Re: Oakland Schools Need Stability

[Marilyn Langlois <langlois-rine@comcast.net>]

Thank you Kathy for setting the record straight!

OUSD punished by the ruling classes for effectively resisting their control,
just as grassroots Haitians have been punished by global elites for 203
years for the same offence.

Marilyn

> From: "Kathy Emery" <mke4think@hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: ca-resisters@interversity.org
> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:10:18 -0700
> To: ca-resisters@interversity.org
> Subject: Re: [ca-resisters] Oakland Schools Need Stability
> 
> I have one big objection to this letter -- -"no one would organize effective
> resistance against your efforts" -- I am convinced that the state took over
> oakland because it had been effectively resisting top down control.  Perhaps
> by now, the back of resistance has been broken, but I doubt it, given the
> history of oakland's phoenix like character.
> 
> kathy
> 
> 
> 
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>
> Reply-To: ca-resisters@interversity.org
> To: ca-resisters@interversity.org
> Subject: [ca-resisters] Oakland Schools Need Stability
> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:32:13 -0700
> 
> A great letter to the Oakland Tribune from a knowledgeable parent.
> Unfortunately, the darned newspaper didn't bother to upload this letter to
> its website, even though it was printed in the daily edition of June 12.
> Here it is, copied word for word.  I know that this parent is not unique in
> the Oakland school district, and that means that we can and must increase
> our efforts at grass roots organizing...
> 
> 
> Oakland Tribune, Letters to Editor, June 12, 2007
> 
> Oakland Schools Need Stability
> 
> Regarding "Officials Get Earful at School Hearing," June 2:
> 
> As a longtime Oakland public school parent, I have concluded that the state
> school administration has failed to create a change for the better.  The
> previous leadership had weaknesses, but the state has produced its very own
> Frankenstein monster.
> The California Department of Education must have been thrilled to acquire
> OUSD.  Now it could offer its friends, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, et. al., the
> opportunity to try out their "we're-billionaires-and-we-know-it-all" notions
> of public school reform.
> If you needed a laboratory  to test your theories, Oakland would be ideal.
> Disadvantaged by significant class, ethnic, and race divisions - with an
> abundance of uninvolved parents - no one would organize effective resistance
> against your efforts.  Besides, with average academic performance already
> low, what would be lost if your experiment didn't succeed?
> As it turns out, something has been lost.  The students and their families
> are now continuously subjected to instability.  The state's manipulations
> have produced a constant turnover of people, positions, and programs at the
> schools with no end in sight.
> Dedicated educators and engaged parents, our most valuable resources, are
> mostly disregarded.  With such rapid change, the body of collective memory
> is growing very, very thin.
> OUSD is being controlled by outsiders with no sincere allegiance to the
> well-being of our city.  They are not experts who can solve the painful
> problems which plague us.  We'll need to do that ourselves.
> So maybe it's time to say, "Enough is enough."
> 
> Sharon Higgins
> Oakland
> 
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> Thanks in advance!
> -Eric Crump
> 
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