By Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, Guest Contributor
Twenty years ago, a bomb went off in our cities. We saw the rapid maneuvering of corporate interests and foundations to destabilize and dismantle public education, specifically in low-income Black communities across the country. We saw the development of a very sophisticated strategy: the takeover of entire school districts.
Ten years ago, a new battle grounded emerged: New Orleans.
Three months after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana legislature passed Act 35, allowing the state-run Recovery School District (RSD) to take over 107 New Orleans public schools. What resulted was a man-made catastrophe:
- Over 7,500 school employees, including 4,000 teachers, were fired
- Massive waves of school closures (only half of the 107 schools were re-opened)
- Students shuffled from struggling school to struggling school, across community lines, from one end of the city to the other
- Students attending schools in deteriorating trailers
- Intensified inequity and instability in New Orleans schools
- Exacerbated student push-out through harsh discipline
The vast majority of schools closed were in poor and working class, Black neighborhoods, communities that were hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Ten years later, the RSD is the first all charter school district in the country, with very little improvement in the quality of education provided to New Orleans ‘ students. Cities and states have since then deployed this same strategy, attacking primarily Black schools and school districts with the false promise of improving educational outcomes, while destabilizing schools and making millions of dollars.
We cannot continue in the path of Newark, Detroit, and New Orleans, to name a few.
This past June the Ohio General Assembly, at the last minute in the legislative process of it current session and with no opportunity for community input, passed House Bill 70. Just like similar bills in Georgia, North Carolina, and Arkansas, SB70 would allow for:
- the removal of teachers union
- local voters losing the right to control their own school districts
- districts to turn operations over to for profit management entities
And on July 16, 2015, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed HB70 into law. This is a dangerous track for us to be on. We’ve seen over and over again that these takeovers; the massive privatization of school districts, does not equal school improvement. In fact, they have created instability, charter fraud, mismanagement, and the loss of thousands of students in school systems that push them out.
It has been 18 years since Ohio Supreme Court ruled by a 4-3 decision in ‘DeRolph v State’ that, “The time has come to fix the system. Let there be no misunderstanding. Ohio’s public school-financing scheme must undergo a complete systematic overhaul.”
We at Racial Justice NOW! know Black communities across the state will be devastated by these takeovers. The roots causes for why certain districts are deemed “failing” are not being addressed. Our schools need adequate funding, culturally relevant curriculum, and positive school discipline policies that keep our children in the classroom. We need real investment in education, across community lines. We need equity. Parents need to have a voice in education, local control. This is our choice.
Zakiya Sankara-Jabar
Director, Racial Justice NOW!