‘SYSTEMIC RACISM’

These California Teachers Stopped Eating Over a Week Ago to Fight School Closures

“If I die, I want the board to know my death was at your hands,” one teacher warned the Oakland school board.

Teachers, students, and community activists in California have been waging a battle against Oakland’s school district after officials proposed a controversial plan to dismantle 15 schools that mainly served students of color.

Two educators took the matter so seriously that they vowed to fight “until the death” with a hunger strike that began one week ago.

Medical teams had to assist ​​Oakland Community School Program Director Moses Omolade and Westlake Middle School choir and dance director André San-Chez early Tuesday morning—the eighth day of their hunger strike—after they experienced health issues, CBS 5 Bay Area reported.

In a statement, San-Chez told the Oakland school board, “If I die, I want the board to know my death was at your hands.”

Omolade and San-Chez launched their hunger strike Feb. 1—refusing to eat until the Oakland Unified School District’s board votes Tuesday evening on the schools’ fate, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“We will not eat until you end all school closures,” Omolade said, according to The Oaklandside.

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“I’m feeling charged by my community,” Omolade told Democracy Now in an interview. “I’m feeling—obviously—weak in the body, but the spirit is strong. I’m feeling leveraged to push back against systemic racism that’s happened in our communities.”

Under a plan presented at a Jan. 31 board meeting, 15 schools in the district would either be permanently closed or merged with others, with officials citing the financial deficits the schools face. District officials say that enrollment at the schools has decreased and insist their financial futures are grim.

“While we do not deny these changes are difficult and painful for African American and Latino families, we aim to build improvements in school environment and academic outcomes through these changes,” district officials said in a letter to the school board, according to NBC Bay Area.

“We know that our students, staff and families all agree that we need a district of thriving schools,” Oakland Unified School District spokesperson John Sasaki said in a statement. “Yet, not everyone necessarily agrees on how best to get there.”

But some community members aren’t buying those financial arguments, claiming that the schools’ monetary issues actually stem from resources being funneled to district charter schools.

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School board director Mike Hutchinson—who opposes the closures—said that the decision to consolidate the schools came too quickly and was made without enough community discussion.

“If we’re going to make decisions, permanent decisions, about which neighborhoods still have a public school, that needs to be a robust process that involves the community,” he said, according to CBS 5 San Francisco. “At this point, there’s been zero community engagement and there have been zero discussions, even among the school board to do this.”

Educators have cried that the move will put too much pressure on teachers who will be forced to handle classes that are simply too large.

“Why we’re doing this is very straightforward and clear,” Omolade said to Democracy Now. “Racism has run rampant in our communities for far too long. …We are attempted to be shut down without community engagement. It’s not something that we’re going to stand for; that’s what’s currently happening. The school board is attempting to close predominantly Black and brown schools without engaging us at all. So, we are deciding to push back. We are deciding to make noise and to cry foul about the reasons in which they’re choosing to close our schools. Balancing the budget, especially when it’s only 2 percent of the budget, on Black and brown bodies is not something that’s acceptable.”

The future of the schools will be voted on Feb. 8 during a special Oakland district board meeting. Community members hope that the hunger strike and public momentum will influence the board members’ decisions.

Members of the Oakland Unified School District did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.

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Brooke Leigh HowardRace and Identity Reporter

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