State Administrator Calls Cops on Teachers

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

> From: "Jonathan Stribling-Uss, Education Not 
> Incarceration" <ednotinc@riseup.net>
>
> Hello Everyone,
> The situation at East Oakland Community High has gotten more serious,
> Please read this and call or email Jack O'Connell (State Administrator Kim
> Statham's boss, he can be reached at joconnell@cde.ca.gov 0r
> 916-319-0800)or the District at (510)879-8200, and demand an end to the
> suspensions of the 9 East Oakland Community High school Teachers, to stop
> the School Closures and to return local control to Oakland.
>
> There is also a Press Conference today that everyone should come out to :
> June 13, 4:00pm, City Hall Steps
>
> Thanks for your prompt action,
> Nuri Ronaghy,
> Education Not Incarceration
>
> State Administrator Calls Cops on Teachers; Nine Put on Administrative
> Leave
>
> Just days before East Oakland Community High School?s scheduled
> permanent shutdown by Oakland Unified School District?s state
> administrator, nine teachers (more than half the school?s faculty)
> were suspended without warning. The suspensions come a day after
> students and parents staged a one-day boycott and held Freedom
> School classes in a church.
>
> OEA President Betty Olson-Jones was actually meeting with the teachers
> when the District had the gall to send two of its School Police
> Officers to question a teacher about?loading boxes into his car!
> Never mind that it?s the end of the school year, never mind that
> this school is being closed down and teachers have countless box
> loads of their own private property to pack. The ?search?
>  revealed nothing but books and papers belonging to the teacher.
> At the same time, another teacher was refused permission to go
> to his classroom to retrieve his personal computer! These
> episodes exemplify the contemptuous way that the District has
> treated these teachers all year.
>
> Today?s events follow months of increasing tension between the
> District and the small school, which opened just three years
> ago. On February 28th, after learning their school was slated
> for closure, hundreds of students, parents, teachers and
> supporters marched eight miles to District headquarters,
> where they spoke passionately in support of keeping their
> school open. Despite a letter of support from Mayor Dellums,
> despite the support of a majority of the School Board, Dr.
> Statham refused to allow the school to continue. Just last week,
> at a Public Hearing on the Oakland Schools (organized by the Oakland
> Education Association and a coalition of community groups),
> students, teachers and parents of East Oakland Community High
> spoke before a panel of elected officials, including Mayor
> Dellums, Assemblymembers Sandré Swanson and Loni Hancock, a
> representative from Barbara Lee?s office, Supervisor Keith
>  Carson, Central Labor Council Executive Secretary Sharon
> Cornu, and over half of the elected School Board. They told
> the gathering of over 200 people that 72% of their 11th graders
> had passed the math and 84% had passed Language Arts of the
> California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), a test doesn?t
> need to be passed until the senior year. Many of these same
> students are taking college courses.
>
> This is another blow to OUSD?s increasingly empty claim that
> it stands for retention and recruitment of good teachers.
> Instead of supporting them, the District is treating the
> dedicated teachers of EOCHS like criminals. The State
> Administrator?s willful closure of East Oakland Community High
> in the face of overwhelming community support shows that they
> will listen only to the dictates of the State. This underlines
> the unfitness of the State to run our District.  In the words
> of a poem written and recited by an EOCHS student at last week?s
> public hearing:
>
> ?At my school, I see 40 cameras
> Watching our every movement
> But what I don?t see is a library full of books
> There is no library
> ?
> What I don?t see is the money that was spent for that fence,
> the cameras Our school supplies that should have been provided
> by the District Instead I just see my teachers spending their
> money out of their own pockets?