News Analysis
A Los Angeles judge ruled against California teachers and in support of a Silicon Valley billionaire today in the much watched Vergara Case, a lawsuit with major Emery Unified School District connections. It's a case that has pitted school privatizers and anti-union right wing forces against teachers and public school supporters. Emery Unified sent two strong anti-teacher's union supporters, former school superintendents Tony Smith and Debbra Lindo to argue in support of billionaire plaintiff David Welch (57). The case will have repercussions far beyond California as the plaintiff vows to take the case nation-wide, a prospect that has drawn cheers from all manner of conservative pundits and right wing think tanks across the land.
Both Emery superintendents supplied the plaintiff with 'letters of declaration', using their Emery credentials to bolster their case that teachers are to blame for the poor state of education in Emeryville and in California.
Silicon Valley Tycoon David Welch The Republican billionaire used Emery School Superintendent's help to argue that teachers unions should be deep sixed.
The plaintiff used Emery's superintendent's letters of declaration to argue that only the destruction of the teachers union and tying teacher pay with student test scores can save education, something that needs to be done "for the students". The idea is that well qualified teachers will flock to school districts that offer no job security and pay poorly although neither Emery superintendent nor anyone representing the plaintiff has shown how this will work. The Vergara plaintiff argued good teachers aren't interested in due process and instead clamor for their job and pay to be dependent upon the capricious whims of superintendents and other things beyond their control like student poverty and associated dysfunctional home life.
Emery Unified: Anti-Teacher Incubator
Emery, being such a small school district, has played an over sized role in today's victory against teachers. The district here has long taken an adversarial position against its teachers, most notably when the School Board resolved to support Superintendent Lindo over the teachers in the infamous Teachers Resolution fight. Tony Smith and his program of shutting down schools, cutting teacher pay and turning over public schools to private charter corporations while he served as Oakland's superintendent is still revered by the School Board here at Emery.
Emery's role in the anti-teacher/ pro-privatization movement has come to be that of an incubator. The district here collects those with disdain for teachers and elevates them to superintendent. After attaining superintendent status, Emery sends them out into the world where they can help right wing causes and inflict damage to teachers statewide.
It's a recipe that has rankled teachers here at Emery. Emery Teachers Association president Dawn Turner told the Tattler today, "We have the dubious distinction of having provided not one but two former superintendents as expert witnesses on the Vergara case. They are using students to forward a right wing agenda". Ms Turner echoed her colleagues vow, "We will fight this" she said.
In a tragicomic irony, the ruling in Los Angeles today comes right on the heels of last week's "Teacher Appreciation Week" here at Emery.
Opinion
The School District here in Emeryville has to play the role of editor. With all the various sundry and disparate ideas floating around for how best to teach our children, their job is to edit out the ideas not worthy of consideration and implement the good ones. This is Step One in public education policy. Unfortunately they've never publicly explained what they think constitutes a good idea but they've shown they know good ideas come from 'serious people' (with apologies to the economist Paul Krugman).... people like Emery Education Fund president John Gooding, a man they've put their stock in over the years. The School Board listens to John Gooding.
John Gooding: Serious Person (on left). Serious people do things like present awards to those who help disseminate serious ideas.
The Board again showed this dynamic when they invited Mr Gooding to impart his wisdom about the proper role of a school district in public education at their April retreat. The Board and District officials sat enraptured nodding their heads up and down in agreement and back and forth in awe as Mr Gooding alerted them to an education crisis at Emery; the District is dropping the ball, falling short of their charge to produce competent worker bees for the private sector he told them. Corporations need "workers that can add up a column of figures" Mr Gooding repeatedly said, warning the assembled Emery power players that graduating seniors are not making the cut. He went on and on reminding the Board their job is to transform students into workers for the corporate hegemony (to drive down wages). He spiced up his presentation with a few always popular "for the children" cliches for dramatic effect, a perennial favorite of serious people.
Governor Pete Wilson: Another Serious Person Illegal children should not receive benefit of a public education.
John Gooding is a businessman who knows business, he knows what businesses want. He's a member of the Board of the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce and he lobbies for corporations through his political consulting firm the Quadric Group. Whether fighting against Measure C, the 2005 initiative providing for a living wage for Emeryville hotel workers or bundling donations for business friendly candidates for Emeryville City Council elections through EmPac, the Chamber of Commerce's political action committee, Mr Gooding has for years devoted himself to making sure Emeryville City Hall works for business.
