Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) management claim they must close schools to save money due to the district’s financial problems. However, the District ended last year with a $21 million surplus, and has ended 5 of the last 6 years with a budget surplus. OUSD received $4,285 more revenue per pupil than the median in Alameda – the second highest among our county’s districts. Per-student funding has increased by 46% since 2012-13, growing faster over this period than a large majority of districts statewide.

They claim they need to “right size” the District because it has declining enrollment. But according to OUSD data, enrollment has increased by 4200 students since 2004. Of course, public school enrollment is decreasing, but that is caused by the expansion of the charter industry in our city. Furthermore, both OUSD’s own studies and third-party research show that school closures do not even save money, and they result in the loss of students and qualified employees.

Yes, there are financial problems in our District – manufactured ones. OUSD has exhibited egregious fiscal mismanagement for years. In 2017-18, the District spent about $95 million more on non-classroom costs than the median amount spent by 37 Bay Area districts. The charter schools in Oakland are causing a waste of $57 million a year in funding. If that wasn’t enough, the added cost to public schools of serving the high-needs students that charters neglect to serve runs up to an additional $51 million per year. This is an enormous squandering of our public resources and neglect of our students.

In September 2019, the OUSD School Board voted to continue to close and consolidate schools, moving forward with their so-called “Blueprint for Quality Schools” and “Citywide Plan.” The District’s plan arises from the lobbying efforts of wealthy privatizers who seek to expand charter school growth in Oakland at the expense of neighborhood public schools. Since 2004, 18 Oakland public schools have been closed by OUSD, and more than half of them have been replaced by charter schools, causing violent displacement and increased segregation. Today, one-third of the city’s schools are charter schools. 

The real agenda of the current OUSD Board is not to create quality schools or support our kids, but to hand our public education to the corporations and billionaires who funded their election campaigns. They are turning public education into a business for profit.

The District repeatedly targets and negatively impacts schools serving families of color. On January 28, 2019, the OUSD Board voted to close Roots International Academy without any community or school engagement. Many students displaced by the Roots closure were assigned to a school targeted for closure by the School Board’s vote on September 11, 2019, so that they will be displaced twice! The research is clear: school closures accomplish nothing but displacement and trauma to Oakland’s students – especially students of color.

Oakland Not for Sale, a coalition of families, teachers, and community groups working to save public education in Oakland, also opposes Alameda County’s proposal to expand Camp Sweeney, the juvenile detention facility in Alameda County. The investment and creation of more than a hundred new beds for Black and Brown youth in the detention facility, while closing our public schools, is racist and disrespectful to the students and communities of Oakland. The young people in Oakland would be better served by reallocating the millions of dollars earmarked for a prison camp towards public education.

Oakland Not For Sale also supports the Black Organizing Project‘s (BOP) People’s Plan to eliminate OUSD Police. Oakland Unified is the only Bay Area district with its own police department. The $6 million a year that are currently spent on terrorizing our most vulnerable kids should be redirected towards providing them with the support they need at school.

Flyers:
Are We Against Charter Schools? [PDF]
OUSD Lies [PDF]

Facts about the charter industry:

• Overall, charters do not outperform public schools. [studies: 2010, 2015, 2019]
• Charter schools are more racially segregated than public schools.
• Nonwhite charter students are disciplined (suspension and other punishments) at higher rates than public school students.
• The charter school industry is full of fraud and corruption: fraud and waste in California’s charter schools has reached over $149 million.
• Many charter operators and their affiliates have used public funds to obtain and privately own urban real estate.

Are we against charter schools?

We are not against any particular charter school.  Like public schools, some charter schools perform well and others poorly. We understand when families have to make difficult decisions when their only choices are a low-performing public school or a charter school.

We are against the charter industry. Although there are some charter schools that offer high-quality programs, the corporate charter organizations are increasingly dominating the education system. This not only diverts money from our classrooms, but hands our schools to direct corporate control, leaving parents, teachers and students out of the picture. The charter industry has become a vehicle for privatization, which goes hand in hand with gentrification and segregation.

Privatizers and their false “choices”

Charter proponents say that many public schools have failed our kids – especially in Black and Brown communities. That is true. But this is not because they are public – it is because they are starved for resources. Class sizes are too large, and schools lack the support staff needed to properly serve our kids. 

Since the ‘90s, charter industry investors have been taking advantage of our public education crisis and offering a false “solution” that is making things much worse. They shine a light on the few high-performing charter schools to hide the fact that charters do not outperform public schools in general – even though charter schools routinely avoid high-needs students. Everyone should be able to choose to send their kids to a quality neighborhood school. The charter industry is making that choice even less available to most people than it was before.