President Yee and Vice President Davis,

Please stop hiding behind your Zoom cameras—It’s time for these meetings to return to a hybrid format so that the community has options for how to participate. I’ve heard Director Hutchinson question whether it’s even legal for you to stop holding in-person meetings right now, while our schools are open 100% in person, and I haven’t heard an adequate response to that question. If you want people to trust you as leaders, you need to listen. I’ve heard a demand for both virtual and in-person meetings, and those are both safe and reasonable requests at this time.

It is disingenuous to pretend that you’ve switched to virtual meetings for safety reasons. As someone who works at a school site where over 25% of students tested positive for Covid in the first month of 2022, it is offensive to my deep east Oakland school community, and all of Oakland, that you think you and the board deserve protections that the rest of us don’t have. You can’t pretend it’s in the interest of the public; we all know regular attendance is low enough at school board meetings for it to be safe in the Great Room during this pandemic. If we were able to figure out how to safely test 400 students twice-a-week outdoors at REACH Academy during the omicron surge, then you can accommodate the public on that beautiful La Escuelita campus in a way that is Covid safe. 

If you’re going to vote to close Oakland public schools during a pandemic with no community engagement and a timeline that honors no one, then SAY IT TO OUR FACES. Return to hybrid board meetings and own up to your bad decisions that harm the communities you were elected to serve. 

Megan Bumpus, 5th grade teacher & OUSD parent