Parents, Teachers Say Oakland School Mergers Could Hurt Students in the ‘Flatlands’

Dozens of Oakland parents and educators urged the school board to reject a proposal to merge five pairs of public schools at its meeting on Wednesday night.

The mergers, announced last week after the board didn’t back a wider school closure plan, would save the Oakland Unified School District money and account for declining enrollment, according to Chief Academic Officer Sondra Aguilera. However, they would also affect small school communities and bilingual programs that families say are sorely needed.

The plan would combine 10 schools that share five campuses next fall. The sites have a collective of 3,300 students, with 176 to 440 each. Merging them will save up to $3.5 million a year, the district predicts — making just a dent in its anticipated $174 million two-year deficit.

The board is scheduled to vote on the proposed mergers, along with other cost-saving measures, on Dec. 11.

At Wednesday’s board meeting, many parents and teachers spoke out against the proposal, which they believe is rushed and could hurt students.

“Less than a week for families to be able to respond to this plan and then four weeks before they’re actually going to be voting on it feels really like a lack of respect for the people that are being impacted,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, a spokesperson for the Oakland Education Association and former EnCompass Academy teacher.

Nine of the 10 schools on the merger list opened after OUSD passed a policy encouraging more small schools in 1997, especially in the city’s lower-income “flatlands” neighborhoods.

Four of the proposed mergers would combine one school that runs a biliteracy or dual immersion Spanish program with one that does not. One of them also combines a high school and middle school serving different grade levels.

Many of the current schools also have large numbers of Black students, Taiz-Rancifer said, and she worries about either community being displaced in the mergers.

“What you’re going to wind up having is the elimination of one of the programs,” Taiz-Rancifer told KQED. “Maybe you’re going to eliminate a language program, but then … you’re displacing those kids because their parents are going to want their students to be able to get access to those language programs — or you’re going to displace Black students.

“This is why they haven’t done it in years because it’s very difficult to think about how you can merge these programs,” she continued.

OUSD last tried to consolidate schools in 2022. That plan to close 11 campuses led to a hunger strike, multiple site occupations and outrage from parents and educators who said it would have disproportionately affected low-income and underrepresented students.

It was approved in February 2022, but after taking office in January 2023, the current board reneged on the plan, opting to close just two schools, merge one and eliminate middle-school grades at another. Only OUSD Board President Sam Davis and Director Clifford Thompson voted against rescinding the closures.

Davis said Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell similarly proposed a larger list of schools to close on top of the five mergers being considered this fall but couldn’t garner support for the plan from the majority of the board.

He worries that the five mergers alone won’t go far enough to save the district from state intervention.

“It’s very clear what we need to do to become more sustainable, and it’s not clear right now what our board’s plan is to get there,” Davis told KQED last week.

Much like San Francisco’s school district — which recently halted a plan to close several schools — OUSD must close a massive budget deficit and bridge gaps left by declining enrollment. The district’s total enrollment has fallen 30% over the last 20 years and is headed for a “fiscal cliff,” according to Alameda County Superintendent Alysse Castro.

OUSD is just about 18 months away from regaining full local control after being taken over by the state in 2003 due to fiscal insolvency. The district risks returning to that point if it cannot correct its recurring budget shortfall, a task that an Alameda County Grand Jury report in 2019 said was being kicked down the road amid dysfunction, waste and “a broken administrative culture.”

Johnson-Trammell has called the move to merge schools a step in the district’s long-term plan toward fiscal stability, including centralizing service providers and school-site spending.

But all that could change come January when the board will turn over again. Director Mike Hutchinson, a staunch opponent of school closures, will remain on the board, and Rachel Latta, who will take over Davis’ seat, has also expressed concern over them.

Thompson appears headed for reelection in District 7, which contains four of the affected campuses, and two other new board members will serve District 5 and District 3, where the remaining six schools are located.

The schools the district plans to merge are:

• International Community School and Think College Now Elementary School
• Manzanita Community School and Manzanita SEED Elementary School
• United for Success Academy and Life Academy
• Acorn Woodland Elementary and EnCompass Academy
• Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy and Esperanza Elementary School