After months of protest and tension over a plan to close, shrink and merge 11 public schools, Oakland school board member Shanthi Gonzales announced Monday she’s resigning from the board months before her term expires.
In a letter posted to her website Monday, Gonzales criticized the board for not staying focused on meeting students’ academic needs and denounced the teachers’ union and allies for what she described as a resistance to improving school quality and a hostile effort to silence those with whom they disagree.
Gonzales, who represents District 6, said she is moving to Humboldt County. She was not expected to run for re-election later this year, but her resignation this week means she is leaving seven months before her term is up.
“Our core issue is that most schools are not meeting students’ academic needs, meaning that students aren’t being adequately prepared for their next steps, whether that is middle school, high school or college and career,” Gonzales wrote in the post on her website. “Our efforts to improve school quality have been inconsistent and not nearly ambitious enough.”
School quality, she said, drives enrollment, “so our refusal to really take on school quality in a focused, consistent and fearless way is impacting our enrollment and leading to budget cuts, school closures and other negative consequences.”
Gonzales was among the majority of the board members who approved the plan earlier this year to close and consolidate schools, citing the financial shortfall for the district stemming in large part to declining enrollment.
But the opposition to the plan, which was approved by the board in February, has been intense. Oakland teachers, parents, students and some community members have rallied and marched — including at the homes of board members, protested at school board meetings and in the case of two educators, and launched days-long hunger strikes. On Friday, hundreds of educators went on strike against the school closure plan, picketing at school sites and rallying at Lake Merritt and in downtown Oakland.
Gonzales, in her letter, slammed the Oakland Education Association — the union that represents teachers and other educators in Oakland — for its position and reasserted the need to consolidate schools, writing, “the OEA’s long-standing resistance to operating fewer schools (including last week’s strike) is a large factor in why we have the lowest salaries in the county and struggle to attract and retain quality teachers and staff.
“We need to concentrate our resources in fewer schools in order to ensure stable staffing for students,” she continued.
She described the tactics of the union and its allies as “accusing leaders of being racist or anti-Black in response to disagreement,” which she called “intellectually lazy” and “irresponsible.”
Gonzales said, too, that critics of the board had contacted her employer to “ask that I be condemned for supporting school closures” and vandalized other board members’ homes, cut internet cables during the board meetings, denounced a board member during their church service as “Black Judas” and distributed fliers calling the board members racists.
She did not elaborate about which board members faced harassment, but current board President Gary Yee told this newspaper in February that he was harassed by two people while out on a walk near his home after the board vote about the school closure plan. They followed and threatened him after asking if he was indeed on the school board, Yee said then. Later, he found a motion sensor on his garage had been damaged, with a “no closures, no cuts” button left behind, and the window on his front door had been broken by a thrown bottle.
“To my knowledge, they have not condemned any of the recent acts of intimidation toward board members, which is a sign of tacit approval,” Gonzales said of the union’s response to the harassment of board members.
Asked to respond to the allegations, Oakland Education Association President Keith Brown said in a written statement issued through a spokesperson that Gonzales “will not be missed.”
“We hope the next director will listen to, and keep their commitments to District 6 students and families rather than closing their schools,” he continued.
Yee, Gonzales’ colleague on the board and the current board president, expressed a very different sentiment.
“I will miss Shanthi’s dedication, courage, and effectiveness as a colleague and leader on the school board,” Yee wrote in a memo regarding her resignation. “That service was always focused on building a better, more sustainable, more inclusive system of quality schools dedicated to the success of every student, no matter the personal and political costs.”
The board will have to appoint a replacement for Gonzales within 60 days or call for a special election; otherwise, the county superintendent can pick someone to fill the seat. Yee said the board will consider how and when to initiate the process at its next board meeting on May 11.
Gonzales referenced some things she’s proud of the district for achieving during her time on the board, such as increasing the graduation rate of high schoolers by more than 7% and expanding services for students new to the U.S.
She authored an enrollment stabilization policy for the district that put more resources to combatting declining enrollment and helped re-establish board committees, such as the budget and finance committee.
But, Gonzales said in her letter, the board has not been entirely successful, either. She criticized the board for spending “way too much time on issues that (while important) don’t have much to do with how students are doing academically.”
“Oakland has some of the most generous taxpayers in the state, and we receive more funds per student than most districts,” Gonzales said in her closing words. “We can do better to honor and respect the generosity of our residents by using our resources better, to focus relentlessly on student needs.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com