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Agenda Item
I.-1 24-2794 Adoption by the Board of Education of AB 1912 Recommendations (Votes, if any, shall be Recorded In Consecutive Legislative Files):
First, Adoption of Resolution No. 2425-0020 - Concluding the AB 1912 Community Engagement Process; and
Second, Adoption of Resolution No. 2425-0015 - Initiating School Mergers (Second Reading), effective 2025-26 Year (Or alternatively 2026-27 Year).
Closing this school would only serve to exacerbate the already weekend school system of the East Bay- by exhausting what little current resources still exist when schools closing and merge.
Hello, my name is Jackie and I am a parent to a 1st grader at Manzanita SEED. We deeply value the dl program at Seed and you’ll be putting it at risk if you decide to merge the schools. PLEASE vote oppose.
hello and thank you for your time. i'm writing today to strenuously oppose the continued closures and mergers of Oakland schools. these closures are causing significant harm to the development of the youth of Oakland and exacerbating some of the biggest problems with our school system: large class sizes, lack of personal attention, lack of care for the well-being of Oakland students. closing a school destabilizes a child's education and life at a critical time and as we have seen with other closures in the past it is not a step that can be taken back. i urge you to vote against the measure to close these schools today, for my nephew's sake as well as for the sake of all of Oakland's kids, and teachers, and community at large. thank you.
I oppose these school closures. I grew up in Marin County, but I have long planned to raise my kids in Oakland largely because of the amazing schools we have like Manzanita SEED. Please don't take these schools away from the children and families who currently love and need them, as well as all of us who hoped to benefit from them in the future.
Merging Manzanita SEED and Manzanita Community would result in negligible savings while creating huge disruption and risking the integrity of the bilingual program. These schools already efficiently use their space and have high enrollment.
I oppose the school closures and mergers, especially at the Manzanita campus. This site needs better staffing, not consolidation. You will completely change the cultures at some schools where children are highly regarded, like at TCN.
I am a substitute teacher in the schools and I see the issues with this plan clearly. Closing and merging schools doesn’t save the problem of OUSD budget shortfalls. It’s a drop in the bucket and children and adults learning and work environments are at stake.
I strongly oppose the plans to merge schools. Our son is in TK at ICS and value the connections he's built with his school community. 90% of us affected by this have little understanding of the financial information that's bombarded our eyes and ears the last month. What we do know and can fully grasp is the importance of maintaining our children's well-being in opposing this plan. With marginal benefits financially, our trusted school board should look at other avenues first to solve the problem. Expediting to push a plan and agenda is not the way and will only hurt us as a whole. I hope you all can listen to the community and vote appropriately. Thanks.
Larger schools are a barrier to learning. They harm students, especially the most marginalized. And make the already challenging work of teachers and administrators more overwhelming. The savings are not worth it!
Of course, nobody wants their children's school to close or consolidate, and we realize that the District has to make some tough choices regarding finances and resource allocation.
I'm appealing to you to maintain Manzanita SEED as its own school because of its unique bilingual program--consolidating with our good neighbors Manzanita Community will compromise this element, which is the main reason many of us chose this option. MCC parents decisions *not* to follow this route should also be respected.
SEED's unique orientation goes beyond the simple bilingual program--there's a real effort to engage parents who speak Mam, Arabic, Chinese dialects, and other languages. I appeal to you not to dilute this unique community orientation that really serves this neighborhood's residents.
Thank you!
The cost savings available here does not overwhelm the harm
These are schools that serve vulnerable populations. Schools that have built individual culture and community. Merging them would only cause more harm.
