Oakland, California school district touts itself as the nation’s first full-service community schools district, committing to a model of school improvement that, according to the model’s most prominent proponents, provides students with “well-rounded educational opportunities” and the “supports” they need to be successful. According to, community schools address the basic needs in the communities they serve. news reportsThese include access to health and dental treatment, nutritious food, arts programs and sports and recreation. Oakland announced in February 2022 that it would close several of its community schools despite its commitments to its districtwide reform plan.
As Mother Jones reported, Oakland school board members voted to close seven schools in the district, three of which — Brookfield Elementary, Carl B. Munck Elementary, Korematsu Discovery Academy — are official practitioners of the community schools model, according to the National Education Association, which promotesThis model is used to help schools implement it. A fourth school, Oakland Community Day SchoolThe closing of, which is scheduled for the end of the current academic school year, uses a very similar approach to the full-service supportMost community schools offer this service.
The Oakland board’s decision to shut down and merge schools has sparked widespread opposition in the community, including criticism from the teachers’ union and community groups, organized rallies, protest caravan to board members’ homes, student walkouts, and a hunger strikeTwo Oakland school employees staged the event, which was called off. “On the day of the vote, more than 2,000 viewers logged in to the virtual board meeting and hundreds raised their hands to speak during public comment,” World Socialist Web Site reported. “[A]ll speakers unanimously opposed the school closures.”
The criticism is largely focused on the fact the closures disproportionately effect families who are often the most needy of the full service nature of the community school approach. This includes families with children who often struggle in schools and families of color. As KQED reportedWhen the board proposed its reorganization, initial plan to shutter eight schools in January, “an estimated 93 percentAverage number of students [at the schools affected by the closure plan were] considered either lower-income, English learners, or foster youth—compared to the .” Black students made up about 43 percent of the students affected by this decision and accounted for “almost twice the proportion of Black students in the entire district.”
Board members and the district’s administration maintain that the closures are necessary because of enrollment declines and the district’s longtime financial problems. “Enrollment in Oakland Unified has declined by more than 15,000 over the past 20 years,” the New York Times reported, and, “the district is facing a $12.3 million deficit on top of $3.2 billion in needed repairs at school facilities.”
Even supporters of the closures, such as the editorial board of the East Bay Times, admit, “[C]losing small schools alone will not cover the district’s structural budget shortfall.”
Also, it would seem that closing schools would be more apt to increase student and family attrition — as ousted parents would opt for other providers or leave the district altogether — rather than stemming the bleeding.
The district has also claimed that closing the community schools is necessary for the school district to fulfill its mission of being a “quality community schools” district.
According to a 2019 article in EdSource, Oakland Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell has argued that “[t]The only way to improve school outcomes, is [to] get enough children in every school so each campus is fiscally sustainable and then to ensure they get the full range of services they need, including support services like counselors, librarians, and so on.”
The first time the district proposed closing schools was in presentation to the board repeated the commitment to “build a Full Service Community District focused on high academic achievement while serving the whole child,” but then it proceeded to make the case that the high number of small schools in the district, including those that practice the community schools approach, put that mission “in jeopardy.”
The district’s insistence that it must close community schools in order to save them seems reminiscent of other examples of government doublespeak in the past, multiple sources Our Schools has spoken with question the district’s commitment to the community schools model, or at least question the level of commitment by the district to the core tenets of the model.
Complicating the matter is Oakland’s history of welcoming charter schools into the district. According to a 2019 analysis by KQED, “in the decade after 2000,” the number of charter schools “more than tripled.” And the charter enrollment in Oakland has remained high, as a 2022 EdSource report noted, growing a total of “around 16 times from 1,011 students in 2000-01 to 16,678 in 2020-21.” The district seemed to be guided by an approach to school improvement that relied on the principles of market competition to attract more students and funding, a reform methodology that seems antithetical to the community schools model that relies on collaboration.
Oakland has had and continues to haveAs a result, charter school enrollments are relatively high in comparison to the rest of California. EdSource reportedAn analysis of 2020-2021 district state data: “about 32 percent of Oakland students attended charters, while only about 12 percent of students across the state attended charters.” Meanwhile, “between the 2000-01 and 2020-21 school years,” the enrollment in Oakland’s public “district-run schools dropped 34 percent from 53,852 to 35,489, according to the district’s data.” As the per-pupil funding for these students follows them to the charter schools, the district is left with less funding to support the rollout of a successful community schools model.
