Got an opinion for our new community Op-Ed page?
on May 18, 2010
Hi Oakand North readers,
The Arizona boycott, the gang injunction, the mayor’s race … got an opinion about a local issue? Or just want to share your perspective about life as an Oakland resident? We’d love to hear what you have to say!
Next week, Oakland North will launch our brand new community Op-Ed page, and we’re inviting our readers to contribute essays of approximately 500 – 1,000 words on any Oakland-related topic of community interest. Please send all submissions for consideration to: staff@oaklandnorth.net — we’ll choose some to appear on our Op-Ed page.
Oakland North will have the right to edit submissions for length, clarity and spelling/grammar. Please keep essays civil and in good taste — we’re looking for thoughtful first-person opinion pieces, not rants or personal attacks. We hope to hear from you!
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Oakland North
Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.
To the Editor/Opinion:
Let us all be clear about the situation OUSD is presently finding itself: this was the making of the Board of Education, period, full stop!
As a parent and SSC member I have had enough of this Board of Education, starting every meeting – in response to the parent and community uproar to financial failures – with their grasping at reasons by their fingernails. Woe is us “ …California underfunds…”, woe is us “…we have to maintain a reserve…“, woes is us “ costs for special education are ballooning”, woes is us “….we have underenrollment…”.
Please! You all were elected – supposedly by the community – but, we know how much money outside forces put in the campaigns to re-elect you and who they are. You all did these entities’ bidding, followed every ask Wilson put in front of you, too often unanimously, and now your pittance of an excuse – let’s be clear, it’s not an admission of fault when you proclaim through crocodile tears “… I should have made better decisions…” Please! Spear us!
Spear us all your false modesties, and your false appreciations. You have no idea what parents do in our schools, despite it all we stay because we believe in our public schools. Because we’ve learned that you’re not our children’s partener, our teachers, counselors, principals, coaches, restorative justice counselors, special education teachers, janitors, nurses, and cooks are who we need to support daily. Our public schools are valiantly holding up their sides of the bargain. I see it and hear it every day. They have nothing to combat the poor reputation that you and outsiders have proffered on them, all the while dithering about “quality” and “equity” all empty words.
Don’t tell me who else made your jobs harder, because I know as a Board you’ve done nothing to counter the loopholes of Prop 98 that allow the state to pilfer from our local taxes’ education fund and replenish their coffers when they want to, at no cost to them. You certainly were not in Sacramento protesting the imposed depletion of reserve funds to again replenish the state’s coffers. I was there you, were not. And, you certainly haven’t opposed the proliferation of privately run charters for years and the benefits they reap through Measures N G1 either.
You voted for mid-year cuts last year. And you have the gall to do it again this year, with a not so subtle insinuation that you’ll need to do it again later this year? And to support your claims you propose a simplistic graph that shows the schools as receiving the majority of the funds, ergo money should come from them. It’s what schools are supposed to provide! Of course they have the majority of the funds, that’s why schools exist in the first place, that’s how LCFF works. That’s why you’re supposed to be doing your job, to protect those funds, not vote to remove them!! Schools are doing their jobs, why haven’t you done yours?
We don’t have less enrollment, we’ve had more, and all of the gains have gone to the charter schools, no thanks to your decisions – spurred on by Wilson – to embark on “common enrollment”. The farce that is the “Blueprint for quality Schools” – nothing but a thin veiled attempt to do what you’re set out to do: close schools – you are using it to obfuscate and confuse to further your moneyed supporters agenda. This is just a transfer of money and students. There are no savings in this plan.
You have made your decision it was stated on the Nov 8th. You seem to be on the verge of amending that amount. Good! Amend it by removing any and all cuts to the schools. None of them can afford it, and you all know it!
You are the cancer that is making parents leave this town’s schools for private schools and privately run charters. You are the cancer that inflicts the death of a thousand cuts to this district by all your past and present actions. Do your jobs!!