Depending on who’s talking, the Oakland Unified
School Distinct (OUSD) is either on the brink of success or failure—it’s
making strides or it’s missing the mark. Parents, teachers, and
community activists have fought for the last 10 months to have the
school board’s decision to close five elementary schools overturned.
That decision has spawned contentious debates, thunderous marches and a
tent city built at Lakeview Elementary School with the help of Occupy
protesters.
This round of school closures—which is supposed to save the district
money—comes in the wake of a popular movement during the early 2000s
that set up more than 45 new smaller institutions in Oakland, and was
supported by concerned parents who wanted schools in the “flatlands”
transformed. Large schools in the district were closed, or began housing
more than one school within a single building or campus. (
You can read more about the small schools movement here.)
But the district is now struggling to fill those schools. OUSD
superintendent Tony Smith plans to reduce the number of schools in the
district over the next three years. In October, 2011, the OUSD board
voted 5-2 to close Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell Park and Santa Fe
Elementary schools and transform or merge several other schools.
The district is also still recovering from a state takeover due to
the OUSD’s deep financial problems. The takeover lasted from June, 2003,
to July, 2009.
Now, with the new school year approaching, Oakland North sits down
with the newly hired Oakland Education Association (OEA) president,
Trish Gorham. The union works as a bargaining agent for teachers,
counselors, nurses and librarians working for the OUSD. They negotiate
salaries, benefits, and working conditions. At least 2,600
teachers—including substitutes—are members of the union. They are famous
for wearing highlighter-green OEA shirts to school board meetings and
protests.
The previous OEA president was Betty Olson-Jones, who served for 6
years. Gorham became president this July. Gorham, an Oakland native, has
taught in the city’s public school system for 30 years. As a child, she
went to Bushrod Washington Elementary (now Sankofa Academy) in North
Oakland. A graduate of Cal State Hayward, she began teaching in 1982.
She taught at Kaiser Elementary for seven years, and worked for 23 years
as a teacher at Bushrod Washington Elementary
before
the state administrator closed the school—on its centennial year—in
June, 2005, due to low enrollment. (Sankofa Academy, which opened in the
fall of 2005, was founded on the same spot under the New Small
Autonomous Schools policy).
Gorham visited the encampment at Lakeview; when it was raided, she was in Washington, DC,
advocating for public education and protesting
with Olsen-Jones
over polices implemented by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Here she reflects on where the district finds itself today.
Oakland North: Oakland residents have watched their public
school district grapple with big changes, including a state takeover, a
return to local control, and the shift to multiple smaller schools, for
more than a decade. What are your thoughts about the years that have led
up to where the district is today?
Trish Gorham: That’s quite a huge question. For one thing, we are not
out from under state control. Yes, we have a superintendent. Yes, we
have a school board that can vote on various items, whereas only the
state administrator could approve [them] before. But we still have a
trustee and it’s still the trustee that finally approves our budget,
because we still owe money to the state.
We said—ten years ago when they started the new small schools
movement with Bill Gates [Foundation] money—that this was all really
good, but when that soft money dried up, where are we going to be? And
here we are ten years later, not being able to sustain what they ran
after earlier in the decade. So, we need to think. We need to have more
long-range planning. We need to think about sustainability before we
move on and get soft grant money and money from millionaires who have
very little ideas about how schools are run.
Oakland North: What was your first reaction to Superintendent
Tony Smith’s proposal for both an immediate and long-term drop in the
city’s number of public schools?
Trish Gorham: The immediacy was the problem. We understand that we
have had a drop in enrollment over the last 15 years. I understand that
there are some schools that are not at full capacity. But the process by
which they even had this discussion was totally flawed. It had no
community representation. It wasn’t thought out on a long-term basis. It
was rather haphazard.
When you don’t have a process like this that is so heartfelt to the
community, there are flaws and inequities, where some whole parts of the
city were exempt from consideration of closure where others seemed to
be targeted for rather random reasons. So, when you begin with a process
like that you lose all trust that the decisions are being done for the
best interest of the students.
