Urban Schoolers Occupy Ocean View Elementary Site (Parody)

[Editor's Note: A community member submitted this post as a parody in response to an occupation by activists of University of California-owned land at the Gill Tract in April 2012.]

At dawn Sunday morning, hundreds of parents and local schools activists cut the lock on the gate to the at 1000 Jackson St. in Albany, moved in, and started preparing classrooms for a new charter elementary school they plan to run on the site starting on Tuesday, May 1.  

Frustrated by the school district’s insistence on using corporate-designed curricula, such as Everyday Math, Raz Kids and Writer’s Workshop, the “Take Back the School” group decided that it was time to take matters into their own hands.

“This kind of civil disobedience may not sit right with everyone, but we’re at the point of last resort. , and this this was our last chance to save this site,” said a defiant “Schooler,” who preferred to be known as “Just Paolo.”  “The Ocean View site is the last 10 acres of Title 1 school funding left in Albany,” he said, “and they’re just using it for test preparation and teaching ‘social studies,' whatever that is. We’re going to turn this land into something we as a people need.”  

The Schoolers have put up signs on the Ocean View fence that read “Your School. Your Education.” and “General Strike.” Although they have brought camp stoves and sleeping bags into the site, the Schoolers say they aren’t planning to continue sleeping at Ocean View permanently. However, they have moved all of the desks and books out of the classrooms and into the central courtyard, which Ocean View teachers say will prevent them from teaching their classes.  

At an impromptu community meeting at the Crossroads Room in the adjacent on Sunday afternoon, a former Ocean View teacher said she had heard rumors that the Schoolers had taken all of the computers out of the library. Twenty-year-old Lacey Carp, the Schoolers’ media liaison, countered that they had not taken away the desks. “For now, we’ve left the desks, although what we’re going to do with them.” 

Several of the Ocean View teachers expressed concerns about their ability to get the kids ready for the state’s annual STAR standardized testing, which had been scheduled to begin this week. As one teacher put it, “We need to get through these tests for funding reasons, so that we can get back to teaching these kids how to read and write.” Ms. Carp responded that STAR testing isn’t really that important, and that “there are plenty of places around the Bay Area where the old teachers can ‘teach to the test’ if they want to.”

“The AUSD is just planning to put a pot dispensary in here, anyway,” she continued, “so it’s not like they really care about educating our kids.” A proposed and rejected by the in the past, but the dispensary would have been set up on a different parcel, and not on the Ocean View site.

The Schoolers say they plan to hold an open house at the school Wednesday night, so that parents and children from the area can get a chance to see all the work being done at the new charter school being set up on the site of their old neighborhood school.