As the president of Emery Education Fund (EEF), John serves as the intermediary between the schools and the business community, accepting donations and after skimming off some for EEF expenses, doling out the remainder to the schools. He's thus has made himself invaluable to the schools in Emeryville.
John's created a nice little eco system with this formula (even as high level corporations have not been co-operating recently as they've scaled back their donations to the Ed Fund).
This serious man with his serious policy proscriptions for Emery is the same John Gooding who donated money to California Republican Governor Pete Wilson to help fight for Prop 187, the 1994 initiative that would have denied public education to the children of undocumented immigrants. It's the same serious man who brought his lofty position of Emeryville power broker to bear against the workers at Emeryville hotels by attempting to keep wages low and workloads harsh. He warned us at the time that if Measure C passed, if the hospitality corporations had to pay higher wages, Emeryville hotels would leave our town en masse, a prediction that has not come true...in fact a new hotel is opening in 2015.
Regardless of the Measure C loss (loss for the corporate forces, win for the workers), John Gooding has been a good lobbyist for his business clients. He's continuing to represent their interests now as he uses his powers of persuasion on the Emery School Board.
John Gooding is serious but he's wrong. The School Board is wrong. We'll risk a lawsuit from Mr Gooding (he's threatened us before) to argue for the real reason why we educate our children. Public school is meant not to produce compliant workers for corporations. Rather the proper role of public school is to create good citizens; adults who can think critically and who value the joy of learning.
These are ideas not associated with money, they're not forwarded by the corporate sector, they're not delivered by a serious man, rather they're embraced by what the Emery School District would characterize as the non-serious among us. But these are ideas we'd like to see taken seriously at Emery Unified School District.
Remember, I only want what's best for the children. (Repeat often)
Recently there's been a national debate begun about public education and while charter schools, most operating at the expense of public schools have proliferated and teachers unions have come under attack on many fronts, public education supporters have begun to push back against this concerted push to privatize the nation's public schools. At Emery Unified School District however, the course was set years ago and Emery has played its own small role in this conservative attempt to cripple public education, especially where that attempt seeks to destroy teachers unions. To see this one only needs to look to the legacies of former superintendents of its schools Tony Smith and the recently deposed Debbra Lindo.
Even though they had the same goals in mind, of the two former superintendents, the great mentor and architect-in-chief of Emery's slide into it's current anti-teacher state of affairs is inarguably Tony Smith. His shadow is long and even though he left Emery years ago to command Oakland Unified and has since left there amid a witness tampering scandal, Tony Smith and his school privatization philosophy continues unabashedly to serve as guiding principles for Emery. The School Board here is quite clear about their tutelage by Tony Smith, proud even.
Ditto.
While at Oakland, Tony's divisive anti-democratic program of cutting, shutting and chartering schools while taking on the teachers caused a massive grassroots citizen's push back. He is revered nonetheless by the Emery School Board and they have even picked up some of his affectations: think the oft publicly repeated and ever popular "we're doing what's best for the children" as a way of shutting down those who would disagree, as in; what YOU'RE advocating then must therefore be by definition NOT what's best for the children.
After Tony left Emery, the School Board looked to find a permanent replacement and they ultimately found a near carbon copy in Debbra Lindo (except she lacks Tony's easy going and chipper personality). Tony's influence was evident as Debbra Lindo and her Board surrogates began their siege against Emery teachers following the release of the Teachers Resolution in 2012.
Mega ditttos.
The Emeryville duo Tony 'n Debbra have now very publicly entered the national debate with their support in the Los Angeles Superior Court's infamous Vergara case. They tell us that everything will be great if we just tie teacher's pay to high stakes 'bubble' test outcomes, kill due process for teacher's employment and make their jobs teeter on the whims of unelected superintendents. We'll get the best and the brightest apparently if we de-professionalize teaching: sever their job security, cut pay and make their fates dependent on things beyond their control.