The idea that they have saved $2 million in this process, I think, is
not correct. I don’t see how they’ve done that, especially with the
cost of moving a thousand students and materials. It wasn’t worth it.
Oakland North: Didn’t that savings estimate change over time?
Trish Gorham: Yes. It went up to $6 million because that’s what those
schools cost to operate. But all the savings of operation are not going
to be wiped out because you closed the school. There’s still personnel
cost. It’s just shifted to another site.
Oakland North: How should the union be involved in this debate over school closures?
Trish Gorham: Well, it’s not just the union. It’s the community. It’s
the community schools. The schools are the center of the community. And
that’s where the debate and the decisions should be made.
When the district put forth the figures of student populations, they
only counted the students that were enrolled in Oakland public schools.
They did not count for the number of actual children in a particular
district. So, when you are making these kinds of considerations,
everybody needs to have all the correct information and the discussion
has to be long term.
The decision—even if the discussion begins with, “I think we have to
close some schools”—then that’s where you begin the discussion. You
don’t say, and you don’t dictate, “We’re going to close schools and
these are the ones we’re going to close.” Have the conversation.
We have been a voice.
We have been a force.
We
were there at every school board meeting saying that the process was
broken, saying that they should not close these schools. We were always
there. We were leading—the green shirts. If anybody was around, they saw
the OEA out in force defending these schools from an ill-thought
process.
Oakland North: Do you think the small schools movement—which grew across
the United States in early 2000—is why Oakland was left with 101
schools? Does the district have a legitimate argument saying there a
more schools than it can afford?
Trish Gorham: One thing you have to understand is in terms of
schools, you’re talking about sometimes three schools that were on one
campus. So, ten years ago you had Lockwood Elementary. And then it was
broken up into three separate schools but it was still the same
building. It was just called three different things at three different
grade levels. So, it isn’t exactly that we grew. We did not
grow
facilities over that amount of time, we just split up student
populations. The idea that we had this explosion of facilities that need
to now be reigned in is just false.
As far as a legitimate argument, they haven’t proven that to me.
Should we have a conversation about maximizing resources? Sure.
Maximizing facilities and concentrating resources. That’s a conversation
that yes, we should have. It’s a realistic conversation to have. And
when everybody has all of the facts we can have that conversation,
instead of dictate. Then the community, along with the district, can
make thoughtful decisions about how we move forward in the future.
Oakland North: What stance does the OEA take on the increased popularity of publicly-funded but privately-run charter schools?
Trish Gorham: The charter school movement, when it began, was a
bottom-up movement to seek innovation. What the charter school movement
has become now is just a way to privatize education. It is a way to
split off certain populations—not have a unified, guaranteed, quality
public education for all.
As we see charters now, definitely in Oakland, we want a moratorium
on all charters. We want all charters to come under the same
accountability as the regular public schools. If they’re called a public
school, then they should have the same standards and be judged by the
same standards. But in state after state, including California, they
have a different standard of measurement.
What the people who want to abandon public education as a right want
is what they couldn’t get through vouchers. Vouchers didn’t play. OK.
The public did not accept public money for private schools. So, they’ve
taken the back door into charters. Charters is just vouchers by
different name.
Oakland North: How much does collective bargaining or teacher seniority play into your view of charters? Don’t these issues limit protections for charter school teachers?
Trish Gorham: There are many teachers in charter schools that are
doing a wonderful job. They believe in what they are doing. They believe
in the students. But some of them don’t even know they don’t have to
work on Saturday. It’s OK to say you’re not available after 6 o’clock in
the evening, in terms of rights. Yes, [charter schools] do want a
workforce that will work more for less because in the end that increases
the profits. Right now, it’s about profits in many
many
charter schools. Charter schools—because they have individualism—it is
hard to say “This is everything about charters,” because they have
individual ethos. But what I do know about the charter school movement
is that it is a way to break up the public school system. I have no
doubt about that.
