A sign announcing a walkout by teachers to protest school closures hangs on the marquee outside Parker Elementary School on Tuesday, Feb. 8. The Oakland school board voted early Wednesday to close or merge 11 campuses — including Parker Elementary — as it confronts a budget deficit and declining enrollments. (Photo courtesy of jess/@soothingmonkey via Twitter)
City, state, and labor leaders gathered at Oakland City Hall on Wednesday to speak out against the decision by the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education to close, merge or reduce grades for 11 schools, a decision rejected by many in the community.
Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan stood alongside state Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, City Council President Pro Tempore Sheng Thao, and among others, teachers union president Keith Brown to denounce the vote.
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Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.
Katy St. Clair got her start in journalism by working in the classifieds department at the East Bay Express during the height of alt weeklies, then sweet talked her way into becoming staff writer, submissions editor, and music editor. She has been a columnist in the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. Starting in 2015, she begrudgingly scaled the inverted pyramid at dailies such as the Vallejo Times-Herald, The Vacaville Reporter, and the Daily Republic. She has her own independent news site and blog that covers the delightfully dysfunctional town of Vallejo, California, where she also collaborates with the investigative team at Open Vallejo. A passionate advocate for people with developmental disabilities, she serves on both the Board of the Arc of Solano and the Arc of California. She lives in Vallejo.