Please vote no on the merger. Having grown up in an immigrant family, I deeply value my children attending Manzanita SEED where our multiculturalism and multilingualism is celebrated. I recently attended a meeting of parents of both SEED and Manzanita Community School, and each group of parents spoke passionately about how the specialization of each school uniquely serves their children. These schools came into being via the realization that two smaller schools with unique specializations would better serve the needs of the diverse vulnerable communities in our neighborhood than one large school. The savings presented by this merger are uncertain, meager at best, and certainly not sufficient to justify sacrificing these gains. These schools already achieve tremendous efficiencies by sharing a campus and their custodial staff. Let’s not move backwards to the inequities of the past, when only the schools in the hills had 300 to 400 students, and schools in the flats had 800 kids and up.
The lack of thoughtful planning, including the blatant lack of community and staff input in these mergers is another example of OUSD's dysfunctional operations. There are many better ways to address the district's budget issues.
The benefits of this merger are either too minimal or not fully explained. Please do not make a choice that will negatively impact so many students as families without a clear benefit to Oakland. Thank you.
The lack of transparency and the short turn around for this vote is astounding. SEED provides bilingual education to newcomers, Spanish language households, and those families who want their children to be able to communicate with Spanish speakers across the country and world. We have no idea what these proposed mergers will do to our school. It is inappropriate to vote to merge schools without a more thought out and explicit plan for what that will look like for our children and community. We are going into this blind, and we reject this. We know the reserves for the district are high, and this is a matter of prioritizing spending.There is little to no transparency about the unnecessary or superfluous costs to the district for paying for consultants and contractors, and supplies. Before you take from our children, do more-and show us that you are doing more-on your end to close the gaps. Please vote NO on this merger proposal.
The dual language program at SEED helps my 1st and 4th grader retain our family’s heritage language which is incredibly personally meaningful. It ensures our Spanish-dominant neighbors can communicate with their child’s teachers and help them with their homework. The proposed mergers would result in the loss of site-based CCSSP grants which both Manzanita sites currently receive ($270k / year), and risk the loss of Manzanita Community’s CSI block grant, both of which dwarf the projected savings at this campus. I urge a unanimous NO vote on this proposal as well as the other mergers.
I am the parent of a fourth grader at Manzanita SEED. My family chose SEED because of it's dual immersion curriculum and bilingual school community. My grandparents were punished by the nuns at their school for speaking Spanish. They didn't teach our language to my mom. But she ensured that we, her daughters, had access to education in Spanish to reclaim our heritage language. Many Latino families, like ours, now enroll in dual immersion schools so that our children, too, remain connected to our culture and community, improving their educational outcomes and enriching their lives forever. We are so grateful to those who worked hard to build dual immersion in OUSD. The cost savings estimates from the proposed merger are small, and because the district hasn’t been transparent about how they were calculated, it is not clear they are even realistic. We are concerned that chaotic and unpopular mergers risk driving families like ours from the district, leading to a direct loss of funding.
Please reject these school mergers. Sacrificing the stability of 10 schools to MAYBE save a few million dollars hardly seems like a way to promote "Community schools, thriving students." If the problems the district is facing are due to declining enrollment, disrupting the functioning of existing schools--and making parents feel like our children are nothing but numbers to be moved around on spreadsheets to the OUSD leadership--is certainly not going to help solve the long term issues here. How would creating larger, more crowded schools that are less responsive to the needs of the specific communities they serve benefit anyone? To MAYBE save a few million dollars? How is this a good plan?
I am opposed to the proposed school merger. As a parent of a child at a dual language/immersion school (SEED) I worry about the impact on the language program. Manzanita would likely become the largest elementary school in Oakland and there would be a loss of services and resources for all of the students. The transition process if a merger were to occur, would likely be chaotic. I think many kids would be scared and disoriented. I went to a meeting with parents from both Manzanita Community and SEED present and I heard no arguments for the proposed merger, nobody seemed to want it. It’s not fair to the staff, the kids, or the community. Please vote no. Thank you for considering.