Oakland North: I’d like to move into a hotly debated issue in Oakland’s
school system: affluent neighborhoods versus the flatlands. Parents and
community activists have argued that a number of schools in affluent
neighborhoods in Oakland, usually in the hills area, have a diverse
student population. But a larger number of parents in the
“flatlands”—the predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods of East and
West Oakland—don’t have the means to drive their children to those
locations, even if their children are enrolled in those schools through
the OUSD’s options process. Do you agree?
Trish Gorham: I think it’s an unfortunate and a distracting kind of
fight. Yeah there are different levels of economics in Oakland. Now, I
taught at Kaiser, which was technically a “hills school,” and yet we had
students from all over Oakland. We only had about nine families from
the neighborhood attend Kaiser because it was a magnet school.
The driving to the school is—yes, 100 percent of people can’t drive
to school, but most could. I think most have the ability to get students
to and from a school.
Everybody should have the kind of school that Kaiser is—and,
unfortunately, the reason Kaiser has a lot of [resources] is because
parents raise money. So, inequity and funding I think is a real issue.
Poverty is a real issue. How we overcome the effects of poverty?
I want to look more at early childhood education as a way to
fight—mitigate—the effects of poverty. I think that is the one proven
reform that does show in kids’ progress. So, given that, why in the
flatlands are we seeing a decrease in early childhood education
programs? That’s something that I’m asking. I’m trying to figure out why
we can’t provide that service to the most needy of the population.
And going back to the hills verses flats—what we do need to do in all
of Oakland is unite behind every child getting a quality education.
Those who want to pick those fights, I think we have to resist them
because it is to distract us from what’s really important—“Let’s fight
about the location of these schools, rather than what’s good for all the
schools.”
Oakland North: In Oakland, elementary schools like Peralta,
Sankofa Academy, Emerson, Kaiser (which was saved from permanent closure
last year) and Chabot are all considered “above Shattuck,” or closer to
the affluent areas of the Oakland Hills. Parents say those schools lie
within a geographic area in the city unscathed by school closures. Is
Oakland’s school system heavily segregated in this way?
Trish Gorham: Well, Kaiser was on the list and it has been
historically in the past on the list of school closures many years prior
to the state takeover. Sankofa was named, that was the school I came
from.
I would lay that marker not at Shattuck, but at Telegraph. Sankofa is
below Telegraph. That’s why I just wouldn’t put Shattuck and there’s
nothing below Shattuck anymore. Golden Gate was below it, which is now
Aspire [a charter school]. Santa Fe Elementary was below it.
Just as a native of Oakland who grew up in North Oakland, Telegraph
was a boundary line in terms of the prosperity and different
neighborhoods. It was just different neighborhoods. When I taught at
Washington—and I’m going to be real honest—there were two junior highs
that our students could go to. They could go to Claremont or Carter
Middle School. Twenty years ago, our kids were discouraged from going to
Claremont. They were encouraged to go to Carter. Not from
our
school. We encouraged them to go to wherever they wanted to, quite
frankly, but we were in the feeder district for Claremont, so most of
them went to Claremont and there were real issues there.
I think that there is a problem with the lines being drawn and
protections of certain schools. I don’t know why Sankofa is a K-8 when
Claremont is a middle school. Where are those middle schools coming
from, if there are no kids in North Oakland because they just closed
Santa Fe? I’m concerned that there is some sort of demarcation taking
place in North Oakland.
When you say, ‘This is where the good schools are. This is where the
not-so-good schools are,” number one, you’re discounting a lot of great
schools that are scattered throughout Oakland. I kind of reject that
there’s only a certain area of schools that are great. There are great
schools throughout Oakland. And where they’re not great, where they
don’t have the resources to have everything every school has, then
that’s what we should be talking about. Not moving to where they are
[good], but everybody having the same thing. Having equity throughout
the district.
Oakland North: Board members cannot discontinue the options
process entirely, as the No Child Left Behind federal legislation
includes requirements allowing parents to move their children out of
failing schools. However, the district can aspire to more neighborhood
focus on schools. Is this what the city needs?