Below is a recent letter to the Oakland Tribune from Tony Smith (filled with right wing memes and dog whistles) that might seem sincere to the uninitiated. To those following the Emery School Board (Tony's begats) however, it's just part of the continuing attack on and privatize of public education. Here is Tony Smith, the Great Man to Emery Unified continuing to release his toxic brand of divisive politics even as he has decamped to Chicago, some 2000 miles distant:
Former Emery schools superintendent Tony Smith is being sued for coercing an Oakland Schools Police Officer to make false statements to Oakland Police about an officer shooting last year. The story was covered by the Tattler on June 2nd. In June, Mr Smith resigned as Oakland's School Superintendent suddenly and has left the state, citing pressing and private family matters. From the Oakland Tribune:
Lawsuit claims Oakland school district leaders interfered in police shooting investigation
By David DeBolt ddebolt@bayareanewsgroup.com
Posted: 06/25/2013 03:35:26 PM PDT
Updated: 06/26/2013 06:19:07 AM PDT
OAKLAND -- An Oakland schools police sergeant filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday claiming district leaders pressured him to change his statements about an incident in which his partner shot and killed a 20-year-old man outside a high school dance in 2011.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges the district retaliated against Sgt. Jonathan Bellusa for filing written complaints against his superiors, including one charging that an Oakland schools police chief hurled racial slurs and threatened to kill officers in a drunken rant.
Lawyers for Bellusa announced the civil rights lawsuit against the district and outgoing Superintendent Anthony Smith in a news release issued Tuesday.
The suit centers around conflicting accounts of an incident on Jan. 22, 2011, in which Bellusa and Sgt. Barhin Bhatt conducted a traffic stop on 20-year-old Raheim Brown, who was parked with the car's hazard lights on, near a Skyline High School dance.
The stop quickly turned deadly. According to reports at the time, Bhatt said he saw Brown stabbing at Bellusa with a screwdriver; district officials later said Bellusa, the commanding officer, then ordered Bhatt to shoot Brown, fatally wounding him.
In his lawsuit, Bellusa said Superintendent Smith and General Counsel Jacqueline Minor interrupted his statements to police, and officials later tried to "coerce Bellusa to conform his testimony to the version proffered by Bhatt."
According to Bellusa's version, he was struggling over the screwdriver with Brown when Bhatt fired two shots at Brown, allowing Bellusa to move away from Brown and the screwdriver. Bhatt then reloaded and fired more bullets into Brown, the lawsuit says.
Former Oakland & Emeryville Schools Chief Tony Smith
Though the Alameda County District Attorney's Office declined to file criminal charges and district lawyers said the action did not violate any policies or practices, the shooting of Brown was believed to be the impetus for a federal grand jury investigation. The U.S. Department of Justice notified the district about the investigation in May 2012.
The district has its own police force, which includes about a dozen sworn police officers patrolling the district's 100 schools.
Bellusa was put on medical leave in September 2011 and remains on unpaid administrative leave.
He claims he was a target for retaliation for filing a written complaint against then-Oakland Unified School District Police Chief Pete Sarna for a racist rant against fellow officers. Sarna later resigned.
District spokesman Troy Flint said district leaders did talk to Bellusa and Bhatt after the shooting in front of Oakland police department officers but in no way tried to influence their statements.
"Belussa is rather unscrupulously trying to claim whistleblower status to mask other issues related to his employment at the department," Flint said. "If this case goes to trial, which actually would be quite refreshing so the facts could come out, more detail would come out. Belussa himself has been known to engage in the behavior he is accusing Sarna of."
Former Emery School District Superintendent Tony Smith has been implicated in a witness tampering cover-up incident involving an Oakland School District Police shooting in 2011 according to an involved police officer. The story, relayed by San Francisco Bayview News and corroborated by NBC Bay Area News is re-posted below. The complainant officer, Jonathan Bellusa, alleges Mr Smith, Oakland's School District Superintendent attempted to coach him on particulars of a shooting that had happened moments before. Mr Smith allegedly tried to get Officer Bellusa's recollections to match those of the shooter, Officer Bhatt, Officer Bellusa's partner. The story alleges Mr Smith quickly worked on getting the two officer's stories to match before regular Oakland Police officers arrived on the scene. The victim who died in the hail of police bullets was a twenty year old man in a parked car near a school dance. The story broke right after Mr Smith mysteriously and suddenly announced his resignation from his job as Oakland's schools chief in April. Tony Smith, as Emery's Superintendent, was an early proponent of the Center of Community Life and was instrumental in it's early planning. He cast a large shadow at Emery and his influence is still felt in the incipient Center of Community Life and the District itself. Here's the San Francisco Bayview News story and the accompanying NBC Bay Area News video:
Perhaps you’ve heard or read the name Raheim Brown Jr. He’s the 20-year-old Black man who was beaten then shot and killed by Oakland School Police Department Sgt. Bhatt.