The rationale for these school mergers - pardon, these school closures - is especially threadbare even by OUSD's leadership's own sorry standards. These closures are an attack on East Oakland communities, on newcomer students and their families, on bilingual education, on classified as well as certificated staff, and on the small schools movement and those parents, teachers, and community members who took it upon themselves to create schools that served the real needs of their communities. No to this plan in 25-26, no to this plan in 26-27, no to this plan period.
Closing this school would only serve to exacerbate the already weekend school system of the East Bay- by exhausting what little current resources still exist when schools closing and merge.
Find other budget alternatives!
Hello, my name is Jackie and I am a parent to a 1st grader at Manzanita SEED. We deeply value the dl program at Seed and you’ll be putting it at risk if you decide to merge the schools. PLEASE vote oppose.
hello and thank you for your time. i'm writing today to strenuously oppose the continued closures and mergers of Oakland schools. these closures are causing significant harm to the development of the youth of Oakland and exacerbating some of the biggest problems with our school system: large class sizes, lack of personal attention, lack of care for the well-being of Oakland students. closing a school destabilizes a child's education and life at a critical time and as we have seen with other closures in the past it is not a step that can be taken back. i urge you to vote against the measure to close these schools today, for my nephew's sake as well as for the sake of all of Oakland's kids, and teachers, and community at large. thank you.
I oppose these school closures. I grew up in Marin County, but I have long planned to raise my kids in Oakland largely because of the amazing schools we have like Manzanita SEED. Please don't take these schools away from the children and families who currently love and need them, as well as all of us who hoped to benefit from them in the future.
Merging Manzanita SEED and Manzanita Community would result in negligible savings while creating huge disruption and risking the integrity of the bilingual program. These schools already efficiently use their space and have high enrollment.
I oppose the school closures and mergers, especially at the Manzanita campus. This site needs better staffing, not consolidation. You will completely change the cultures at some schools where children are highly regarded, like at TCN.
I am a substitute teacher in the schools and I see the issues with this plan clearly. Closing and merging schools doesn’t save the problem of OUSD budget shortfalls. It’s a drop in the bucket and children and adults learning and work environments are at stake.
I strongly oppose the plans to merge schools. Our son is in TK at ICS and value the connections he's built with his school community. 90% of us affected by this have little understanding of the financial information that's bombarded our eyes and ears the last month. What we do know and can fully grasp is the importance of maintaining our children's well-being in opposing this plan. With marginal benefits financially, our trusted school board should look at other avenues first to solve the problem. Expediting to push a plan and agenda is not the way and will only hurt us as a whole. I hope you all can listen to the community and vote appropriately. Thanks.
Larger schools are a barrier to learning. They harm students, especially the most marginalized. And make the already challenging work of teachers and administrators more overwhelming. The savings are not worth it!
Of course, nobody wants their children's school to close or consolidate, and we realize that the District has to make some tough choices regarding finances and resource allocation.
I'm appealing to you to maintain Manzanita SEED as its own school because of its unique bilingual program--consolidating with our good neighbors Manzanita Community will compromise this element, which is the main reason many of us chose this option. MCC parents decisions *not* to follow this route should also be respected.
SEED's unique orientation goes beyond the simple bilingual program--there's a real effort to engage parents who speak Mam, Arabic, Chinese dialects, and other languages. I appeal to you not to dilute this unique community orientation that really serves this neighborhood's residents.
Thank you!
The cost savings available here does not overwhelm the harm
These are schools that serve vulnerable populations. Schools that have built individual culture and community. Merging them would only cause more harm.
Please vote no on the merger. Having grown up in an immigrant family, I deeply value my children attending Manzanita SEED where our multiculturalism and multilingualism is celebrated. I recently attended a meeting of parents of both SEED and Manzanita Community School, and each group of parents spoke passionately about how the specialization of each school uniquely serves their children. These schools came into being via the realization that two smaller schools with unique specializations would better serve the needs of the diverse vulnerable communities in our neighborhood than one large school. The savings presented by this merger are uncertain, meager at best, and certainly not sufficient to justify sacrificing these gains. These schools already achieve tremendous efficiencies by sharing a campus and their custodial staff. Let’s not move backwards to the inequities of the past, when only the schools in the hills had 300 to 400 students, and schools in the flats had 800 kids and up.
