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If society is judged by the way it raises its children, what does the present condition of the East Bay’s major school systems say about us? 

Some months ago, the public schools of Oakland were seized by the state because of what was called financial mismanagement. It’s always been an interesting point—at least to me—that we have never had an impartial, public accounting of how that financial mismanagement actually took place. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Oakland’s schools got seized for failure to balance its books by the state of California (which, if one is paying attention, has been having its own considerable troubles in that regard; California might be looking over its shoulder with no small amount of worry, except that our national administration appears to be busy these days gorging itself on small countries). In any event, Oakland got seized, and around the state they gave knowing nods and gave that small, seemingly-innocent gesture of wiping over the backs of their hands to denote skin coloration and said, well, after all, it’s Oakland, you know. And the state went about its business. 

Berkeley—with its radical traditions and active citizens—may be a portion too gnarly for even the State of California to swallow. Still, the Berkeley schools find themselves under the thumb of that peculiar, state-initiated institution called FCMAT (the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team), which was called in to…ummm…assist the local educators after said educators overreached themselves a bit on the financial side. Having gotten its entry into Berkeley’s kitchen, however, FCMAT has taken to dipping its spoon into a multitude of the school district’s pots—facilities and public relations and even curriculum—all of which had nothing to do with the reasons FCMAT was summoned up in the first place. This has caused some considerable grumbling in and around the classrooms and district offices, but no sign, as of yet, of open revolt. And around the state, they shrugged and said, yes, but that’s Berkeley, the place where old men tie up their hair in ponytails, so it’s no wonder they couldn’t balance their checkbooks. 

Now comes the situation in West Contra Costa County. A decade ago, or so, they were forced to take a loan from the state to keep their schools afloat. They did—stay afloat, that is—but only just barely, listing badly like an abandoned rowboat in a bay backwater until, this week, we are informed that they must gut both sports programs and school libraries or else face a plummet straight to the bottom. No small part of the problem is that the West Contra Costa County schools must pay a million or so a year back to the state in loan payments. Iraq, the Bushites argue, must be forgiven its debts in order to move into the new world order of nations. But nobody cries for Richmond and El Cerrito, apparently. 

None of these East Bay, inner city school districts stands seriously accused of pocketing gobs of money for other than legitimate purposes. Their sin, it appears, is that they tried to juggle the balls of two realities…one, their mandate to provide adequate education for their young charges, and two, to do so within the context of a state climate that has increasingly squeezed out all sources of revenue to carry out that mandate. The Oakland schools, for example, got into its present troubles by merely attempting to bring its teacher salaries up to the median level of the Bay Area. How dare they?, we can hear the shocked rejoinders over sips of Starbucks in San Anselmo. Don’t they know their place? 

(This is the point where we pause and say that—the Dennis Chaconas county school board race being over—the time has come for an independent look at how the Oakland schools were lost. Such an investigation might be able to lure out the elusive Mr. Yasitis, who served at the center of the storm and could, presumably, provide interesting enlightenment (under oath, and with supporting documentation, one would hope). But such a public accounting should certainly entail not only the financial details, but the political as well, since only the naive would believe that politics played no role in the Oakland takeover. It is difficult to say who in authority might call for such an investigation. Not Mayor Brown, certainly, nor County Superintendent Sheila Jordan nor State Attorney General Bill Lockyer nor State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell, any of whom, in other circumstances, might be the logical persons to make such a call, with the exception that in this case each of them played a significant role in the state takeover and, therefore, might be expected to be disinclined to prosecute a vigorous inspection of their own selves. In any event, think on that a bit, folks, and give me some help on who might lead this charge. Isn’t anybody—anywhere—in the least bit curious as to how all of this came to be?) 

But back to the whole East Bay. 

One of the jobs of journalists and columnists and commentators is to ferret out connections that otherwise might not be apparent to the general public, but this one is too easy, friends. The present problems of the East Bay’s three major public school systems have all been treated as if they have occurred in isolation…each with its own peculiar, individual causes…but one does not need the cognitive powers of a Holmes or an Easy Rawlins to see the broad pattern, here. The problems of Oakland and Berkeley and West Contra Costa are not idiosyncratic…dumb, local administrators who cannot meet the bottom line, and airy school board members who cannot hold them to account. There is something larger, and more structural, at work here. We have, it appears, been gotten. 

We have grown up in a world of free, universal, adequate public education. We have come to believe that this was always the case, and will always be. Neither is true. What we are seeing—in the crisis in the East Bay schools—is a possible end to public education as we have known it. Someone is damming up the source of the common stream and, unless we wish to sit around and thirst to death, we ought to get up and walk over and encourage them to stop. If we want to have any say in what comes next, we need to roll up our sleeves and—as they say in Arkansas—get to gettin’. 

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