In the Oscar Grant Memorial March and Rally on the third anniversary of Oscar’s murder on New Year’s Day 2009 by BART police, supporters of Raheim Brown and all victims of law enforcement demanded justice. – Photo: Bradley Stuart, Indybay
In January 2011 Brown and a female companion were parked in a vehicle in the Oakland Hills when they were approached by officers Barhin Bhatt and Jonathan Bellusa, who were working as hired security guards for an Oakland School District dance being held at Skyline High School.
The officers reported that they first approached the vehicle, which was not parked at the school or on campus, because the hazard lights were flashing. Brown and his friend didn’t need help. As a justification for questioning them, the officers claimed they smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle after approaching it. Other reports have claimed the officers thought the car was stolen. The officers also reported Brown threatened to stab Barhin with a screwdriver that he had in the car.
As Brown and his companion sat, buckled-up, in the car, the officers began beating them both.
What exactly happened next, no one is certain because the requests for the full reports of the shooting by Lori Davis, mother of Raheim Brown, and her attorney, John Burris, have yet to be fulfilled by the Oakland Unified School District.
What is known is that Bellusa, who was outside the car on the passenger side where Brown was sitting, ordered a first round of shots. The shots were fired by Bhatt, who was outside the car on the driver side near the female driver. Bhatt fired at Brown across the driver multiple times, but Brown remained living at this time. Bhatt’s gun jammed. He cleared it, then a second round of shots was fired, killing Brown.
Davis filed a wrongful death suit against OUSD, which operates and employs the district police officers who shot and killed Brown.
Breaking ‘Code Blue’
This case is highly suspicious for many reasons: 1) A complete report containing all the details has yet to be made available to the public, Ms. Davis or her attorney; 2) there was definite mismanagement on the part of OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith directly following the shooting, as well as by OSPD Chief Williams; 3) an Oakland School Police Department officer is calling foul against his own department.
Raheim Brown
What has come as a “whistle-blowing” effort by Bellusa has also rocked the community and the department’s claims.
Bellusa filed a federal complaint against the OSPD claiming retaliation for his refusal to lie about the second round of shots that killed Brown. In his complaint, Bellusa claims that the second round of shots weren’t necessary because Brown was no longer a threat, after being shot with the first round.
According to Davis, who cited testimony by former Sgt. Bellusa of OSPD, Superintendent Tony Smith was accompanied by some Oakland School Board members at the crime scene – directly following the shooting.
“Based on Bellusa’s testimony in his deposition,” said Davis, “Tony Smith came down there and tried to get him to do witness tampering. He tried to get their (Bhatt and Bellusa’s) stories together.”
Bellusa, who is now on paid administrative leave is accusing the OSPD of a pattern of corruption.
For the Davis wrongful-death case, the Bellusa complaint and the federal investigation underway bring light to the issue of a cover-up by the OSPD.
“You don’t get one officer to lie for the other one,” said Davis.
Problems with guns
Incidents like the Raheim Brown killing highlight a huge debate going on in America right now about the necessity of armed district staff in schools. This comes after the terrible December 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children, six teachers, the shooter and his mother were shot and killed.
For people of color, the issue may be more of a concern regarding security officers being armed when working at schools with large numbers of students of color. Communities of color are extremely reluctant to put guns in the hands of those who terrorize Black children and youth the most: the police. To whites, police officers are there to protect civilians.
Raheim Brown’s mother, Lori Davis, was one of the parents of young Black men killed by police who spoke out in passionate protest at a press conference held two days after San Francisco police murdered Kenneth Harding on the spot, at Third and Oakdale, where Kenny died on July 16, 2011, a few months after Raheim’s death. – Photo: Malaika Kambon
When asked whether OUSD needs a police department, Davis said; “They don’t need police – just regular security.”
The rate of officer involved shootings seems to be increasing.
“Invasive policing is only one aspect of the U.S. states’ comprehensive containment strategies to exploit Black people and to smother resistance … The U.S. state maintains and reinforces these economic injustices with the militarized occupation of Black communities by the police and a web of racist legislation like the ‘war on drugs,’ discriminatory policies like ‘three strikes’ and ‘mandatory minimum’ sentencing. The result is a social system that mandates the prison warehousing of millions of Black people and extrajudicial killings where the killers act with impunity and more often than not are rewarded and promoted for murder.”