The lack of thoughtful planning, including the blatant lack of community and staff input in these mergers is another example of OUSD's dysfunctional operations. There are many better ways to address the district's budget issues.
The benefits of this merger are either too minimal or not fully explained. Please do not make a choice that will negatively impact so many students as families without a clear benefit to Oakland. Thank you.
The lack of transparency and the short turn around for this vote is astounding. SEED provides bilingual education to newcomers, Spanish language households, and those families who want their children to be able to communicate with Spanish speakers across the country and world. We have no idea what these proposed mergers will do to our school. It is inappropriate to vote to merge schools without a more thought out and explicit plan for what that will look like for our children and community. We are going into this blind, and we reject this. We know the reserves for the district are high, and this is a matter of prioritizing spending.There is little to no transparency about the unnecessary or superfluous costs to the district for paying for consultants and contractors, and supplies. Before you take from our children, do more-and show us that you are doing more-on your end to close the gaps. Please vote NO on this merger proposal.
The dual language program at SEED helps my 1st and 4th grader retain our family’s heritage language which is incredibly personally meaningful. It ensures our Spanish-dominant neighbors can communicate with their child’s teachers and help them with their homework. The proposed mergers would result in the loss of site-based CCSSP grants which both Manzanita sites currently receive ($270k / year), and risk the loss of Manzanita Community’s CSI block grant, both of which dwarf the projected savings at this campus. I urge a unanimous NO vote on this proposal as well as the other mergers.
I am the parent of a fourth grader at Manzanita SEED. My family chose SEED because of it's dual immersion curriculum and bilingual school community. My grandparents were punished by the nuns at their school for speaking Spanish. They didn't teach our language to my mom. But she ensured that we, her daughters, had access to education in Spanish to reclaim our heritage language. Many Latino families, like ours, now enroll in dual immersion schools so that our children, too, remain connected to our culture and community, improving their educational outcomes and enriching their lives forever. We are so grateful to those who worked hard to build dual immersion in OUSD. The cost savings estimates from the proposed merger are small, and because the district hasn’t been transparent about how they were calculated, it is not clear they are even realistic. We are concerned that chaotic and unpopular mergers risk driving families like ours from the district, leading to a direct loss of funding.
Please reject these school mergers. Sacrificing the stability of 10 schools to MAYBE save a few million dollars hardly seems like a way to promote "Community schools, thriving students." If the problems the district is facing are due to declining enrollment, disrupting the functioning of existing schools--and making parents feel like our children are nothing but numbers to be moved around on spreadsheets to the OUSD leadership--is certainly not going to help solve the long term issues here. How would creating larger, more crowded schools that are less responsive to the needs of the specific communities they serve benefit anyone? To MAYBE save a few million dollars? How is this a good plan?
I am opposed to the proposed school merger. As a parent of a child at a dual language/immersion school (SEED) I worry about the impact on the language program. Manzanita would likely become the largest elementary school in Oakland and there would be a loss of services and resources for all of the students. The transition process if a merger were to occur, would likely be chaotic. I think many kids would be scared and disoriented. I went to a meeting with parents from both Manzanita Community and SEED present and I heard no arguments for the proposed merger, nobody seemed to want it. It’s not fair to the staff, the kids, or the community. Please vote no. Thank you for considering.
The rationale for these school mergers - pardon, these school closures - is especially threadbare even by OUSD's leadership's own sorry standards. These closures are an attack on East Oakland communities, on newcomer students and their families, on bilingual education, on classified as well as certificated staff, and on the small schools movement and those parents, teachers, and community members who took it upon themselves to create schools that served the real needs of their communities. No to this plan in 25-26, no to this plan in 26-27, no to this plan period.