Oakland’s public schools, which were closed or threatened to close due to low enrollment, have often had their doors reopened. classroom spaces leased to charter schoolsThe California state law requires that the, but it is hotly contested in this community.
Oakland is being spotlighted at a time when community schools are gaining popularity. California launched recently a $3 billion projectTo increase the number of community schools in the state. Maryland plans to convert nearly one-third of the state’s public schools to the community schools model by 2027. And Congress has proposed to more than double — from $30 million to $75 million — the federal government’s grant program for full-service community schools.
“A Big Hole in This Community”
When former Oakland Superintendent Tony Smith declared the district’s adoption of the community schools model in 2010, the announcement “vaulted the struggling district into the national spotlight,” according to a 2013 article in EdSource. EdSource reporter Michelle Maitre wrote that the decision to adopt the model “would vastly expand the role of schools in the lives of their students and the community as a whole,” and that, even though Smith was leaving Oakland, “[his] departure is unlikely to halt the reform initiative.”
Brookfield Elementary is an Oakland school that was part of the reform initiative. However, it now appears that the school has been closed.
“Closing this school would leave a big hole in this community,” fifth grade teacher Corrin Haskell told Our Schools. Haskell has been teaching at Brookfield for so long — 25 years — that many of the students he currently instructs are children of parents whom Haskell taught years ago.
Brookfield is home to a high number of students who are not housed, according to Haskell. students who don’t speak or read the English language very well, and students who have been labeled as having “discipline problems.” The school also has a “high population of students needing special education services,” according to Haskell, as well as a long list of students with special needs who are mainstreamed into the general education classrooms.
Haskell said the neighborhood surrounding Brookfield has a “bad reputation,” but the school has become the anchor of the community. It is close to other nonprofit organizations with which the school partners, including a library and a senior living center. The school also has partnerships with local businesses.
Brookfield recently went to great lengths in order to improve its facilities. This included planting an orchard, a bamboo forest, new soccer fields, as well as adding a new playground. new labThe $100,000 grant was used to fund the teaching of science, technology engineering, art and math (STEAM). NBA Cares program.
Brookfield has a team of specialists and partnerships that makes it possible to provide legal services to families and students with mental and/or physical health services. Haskell isn’t sure where students and families would go to get these services when the school closes.
He said that schools where families would need to transfer are more than a mile from the homes. sits in the middleIt is difficult to walk around a triangle that is formed by three major thoroughfares. “Everything in the community is attached to the school,” he said.
Also, counter to the district official’s claims of targeting closures of “small schools” only, Brookfield was never designed to be a small school, according to Haskell, who said the current enrollment of 200 is far below the high-water mark of 800 that he remembers from years ago.
Design a Small School
Carl B. Munck Elementary is another school that is closing. It resembles the other side of community schools implementation.
Munck is different from Brookfield Was designed to be a small school, according to the school’s Principal Denise Burroughs, who spoke with Our Schools.
Also, instead of being nestled into a neighborhood like Brookfield is, Munck is “somewhat of an outlier on the closure list,” said Burroughs, because it is located in the Northeast Hills, and is wedged between a large park and a tennis club, making it “not a walkable school.”
Because of its out-of-the-way location, Munck is more of a “commuter school,” said Burroughs, attracting parents from outlying areas who work in Oakland but don’t live there. Burroughs explained that parents are drawn to the school due to its small size and emphasis on technology and the arts. That curricular focus came about “not by the design of someone else,” said Burroughs, but “because that is what has evolved, given the capabilities of the staff and the interests of students and families.”
Also, unlike Brookfield, Munck’s implementation of the community schools model has placed far less emphasis on features like physical and mental health services, often called wraparound services.
“Not offering certain services doesn’t preclude you from being a community school,” said Burroughs, who has worked in the district for 28 years, 17 as a principal. “Each school is different and needs to set up a [community schools] model that meets the needs of its families,” she said. “For us, that means we may not offer the types of wraparound services that are often associated with community schools.”
“We are a small school,” Munck Program Director René Mastin told Our Schools. “The school was constructed to be a small school, so when you try to expand us beyond what was originally the creative model for this space, then you create problems. [Because]We are small. Part of our community schools model, we can get to know all the kids who walk through the doors and recognize their families. [them],” said Mastin, who has worked for the district for 20 years, 18 at Munck.
That determination to offer services that families genuinely need, rather than imitating what other schools offer, led the school to extend its operating hours — the school is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. — to accommodate the needs of its commuting parents.