These views are backed by data tracking police killings, or “extrajudicial killings,” over many months. The latest data collected by MXGM shows that a Black person in the U.S. is killed every 28 hours by law enforcement.
The nearby Oakland Police Department is so plagued that it has been appointed a court monitor, former Baltimore commissioner Thomas Frazier, by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson to oversee mandated changes to the department.
What post-racial America?
What does this mean? It means that as the Black community and its organizers and leaders have justly claimed and proven, a post-racial society DOES NOT exist in America.
Barhin Bhatt, the Oakland School Police officer who killed Raheim Brown, keeps protesters out of Fremont High School on March 4, 2011, three months after the murder. In August of the same year, the appointment of Bhatt as chief of the Oakland School Police sparked outrage that led to his removal about two weeks later. Forty angry speakers testified to the Oakland School Board, including civil rights attorney Anne Butterfield Weills, who said that to “appoint the shooter of Raheim Brown Jr. to be the acting chief of OUSD ... what a role model for our young people, particularly for our Black and Brown young males and women who are in our schools.” – Photo: KALW
Blacks are still falling victim to racist law enforcement organizations intent on sending them to prison if not to the graveyard. Why is it that our Black youth must endure officers at their presumed “educational safe havens” or when they are merely enjoying some leisure?
What real justification can there be for officers – who were hired to secure a school dance on a school campus – to venture from their assigned duty posts and beat, shoot and kill innocent youth? Furthermore, what justification does Tony Smith have for not releasing the details of the incident as reported by his staff?
When Smith started as superintendent he was quoted in an Oakland North article as saying, “For me, you have to examine the effects of institutional racism, institutional classism, institutional bias, language bias and say, ‘At this point, the system that we have – even if we do it really, really well – isn’t going to close and transform that gap.’”
Apparently that was only talk and didn’t extend to his school police department. Not only has Smith championed school closures, he hasn’t brought in valuable resources such as librarians, music programs etc. In the same interview he said:
“I’m incredibly committed to thinking about new kinds of relationships with local communities. We have to become beacons and be able to infuse into those neighborhoods expectations and ways of being. That takes partnership and leadership and expectations and being honest about how hard it is.”
It is safe to say that the beacon light is out when it comes to Tony Smith and the Oakland Unified School District. His failure to demonstrate unwavering, transparent leadership has continued to damage Oakland schools and district departments – as evidenced with the OSPD.
Smith has only been in Oakland four years and he conveniently is moving to Chicago, just as a wrongful death suit surfaces and a federal investigation is taking place, with him as lead culprit.
In his letter to the Oakland School Board, he cited family illness as the reason for the move. That very well may be true.
What is also true is that, on Smith’s watch in Oakland, we have lost another young Black life.
Laura Savage is a graduating senior in journalism at San Francisco State University and is interning with the SF Bay View this semester. She can be reached atlsavage26@gmail.com.
As former Emery school superintendent Tony Smith prepares to leave his Oakland superintendent post for Chicago, local teachers, educators and school supporters are taking stock of what his leadership style has wrought. Many have been critical of his reliance on educational entrepreneurialism; the top heavy managerial style that disempowers teachers while relying on connected consultants and cutting budgets, shutting schools and turning over under performing schools to private charters. It's a program Tony started in Emery and our smitten school district and school board has made sure it's a program that has largely remained here at Emery after Tony's departure.
We’re offerring a piece by our retired teacher comrade Jack Gerson on the “legacy” of Tony Smith, the now resigned superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District. We will be posting more on this soon. Please send comments and suggestions.
Tony Smith: What He Did to Oakland, What He’ll Try in Chicago
By Jack Gerson April 6, 2013
On April 4, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Superintendent Tony Smith gave notice that he was resigning effective June 30 and relocating his family to Chicago to be near his ailing father-in-law. There is little doubt that Smith will soon be a visible presence in Chicago education – quite possibly the next CEO of Chicago Public Schools. It is important for Chicago teachers and community to know just who they are likely to be dealing with – and to those fighting back against the corporate education agenda elsewhere too,
Tony Smith, laying the law down on Oakland’s students, teachers, and community . . . and then cutting out! Deuces!
given the importance of the struggle in Chicago.
