Oakland school board meeting disrupted by protesters again
A large crowd unites to denounce pending school closures
OAKLAND » For the second time in three weeks, protesters disrupted an Oakland Unified school board meeting Wednesday, so much so that board trustees again retreated to a secluded room to finish their meeting.
Many of the protesters had come to again denounce the school board’s September decision to close Kaiser Elementary School in the Hiller Highlands neighborhood and merge it with Sankofa Academy, about 4 miles away. Others decried the merging of Elmhurst and Alliance middle schools earlier this year. And members of Oakland’s Black Organizing Project urged the district to get rid of its police department.
Neither school closures nor the district’s police department was on the school board’s agenda for Wednesday.
Soon after the meeting began with the usual announcements and commendations, the protesters took over, speaking out of turn at the public comment podium and chanting. At one point, Kaiser parent Saru Jayaramana called on the crowd to “turn (its) back” on the school board, which many did while chanting “No school closures; Oakland is not for sale.”
The school board and Superintendent Kyla JohnsonTrammell tried but couldn’t regain control of the room and headed off into a secluded room with media and other district officials. They finished the meeting there, streaming it on TVs in the auditorium.
District spokesman John Sasaki said school board members didn’t want to move into a different room but felt they had to when a few people approached the stage. Most of the protesters continued to stand with their backs to the board members.
“We’re just hopeful that the protesters find another way to express themselves than stop the business of the board of education, because it has to get done,” Sasaki said.
A group of students took the school board members’ seats for a while and voiced its own concerns about the Kaiser/Sankofa merger and school police.
Jayaramana, who is also co-founder and president of Oakland-based nonprofit Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, said “Oakland is not for sale” protesters plan to continue disrupting meetings until the school board and district address their four demands: Halt school closures, stop charter school growth, involve the public in financial decisions and stop funding the district’s police department.
“Every school board meeting is important; every school board meeting is a chance for us to tell the board that it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to be business as usual until they listen to our demands,” Jayaramana said in an interview.
Jayaramana attended the meeting in crutches; she was taken down by four officers during an October school board meeting, suffering leg and shoulder injuries. Jayaramana said she and her husband, Zach Norris, who also was arrested during the meeting, plan to sue the district, alleging school police used excessive force and violated their rights to freedom of speech.