Burroughs says that the after-school program is extremely popular. Two parents Our Schools spoke with confirmed this popularity.
“The teachers in the after-school program are just amazing,” Courtney Easley, a parent of a first grader at Munck, wrote in an email to Our Schools.
“My son loves the programs the school has to offer and has a schedule he has been following for three years,” wrote Dai Shane Wilder, a parent of a second grader at Munck, adding, “It will be extremely difficult to find another school” when Munck closes.
“More of an Ideal Than an Actuality”
“Community schools [in Oakland] are still more of an ideal than an actuality,” Janelle Scott told Our Schools. “Consolidating and closing schools seems to challenge that ideal.”
Scott, a University of California at Berkeley professor and researcher who closely studies the impact of school closures and the spread of school privatization, has been a prominent critic of the district’s closure plan, writing in an op-ed for the Mercury News that the savings projections the district claimed will result from the closures “do not account for the costs to students’ health, well-being, and safety, or offer clear plans for transportation and before- and after-school care, which are essential for working families.”
In her phone conversation with Our Schools, Scott said that since the beginning of Oakland’s commitment to the community schools model, starting with former Superintendent Smith, “it’s not as clear that subsequent leaders have shared that commitment.”
“Willingness to invest in the community schools ideal has been a challenge,” she said, and her observation is that the implementation is far from being systemic. The district, she said, “has not been able to exert an overall framework” for implementing the model.
While Scott questioned Oakland’s commitment to implementing the community schools model, front-line Oakland educators say the district’s implementation is not being true to the actual principles of the model.
In its “rushed” decision to close schools, Brookfield teacher Haskell said, “[The district is] not engaging the community at all… The top-down decision-making reeks of elitism.”
Brookfield teachers and school personnel used the collaborative leadership practices that are supported by the community schools model to expand their autonomy so they could respond more quickly to student and family requests without having to ask the district permission. “Now, all that work seems to be thrown away,” he said.
Haskell also sees the district’s stance of welcoming charter schools as a betrayal of its commitment to the community schools model. According to Haskell, Brookfield enrolls students “charter schools won’t take,” echoing frequent complaintsCharter schools pick students who are more likely than others to succeed in school, leaving public schools with fewer students who are most difficult.
Haskell explained how Brookfield students began to move to charter schools in their neighborhood. Brookfield had no choice but to reduce costs and close its computer lab and library. It also cut back on its extensive sports programs, which incentivized families into leaving the school.
Munck educators Mastin Burroughs and Burroughs also accused district of not being genuine supporters of the collaborative approach to community schools that allows for community-led creation and practice of school programs and practices from the bottom up. In Munck’s case, the district has pressured the school to provide services the district is supportive of rather than allowing Munck to determine for itself what is best for its students and families.
“Community schools is a model that oftentimes [school leaders] want to just… [impose] on any school,” said Mastin.
Principal Burroughs accused the district of “trying to have us be something else” by emphasizing wraparound services in its adoption of the model, while, at Munck, adopting the approach has led to more of “an academic model and a social-emotional model.”
Berkeley professor Scott pointed out that Oakland’s plan for closing schools also poses significant problems in schools that will be assigned to welcome students from the schools that have been closed. The welcoming schools, many of which do not follow the community schools model, may not even be aware that they’ve been designated for that role and won’t know which students will show up at their doors until opening week.
For that reason and others, the district’s plan, Scott felt, “shows a lack of consideration of all the dimensions that are important if students are really, as the district claims, at the center of its efforts.”
No matter whether Oakland is truly at a point where it cannot choose but to close schools, this decision to close schools following the community schools approach shines light on the policy implications that come with becoming a school system that is committed to school transformation that values the well-being and needs of students and families as well as the community.
The community outrage over the closure decision shows that Oakland school officials made the wrong choice in putting their education reform horse on the back of community schools. They may not have known that it would be more difficult for the district’s to follow the principles of the model, making it more difficult to maintain a command and control leadership style that is contrary to the model.
If what constitutes a “quality school” is based on how well the school responds to the needs of the surrounding community, then how can fiscal efficiency vault to the top of policy imperatives?
If districts claim to include communities in making decisions about schools, how can they make sweeping decisions based on a perceived budget imperative the community doesn’t accept?
How can a school district agree to a collaborative model for school transform?
These difficult policy issues seem to be unique in Oakland. Are other districts in California, Maryland, and across the country adopting the model of community schools paying attention?