My guess is that Tony Smith’s job in Chicago will be to break or weaken the powerful alliance between teachers, students, parents and community so evident during and after last September’s teacher strike. There are few who can match him when it comes to talking about the importance of neighborhood schools providing wraparound services to combat the effects of poverty; to recruiting, rewarding, and retaining good teachers; to stimulate authentic learning based on concepts and creativity rather than skill-based rote learning; to provide all the resources that teachers need to teach and students need to learn; to acknowledge and work to overcome racism and its effects; to forge real authentic collaboration between faculty, staff, community, students, parents, and administration; to crack down on mismanagement, excess administrative overhead, and needless outsourcing; etc. For that is exactly what he did when he was appointed superintendent in Oakland four years ago. He talked so well, in fact, that even some skeptics were willing to suspend disbelief and give him a shot.
But in Oakland, it was just talk. Indeed, throughout his career, Smith has been a proponent of the corporate agenda for education and a practitioner of divide and conquer, of charter schools and privatization, of school closures, downsizing, and union busting. Smith takes funding cuts for granted; he goes hat in hand to his corporate patrons to solicit marginal funding (in exchange for carrying out their policies), but does not go after corporate and individual wealth. So in the end, he is just another proponent of “do more with less” austerity sacrifice. He executes the cuts demanded by his corporate patrons. This goes back to his roots.
Tony Smith graduated from U. of California Berkeley in 1992, where he was captain of the football team. He went on to get masters and doctoral degrees in education from UC Berkeley, and from 1997 to 2004 was one of the leaders of the Oakland-based Bay Area Coalition of Equitable Schools (BAYCES – now the National Equity Project). At the time, BAYCES was the Oakland conduit for Gates Foundation money, and Gates was heavily promoting the “small school miracle”, engineering the breakup of thousands of comprehensive secondary schools nationally.
In Oakland, starting in about 2001, BAYCES “designed” the breakup of three of the city’s six comprehensive high schools – the three “lowest-achieving” schools, those serving the city’s highest poverty areas, with overwhelmingly black and Latino enrollments – Fremont, Castlemont, and McClymonds High Schools. I was a teacher at Castlemont, which was broken into three small schools in 2003. BAYCES “redesign” included permanently closing the school’s library and consolidating the librarian’s position; eliminating French and eliminating the French teacher position; closing all three vocational academies (construction, culinary, and fashion), although all three provided job training in an area of sky-high unemployment for blacks and Latinos under 25 years of age.
We said at the time that this under-resourced breakup of Fremont, Castlemont, and McClymonds would drive out students and teachers, encourage the growth of charter schools, and make already unstable neighborhoods still more unstable. And that is what happened: Castlemont’s enrollment went from 1,750 in 2003 to fewer than 600 last year. McClymonds went from 1,000 to 250; Fremont from 2,300 to 750. At the same time, charter school enrollment in Oakland quadrupled.
In 2003, in the midst of the BAYCES-led breakup of Oakland secondary schools, the state of California put OUSD in receivership, ostensibly because the district’s budget was $37 million in the red. For the first two years of the state takeover, BAYCES openly co-administered OUSD with Elli Broad’s handpicked State Administrator for OUSD, Randy Ward, and an army of other Broad Institute graduates. During this period, scores of custodians, nearly all maintenance workers and many food service workers and drivers were laid off; libraries in nearly every middle school and several high schools were closed; charter school enrollment soared. Randy Ward introduced Results Based Budgeting (RBB), in which school sites were told that they were responsible for nearly all expenses, including teacher salaries – pressuring principals to try to force out veteran teachers in favor of lower-paid and untrained Teach for America recruits, and to cut supplies and resources to the bone (at more than one school, teachers were told that they needed to pay for copier paper out of their own pockets).
Tony Smith was a BAYCES leader when these policies were put in place. He left BAYCES in 2004 – not in protest, but to advance his career. From 2004 to 2007 he ran the Emeryville, California schools. From there, he went to San Francisco for a year and a half as Deputy Superintendent.
Fast forward to Spring 2012. Tony Smith has been OUSD superintendent for three years – ever since the state takeover ended in 2009. Despite his passionate and eloquent rhetoric, Smith has continued – even deepened – the harmful policies put in place during the state takeover. He has maintained Ward’s Results Based Budgeting and, like Ward, has used RBB to target veteran teachers. Now, in April 2012 Smith, who participated in the ill-conceived break-up of the three high schools while at BAYCES, announces that the position of classroom teacher will be abolished at Castlemont, Fremont, and McClymonds, where now all teachers will be “teachers on special assignment” and the small schools replaced by “Acceleration High Schools”. The reconsolidation was as ill-conceived and as poorly designed as the breakup had been: the libraries remained closed; custodial, food service and clerical staffing remained inadequate; support services were scarce; overall the schools remained terribly resource-starved. The elimination of the classroom teacher position was a transparent excuse for violating the due process and seniority provisions by forcing all teachers at the three high schools to reapply for their jobs every year.
