After months of protest and rigidity over a plan to shut, shrink and merge 11 public faculties, Oakland faculty board member Shanthi Gonzales introduced Monday she’s resigning from the board months earlier than her time period expires.
In a letter posted to her web site Monday, Gonzales criticized the board for not staying targeted on assembly college students’ educational wants and denounced the lecturers’ union and allies for what she described as a resistance to bettering faculty high quality and a hostile effort to silence these with whom they disagree.
Gonzales, who represents District 6, stated she is shifting to Humboldt County. She was not anticipated to run for re-election later this yr, however her resignation this week means she is leaving seven months earlier than her time period is up.
“Our core situation is that the majority faculties will not be assembly college students’ educational wants, which means that college students aren’t being adequately ready for his or her subsequent steps, whether or not that's center faculty, highschool or school and profession,” Gonzales wrote within the put up on her web site. “Our efforts to enhance faculty high quality have been inconsistent and never almost formidable sufficient.”
Faculty high quality, she stated, drives enrollment, “so our refusal to essentially tackle faculty high quality in a targeted, constant and fearless means is impacting our enrollment and resulting in price range cuts, faculty closures and different unfavorable penalties.”
Gonzales was among the many majority of the board members who permitted the plan earlier this yr to shut and consolidate faculties, citing the monetary shortfall for the district stemming largely to declining enrollment.
However the opposition to the plan, which was permitted by the board in February, has been intense. Oakland lecturers, dad and mom, college students and a few neighborhood members have rallied and marched — together with on the properties of board members, protested in school board conferences and within the case of two educators, and launched days-long starvation strikes. On Friday, tons of of educators went on strike towards the college closure plan, picketing in school websites and rallying at Lake Merritt and in downtown Oakland.
Gonzales, in her letter, slammed the Oakland Training Affiliation — the union that represents lecturers and different educators in Oakland — for its place and reasserted the necessity to consolidate faculties, writing, “the OEA’s long-standing resistance to working fewer faculties (together with final week’s strike) is a big think about why we've got the bottom salaries within the county and battle to draw and retain high quality lecturers and workers.
“We have to focus our assets in fewer faculties in an effort to guarantee steady staffing for college kids,” she continued.
She described the techniques of the union and its allies as “accusing leaders of being racist or anti-Black in response to disagreement,” which she referred to as “intellectually lazy” and “irresponsible.”
Gonzales stated, too, that critics of the board had contacted her employer to “ask that I be condemned for supporting faculty closures” and vandalized different board members’ properties, minimize web cables through the board conferences, denounced a board member throughout their church service as “Black Judas” and distributed fliers calling the board members racists.
She didn't elaborate about which board members confronted harassment, however present board President Gary Yee instructed this newspaper in February that he was harassed by two folks whereas out on a stroll close to his house after the board vote in regards to the faculty closure plan. They adopted and threatened him after asking if he was certainly on the college board, Yee stated then. Later, he discovered a movement sensor on his storage had been broken, with a “no closures, no cuts” button left behind, and the window on his entrance door had been damaged by a thrown bottle.
“To my data, they haven't condemned any of the current acts of intimidation towards board members, which is an indication of tacit approval,” Gonzales stated of the union’s response to the harassment of board members.
Requested to reply to the allegations, Oakland Training Affiliation President Keith Brown stated in a written assertion issued via a spokesperson that Gonzales “won't be missed.”
“We hope the following director will hearken to, and maintain their commitments to District 6 college students and households quite than closing their faculties,” he continued.
Yee, Gonzales’ colleague on the board and the present board president, expressed a really totally different sentiment.
“I'll miss Shanthi’s dedication, braveness, and effectiveness as a colleague and chief on the college board,” Yee wrote in a memo relating to her resignation. “That service was all the time targeted on constructing a greater, extra sustainable, extra inclusive system of high quality faculties devoted to the success of each pupil, regardless of the private and political prices.”
The board must appoint a substitute for Gonzales inside 60 days or name for a particular election; in any other case, the county superintendent can decide somebody to fill the seat. Yee stated the board will take into account how and when to provoke the method at its subsequent board assembly on Might 11.
Gonzales referenced some issues she’s happy with the district for attaining throughout her time on the board, corresponding to rising the commencement price of excessive schoolers by greater than 7% and increasing providers for college kids new to the U.S.
She authored an enrollment stabilization coverage for the district that put extra assets to combatting declining enrollment and helped re-establish board committees, such because the price range and finance committee.
However, Gonzales stated in her letter, the board has not been totally profitable, both. She criticized the board for spending “means an excessive amount of time on points that (whereas essential) don’t have a lot to do with how college students are doing academically.”
“Oakland has a few of the most beneficiant taxpayers within the state, and we obtain extra funds per pupil than most districts,” Gonzales stated in her closing phrases. “We will do higher to honor and respect the generosity of our residents through the use of our assets higher, to focus relentlessly on pupil wants.”