to close schools and allow charter schools to take their place.
In Oakland, the state of California, Bloomberg, the Gates, and two local groups funded by Eli Broad were all involved in shutting down over 20 majority kids of color schools in Oakland and replacing most of them with charter schools. When we protested the closure of our kids’ school at a school board meeting, the school district had the school police beat us parents up in front of our children- resulting for me being hospitalized with major knee surgery which took me 1.5 years to recover from.
A big part of this history has to do with state takeover, during which the state forced Oakland to take a $100 million loan, which Oakland didn’t need to ask for, and then force the district to close schools to pay back the debt.
We are working with state legislators on a state bill to reimburse Oakland and other districts for loans we didn’t want, and trying to join together with parents and teachers in Inglewood and other similarly situated districts to move this State legislation. We’d love to be in touch with anyone in Inglewood willing to work with us on this.
(2UrbanGirls has been cited in CityWatchLA, Compton Herald, Daily Breeze, Daily News, Inglewood Today, Intersections South LA, KCRW, KPCC, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, LA Watts Times, Mercury News, Orange County Register and The Atlantic.)