School size isn’t the primary determinant of success. BAYCES breakup of the comprehensive high schools a decade ago was destructive. Smith’s reconsolidation has been destructive too. And Smith has gone a step beyond to overt union busting, by forcing teachers at these three schools to reapply for their jobs every year.
Indeed, Smith has trampled on virtually every hope he raised in his smooth but false talk of three years ago:
Neighborhood schools? Smith closed several, including five elementary schools last June (scaling to adjust for the difference in size between Chicago and Oakland public school enrollments, those five closures alone would be equivalent to the 54 schools Rahm Emanuel et al plan to close). When a group of parents, teachers, and community staged a 17-day sit-in at Lakeview Elementary to protest the closure of the five schools, Smith sent in the cops to evict us.
Wraparound services? Two years ago Smith gutted Adult Education – from 25,000 students when he arrived in 2009, the program now has been all but wiped out. He made cuts to Early Childhood Education. He eliminated counselors at the district’s largest high school. Etc. Those few services he did introduce were partial, and based on soft money from his friends and patrons in the corporate foundations.
Combating racism? All of the schools Smith closed last year were majority minority enrollment – four black, one Latino. Many of the schools in the black and Latino communities that remain open have become more segregated under Smith.
Recruiting, rewarding, and retaining good teachers? Establishing collaborative relations? Oakland teachers have been without a contract since 2008, and are paid 20% below the state and county averages for public school teachers. In 2010, when negotiations broke down over Smith’s demand that the teachers union accept no pay increase, larger class size, weakened seniority and academic freedom, Smith imposed his terms on the union – the first Superintendent in OUSD history to do so. Union-busting then in 2010, just as he did two years later by forcing the Castlemont, Fremont, and McClymonds teachers to reapply for their jobs.
Providing the resources teachers need to teach and students need to learn? Several Oakland elementary schools were chosen by the state to receive supplementary funding for class size reduction, resources, and support under the Quality Education Improvement Act (QEIA) funding, a program aimed at helping the state’s lowest-achieving schools. For the past two years, OUSD has lost millions in QEIA funding because all but one or two of the QEIA-eligible schools failed to meet class size targets – clearly not a problem of poor site administrators, but rather of an inept and unsupportive district administration.
Cracking down on mismanagement, excess administrative overhead, and needless outsourcing? Relative to its size, OUSD under Smith has double the administrative overhead and double the outsourced contracts compared to the average California school district.
Last year, Tony Smith said he wouldn’t care if all Oakland schools were charter schools. Oakland already had the state’s highest percentage of students enrolled in charter schools, and that percentage has increased under Smith (from about 17% to about 20%).
And when Tony enters the game, be prepared to ante up. Although Oakland teachers have not had a raise in five years and are among the lowest paid in the Bay Area, Smith demanded and got a 6% increase over his predecessor’s salary when he signed on as superintendent in 2009. Smith earns a base salary of $265,000 / year. His total annual compensation, including benefits, comes to more than $352,000.
A thread runs through Tony Smith’s career: to attempt to counterpose, in practice, what he asserts to be the interests of students and community to those of teachers and staff. This aligns him with the corporate agenda. And, in fact, he is one of their rising superstars: witness the “philanthropic” funding to OUSD, cited in Smith’s resignation letter and in the school board’s accompanying statement. (This goes back at least to his BAYCES days [1997 - 2004], where he managed BAYCES connections with the Hewlett Foundation.). But smooth though his tongue may be, Tony Smith’s divide and conquer strategy was beginning to backfire on him in Oakland — witness the widespread, if passive, support from the community for the sit-in at Lakeview Elementary, or the increasing heat he has been taking at board meetings from community in west and east Oakland.
So while Smith’s family health issues may well be real, I have to believe that he was looking to get out of town. And I have to believe that his corporate patrons want him in Chicago, where they think he’ll be able to win the community back to their side and break the teacher – community alliance. Prove them wrong.