Trish Gorham: I’ve always thought that schools should be the center
of the community, yeah. That’s why I don’t understand in the closing of
schools—you’re eliminating the center of the community. So, it’s a
little confusing there. But that has always been something I’ve thought
of—having services around the schools, having the schools open at night
for adults. I’ve always thought that was a way to build a community.
Oakland North: What about the district’s choice not to close any schools in West Oakland?
Trish Gorham: That’s because they’re going to do STEM [a national
Science, Technology, Engineering and Math initiative] in that area.
Again, have the conversation. Say “We’re not going to do anything here,
but we are going to do it here.” So if you really want to concentrate
the STEM resources in West Oakland, maybe concentrating resources in
certain schools would be more of a benefit then over all the schools? I
do not know. We never had that conversation—where instead of four
adequate science labs you have three fantastic ones.
Oakland North: This year there are at least 13 candidates
running to become school board members. In past years, few people were
pulling for these positions. Why has there been a surge in candidates?
What are your thoughts about the upcoming election?
Trish Gorham: We went through an interview process last week of
most—I think all—of the school board candidates. And what the interview
team came out with was how wonderful it is to have a contested election
with so many high quality, energetic people really caring about the city
and caring to make change in the schools. It was really uplifting. Even
though we were here until 9 o’clock four nights last week interviewing
people, it was really uplifting.
So, what happens? You know, crisis often does bring out people. And
bad decisions. The district and the school board have made some bad
decisions over the past couple of years without proper input of
teachers. The accelerated TSA [Teacher on Special Assignment program,
where tenured teachers have to reapply and are not guaranteed positions
at a school]
is another example of things that activate people. You know, when people see
real injustice and
real
unfair process they get activated. And actually the district,
historically, has always been the union’s best organizer because they do
something that gets people angry enough that they get up and they act
on it. So, I’m thrilled that we have so may people that are interested
and getting involved. Just getting involved.
Oakland North: Do you think the district needs to save money?
Trish Gorham: Funding is such a crazy thing to begin with. Yeah, we need to
save money,
but often when you have money from the state and federal government, if
you don’t spend it you can’t save it. You can’t roll over money into
the next year. That’s one of the catch-22’s of non-profit funding, is
that if you don’t spend it, you’re not funded at the same level in the
future. That’s what’s happening with the early childhood education,
actually, in terms of decreased funding. So, where could we save
money—or where could we use expenditures more creatively—is probably
more like it.
I think historically there have been too many administrators
downtown. The 55 percent [funding expenditure] rule that the state
mandates goes to the classroom has not been followed by the district
over several years. That needs to be more in line with 55 percent of the
budget needs to be directly on classroom costs. Consultant fees are a
tricky thing, but I think we could look at savings in the consultant
fees, even though that’s from a different pot of money. … Often if you
can save it in state and federal or Title I or monies for specific
purposes, if you can save it there, then it will have an impact on the
general fund.
Oakland North: What’s your reaction to the decimated Adult and Career Education program in the district?
Trish Gorham: I fear for the immigrant population of the city. That
service, language-learning skills, job skills, our language learners are
really dependent on the adult ed program. And I wouldn’t fear so much,
thinking well maybe our community college system can absorb that, but
they’re being attacked too. They’re being closed down, too. They’re
shutting down services, too. So where do the young adults, and [people
who are] career changing, and trying to learn different skills—I don’t
know where they go. I mean, it’s just another example of us not meeting
the needs of citizens in Oakland. It’s sad.
Oakland North: How can the district improve student enrollment?
Trish Gorham: You know where we start? We start with the babies. We
start with early childhood. We give them what they need, we get them
into the system and then they flow on to the schools that they’re
attached to. So, you do begin with early childhood in order to increase
enrollment.
You must address safety, because the one area where I think charter
schools do guarantee—often better then the public school because they
can eject students at will—is safety. The district has to, in reality,
convince people that the schools are safe.
And there are things that are going very well across the district,
the most improved district in California over several years. We have
wonderful teachers. We have wonderful programs. We have wonderful
students. If that word went out and people worked in their communities
to really tell the story that’s happening within the school—because we
get in there and we do the work and we do the work so hard and teachers
are not the ones to toot their own horns. Those stories have to be told.
