Public Comment

Dear Governor Newsom:

We need you to come to Oakland and support the brave people who are on the 8th day of hunger strike to defend the 16 neighborhood schools that the state-controlled school board has targeted to close or merge. Oakland families have been made to suffer for decades now by the intervention of the state in running their schools. State control has driven the school district further into debt and damaged children's prospects by increasing the average class size to 31, as opposed to 19 in private schools.

But closing neighborhood schools, dubiously justified as cost-saving, does NOT serve the interests of the public. It is especially unjustifiable when the state has a significant budget surplus. A good part of that surplus should go to improving public education in California, especially the primary grades in neighborhood schools. It can allow Oakland schools' debt to be wiped out and release the district from state control back to Oakland residents and the parents of Oakland schoolchildren.

I write as a believer, with Thomas Jefferson, in the importance of public education for effective democracy. Especially for children of low-income families, a small neighborhood primary school can ensure children's development to become responsible, fulfilled adults. We know that children thrive in small school and small classes, where their teachers can work with them individually.

Public education has been under heavy attack by the wealthy and the Republican party for decades, and they have succeeded in denigrating teachers and capping their pay, closing schools, especially in low-income neighborhoods, and diverting funding to charter schools, many of them for-profit. All this harms our children and blights their whole lives and our state and country’s future.