OAKLAND (KRON) - On Monday afternoon, opponents of the closure or merger of about a dozen Oakland schools gathered outside Parker Elementary to protest the school board's decision.
Parents, students and staff protested over the weekend as well.
“We are not having it and we will never stop until we have our school in our community where it belongs,” Rochelle Jenkins said.
Rochelle Jenkins’ 11-year-old twin girls attend Parker, one of the handfuls of schools slated to close at the end of this school year.
She and other parents hoped a special school board meeting on Friday would have delayed the closing by a year, but the board majority stuck with their original decision rejecting the change.
“They are doing a service to our children they don’t have any consideration for the people in the poorer or black and brown community,” Jenkins said.
“We are organizing and we will fight to keep these schools open we will not allow them to close parker like this,” Azlinah said.
This woman’s daughters attend first and 5th grade at Parker.
She says by not delaying the closure of Parker, the school board has given parents less than two weeks to choose a new school for next year, with last Friday as a deadline.
She says that’s outrageous.
“In order for me to choose a school for my children I need to go to the school, I need to take a tour, meet the principal I need to find out what sports and languages they offer there. I am not going to be put out and rushed into finding where my children will be educated,” Azlinah said.
This comes after the school board voted to close and merge a dozen schools earlier this month to deal with an expected future budget deficit.
On Friday, the school board voted to uphold the decision to close and merge schools despite a major public outcry, including weekly protests and a hunger strike by two teachers.
Two board members wanted to postpone the closures at parker and community day school until next year, but the majority voted to uphold the original decision.
The school district says 35 percent of its schools are enrolled at below sustainable levels causing a multi-year budget deficit.
The district released a short statement in response to the criticism saying “On Friday night, Feb. 18, the OUSD board of education upheld their previous decision from the meeting on Feb. 8. The district is focused on ensuring all impacted students have as smooth and easy a transition as possible."
As the school district moves forward with its plan - so do the protests.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/glvFQHf
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