By Zoneil Maharaj, Photos by Angelica Flores and Steve Wake
Jul 16, 2007 - 9:20 PM
East Oakland Community High School students march for their education and lose, but only come out stronger
Oakland residents observe as marchers take over their streets. (Photo by Angelica Flores)
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Lorna Dare used to have a six foot wire fence around her property to keep deer out. A sturdy rod iron fence has taken its place to keep burglars at bay. Behind the school campus is a vast open space park that stretches several acres before it reaches the quiet King Estates neighborhood where Dare and her husband reside. Her house was broken into four times in a period of six months beginning in October 2005. Four students from EOC were identified as suspects in the first two crimes.
As her husband prepares dinner, Dare sits at her kitchen table and recounts each incident. The first time, the burglars broke in through the sliding glass doors in the living room and stole a jar of quarters, causing $1,500 in damages to the door alone, according to Dare. Though they knew there was an alarm after triggering it the first time, they came back two weeks later for dimes and nickels.
According to Yang, the one student who was caught is no longer enrolled at the school. The student’s family circumstances were poor, and his single-parent family bounced from hotels to homeless shelters.
“The kid stole a jar of nickels. That’s the kid that the neighbors say should be put in jail,” Yang says.
The third and fourth times – though not proven to be students – the burglars were destructive, pissing on the floor and walls, damaging furniture and other items in the house, Dare says
“What good are the schools if the kids aren’t learning and the neighbors constantly aren’t enjoying it?” asks Dare who says she frequently sees kids “smoking dope” at bus stops. “Obviously, they have no control over them.”
When Anita Stewart came home one evening in May, her house was ransacked. Everything was turned upside down, she says. Her jewelry was missing and her children’s videogames were stolen. The large wide-screen TV stood in place because, she speculates, the culprits didn’t have a car to put large items in.
Stewart, an Indian American woman, has lived in the Oak Knoll neighborhood for five years. Her husband, fifteen. Their beautiful hillside home is less than a quarter-mile away from the school.
“We’ve had crime but nothing like the explosion of daytime robberies in December 2005,” says Stewart, a member of the Oak Knoll Neighborhood Association.
Though she can’t prove that the burglars were students, she cites the change in the school’s population for a decrease in the community’s quality of life. The number of daytime robberies within a half-mile of the school has increased from 7 to 22 since the schools have opened, according to police documents obtained by the Oak Knoll Neighborhood Association. Neighbors have complained about increased vandalism, graffiti, and speedings on Fontaine St. where the school is located.
Residents in the community were never told high schools would be placed there. Stewart has walked door-to-door to collect signatures for a petition to reinstate a middle school at the campus. Though Stewart and other residents admit that parents in the neighborhoods send their children to charter or private schools or schools in other districts, they say it is because the schools aren’t performing academically.
Stewart says if a middle school is reinstated, neighbors will work with it and improve the quality of education.
Board members later point out that when poor-performing King Estates Middle School was located at the current campus, the neighborhood associations were not leaping to help it improve, and there was no community uproar when it shut down.
“I don’t understand what the agenda is but to me it seems people are more concerned about their property than the quality of the youth’s education,” says Newin Orante, a resident of the King Estates neighborhood for six years and a former school district employee. “The only thing I see is that the people walking by my house are older. All of a sudden every crime in the neighborhood is associated with the school. Often times likes this, the youth get shunned. It’s the student voice that gets the raw deal.”
Yang feels that the neighbors’ concerns are a matter of urban politics.
“There are burglaries around Castlemont (High School). There are burglaries in my neighborhood, but somehow those privileges don’t apply to us,” says Yang from inside his home in the Oakland flatlands. “It’s normal for the flatland people to hear gunshots every night, to have to see kids on the corner who are cutting school, who have to deal with burglaries. But it’s not normal in the Hills.”
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Low Test Scores, High Hopes
Down the hillside, where Golf Links Rd. hits 82nd Ave., the beautiful green pastures and serenity of the Oakland Foothills comes to a halt. The grass on some of the lawns are still green but the landscape is dramatically different. Liquor stores and litter are abundant. Here, there are murals of Mac Dre and Tupac Shakur, countless liquor stores and heavy traffic. The new Chevy Silverados, Honda Accords, and Ford Focuses of the foothills are replaced with late 80s Buicks with large chrome wheels.
This is “The Town,” a stereotypical portrait of the city glorified in Oakland rap. This is also where a majority of the students from East Oakland Community High and Youth Empowerment School reside.
A funeral procession moves down Bancroft Ave. as a man pushes his broken down truck up the street across from Dominic and Olveida Leon’s home. The four-foot gate around their house stays locked, unless one of them comes outside to open it. Inside, Dominic keeps a low-rider bike he customized on display. On the walls are model cars he’s collected for years. In the kitchen, Olveida prepares dinner as their daughter, Carmen helps.
Olveida remembers the day she came home to find her daughter’s bedroom door shut. There wasn’t any noise coming from the room. When she opened the door, she was shocked to find Carmen doing homework.
The soft-spoken 14-year-old isn’t and never has been a straight A student. Given more time and attention, her parents believe she can get there. Throughout her elementary and middle school years, she received mostly Ds and Fs. This is her first year at East Oakland Community High, and now she’s getting Cs.
“And a B+ in biology!” Olveida shouts from the kitchen. “She’s excited about learning. It gives me a great hope.”
Despite their efforts, Olveida and Dominic couldn’t get their daughter to engage in her education. Carmen credits her interest and newfound motivation to the faculty of the school.
“I don’t want to go to another school with too many students or a teacher who just wants to get to the end of the day,” Carmen says. “The teachers stay with you after school to help you out. A lot of the kids I know stay there after school. Usually, they don’t want to leave.”
Faculty members go the extra length for their students, going so far as to take students to doctor’s appointments, Wayne Yang says. Often, students visit his home for help with projects.
“We’ve finally created the conditions for which students are actually invested in school…They’re investing because they actually have hope. They have faith that these adults will not let them down,” Yang says. “I appreciate the challenge the district is throwing at us…Whether or not we believe in test scores, it’s still telling. We believe those test scores should go up. They’ll never be comparable to the population for which the tests were designed to measure, but our students will get into college and that’s the difference.”
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