The district could help themselves and give teachers a much-needed pat
on the back if they really did advertise the wonderful things going on
in the schools.
Oakland North: What are the biggest challenges facing teachers?
Trish Gorham: You have to understand that I’m new to this position,
but in my experience the main challenges teachers have, the main reason
they get burned out, the main reason they get frustrated, the main
reason they leave, is administration. It is never the kids. It is the
support they get by their administration and by their site
administration and the respect they’re given by district administration.
On the district level there’s a lot of words spouting [about] how
wonderful teachers are, but when you have not had more than a 1.25
[percent salary] raise in ten years and you are told that you have to
reapply for your job because we’ve changed the title of teacher to
accelerated TSA, when you impose the conditions of a contract that
doesn’t give teachers much dignity, and it doesn’t uplift them to do the
job that they need to do. So, what do they do? A lot of them kind of
just hunker down into their own individual classroom. That’s a mentality
a lot of teachers do just to protect themselves, and their own kids,
and their own community. That’s one protective device. Getting active is
another protective device to fight against the system when we all
should just be working together to make the system better.
They don’t get paid enough. It’s expensive to live in Oakland, and
unlike other urban districts over 65 percent of our teachers live in
Oakland. They’re committed to the city. They’re committed to the kids of
this city. And that’s not true in a lot of urban districts. There’s
huge commitment to Oakland from the teachers of Oakland.
Oakland North: What do you want to accomplish as OEA
president? Will you do things much differently than Betty-Olson did or
do you consider yourself a similar leader?
Trish Gorham: I consider myself similar in many ways. Betty
Olson-Jones’ legacy in this community and to OEA was to really create
the relations throughout Oakland that really identified OEA as being a
member of this community. It always has been, but she really put that
forward every single day. We all have the same philosophy—the basic
philosophy and goals.
… My personal role in the organization has always been to be an
organizer. I’ve been a behind the scenes person making sure we’ve got
the people to do an action, membership meeting or an event. So, I
approach the role with an organizing emphasis, which means really
getting the membership to participate, to understand what solidarity,
not just union solidarity, but just solidarity at the school site, with
each other, what it means and why it’s important. And why we need, in
this day and age especially, to stand together as union members. So I
hope that that’s what I bring.
Academically, I’m going to do everything I can to build early
childhood education in this city because that’s where I think a lot of
the real change is going to happen.
Oakland North: Do you have a protest history?
Trish Gorham: Oh yeah. I have a protest history. [She pulls out a
picture of people holding a large protest sign] This is at the NEA,
National Education Association’s, yearly meeting. That’s where Betty and
I were when [the] Lakeview [raid] happened. It’s when we take care of
our business—9,000 delegates—the largest democratically elected body in
the world. We meet in Washington every election year because we always
have the Democratic candidate for president come to speak with us.
Always. But it didn’t happen this time. Joe Biden came and talked to us.
And President Obama, two days later, spoke to us by phone when we were
in D.C.. So, there had been talk about staging a protest because we are
not happy with president Obama’s education polices, certainly not as
implemented by Arne Duncan, who is the Secretary of Education and never
has taught. So, when Joe Biden was just about to speak we stood up with
our “Dump Duncan” signs.
Oakland North: What are your thoughts about the Lakview sit-in?
Trish Gorham: I think it was extremely important that the parents,
the teachers, the community, how they came together to give a voice.
Actions don’t always lead to the desired results, but the idea that they
gave a voice to the frustration, to the problem, they spoke about why
school closures were not the answer in short or long-term. They spoke to
why this is just another encroachment and another way that we can
privatize and balkanize the school distinct. … To elevate that voice and
wake up a lot of the members of the community who had not paid
attention to this issue before, I think, is tremendous. I hope Joel
[Velasquez] stays a leader in this community and the education community
because his voice is really needed. How I see the purpose of Occupy
Lakeview is to get attention to the real problems that are facing public
education and I think it did a marvelous job at doing that.
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