Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública

Saturday, October 29, 2011

We are Not Alone When It Comes to Fighting School Closures!

Oakland, California

Oakland Unified School District board members voted 5 to 2 in favor of “restructuring” package which includes the closure of five elementary schools in the area.

Oakland parents, students and educators are also struggling to hold onto their neighborhood schools. The economic crisis and the inability of those in power- locally, statewide and nationally- to solve this endemic problem is forcing ordinary folk to do extraordinary things.

If we continue down this path of finding massive democratic ways to solve the problems of US public education, we will have won. So... there is no alternative but to continue to fightback and continue to refine our vision of a truly democratic/antiracist FREE public education system thruout the US.

New America Media Editor's Note: A few weeks before Occupy Oakland moved into Frank Ogawa Plaza, the community of Lakeview Elementary School organized it's first action -- a march of students, parents, teachers and concerned community members to an Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) meeting. Videographer Siraj Fowler documented the multi-ethnic, intergenerational fight waged against the school closures and OUSD's eventual decision to close 5 schools.

New America Media Editor's Note: A few weeks before Occupy Oakland moved into Frank Ogawa Plaza, the community of Lakeview Elementary School organized it's first action -- a march of students, parents, teachers and concerned community members to an Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) meeting. Videographer Siraj Fowler documented the multi-ethnic, intergenerational fight waged against the school closures and OUSD's eventual decision to close 5 schools.

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Saving Oakland's School from New America Media on Vimeo.
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OUSD: The Fight Continues from New America Media on Vimeo.
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OUSD Strikes Back from New America Media on Vimeo.
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The Coalition for
Public Education

Coalición por la
Educación
Pública

Who We Are
What We
Want

The Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública is an independent, non-sectarian, and non-governmental organization with short, middle and long-term educational and social goals. We believe that education is a human right and we want to ensure that New York City public schools are places of learning in which all stakeholders (parents, students, educators, non-pedagogical staff, administrators and the community) are engaged in a democratic process to provide a free and quality education to all its students, from Pre-school to College.

Our coalition is based on antiracist/antisexist democratic grassroots organizing concepts and not based on the idea that any one individual, politician, union leader, or political messiah will save us.

Our coalition will participate in election campaigns but will focus on mass action as a primary vehicle for social change.

Therefore, we will organize the distribution of leaflets, mass rallies, forums, civil disobedience, petitions, referendums, web-based actions, economic boycotts, and other grassroots tactics. We also understand that we are not alone in struggle and that we must unite with other groups and individuals who support democracy, self-determination and the empowerment of our communities.

What We Want:

I. A Peoples' Board of Education

II. Local control of our Public Schools not Mayoral Dictatorship!

III. Better Public Schools not Charter Schools!

IV. Power to Parents, Students and Educators!

V. Implementation of a mandatory Antiracist Curriculum!

VI. Recruiting educators from our neighborhoods to achieve racial parity!

VII.Money for Education Not War!

VIII. OUR Schools = Neighborhood School Control!

NYC EDSTATS You Can Use

New York City Schools by the Numbers

By John Tarleton
www.indypendent.org

$12.5 billion: Annual New York City Department of Education (DOE) budget (2002)

$21 billion: Annual New York City DOE budget (2009)

1,719: Number officials employed by the DOE central administration in June 2002

2,442: Number of officials employed by the central administration as of November 2008

2: Number of DOE officials earning more than $180,000 per year in 2004.

22: Number of DOE officials earning more than $180,000 per year in 2007.

5: Number of DOE public relations staffers in 2003.

23: Number of DOE public relations staffers in 2008.

944: Number of contracts approved by DOE in 2008, at a total cost of $1.9 billion.

20: Percentage of contracts that exceeded estimated cost by at least 25 percent.

$67.5 million: Annual budget of Project Arts, a decade-old program that was the sole source of dedicated funding for arts education. It was eliminated in 2007.

86: Percentage of principals who said in a 2008 poll that they were unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes in their schools.

100,000: Number of seats DOE plans to provide for charter school students by 2012.

25,000: Number of seats DOE plans to build under 2010 to 2014 capital plan.

66,895: Number of K-3 school-children in classes of 25 or more during the 2008-09 school year.

15,440: Average number of seats per year built during the last six years of the Rudolph Giuliani administration.

10,895: Average number of seats per year built during the first six years of the Bloomberg administration.

27.2: Percentage of newly hired teachers in 2001-02 who were Black.

14.1: Percentage of newly hired teachers in 2006-07 who were Black.

53.3: Percentage of newly hired teachers in 2001-02 who were white.

65.5: Percentage of newly hired teachers in 2006-07 who were white.

76: Percentage of white and Asian students who performed better than the average Black and Latino students in 8th grade English Language Arts (ELA) in 2003.

75: Percentage of white and Asian students who performed better than the average Black and Hispanic students in 8th grade ELA in 2008.

77: Percentage of white and Asian students who performed better than the average Black and Hispanic 8th graders in math in 2003.

81: Percentage of white and Asian students who performed better than the average Black and Hispanic 8th graders in math in 2008.

54: Percentage of New York City public school parents who disapproved of Mayor Bloomberg’s handling of education, according to a March 2009 Quinnipiac poll.

Sources: New York City Council, New York City Comptroller’s Office, New York Daily News, New York Post, Eduwonkette, Quinnipiac Institute, Black Educator, Class Size Matters, New York City Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein.