To: Current Francophone Families and Our Fellow Oakland Community Members From: Francophone Charter School of Oakland Nonprofit Board of Directors
April 21, 2020
To Our Families and Community:
We at Francophone have a wonderful, inclusive public school that families value. Recently, some of our families, staff, and board have been the target of an intimidation campaign by people who think our school should be erased. The campaign is coordinated by the Oakland Education Association (OEA). We will continue to engage civilly and productively with those who do the same, but we will call out irresponsible acts of aggression and intimidation.
We will also continue to ensure the school’s ability to serve families and their children through the structures of the law. Families and educators came together on their own to create this high performing, globally-inclusive nonprofit public school, and efforts to tear it down by sowing fear are unacceptable. We are calling on OEA to immediately halt these intimidation tactics, including publishing personal information.
We support productive dialogue, but must draw the line when attacks become personal. As part of OEA’s intimidation campaign, our volunteer board members’ home addresses, and even our spouses’ and coworkers’ phone numbers, were shared with thousands of people. This is a malicious practice called “doxing,” and is commonly used by the alt-right; it puts our own families at risk and we forcefully condemn it.
We’d like to share some facts about our small school. We were founded by a group of families who envisioned a diverse, globally-minded, French language dual-immersion public school. Our school is a public school, free to attend, and is the only opportunity for public French language immersion in the region. A majority of our students identify as people of color, and approximately one-third of our families qualify for free or reduced lunch.
After much work, we received our charter in 2015. Our goal from the beginning was to develop bilingual and bi-literate global citizens who are open-minded and value intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, and creativity. By design, we celebrate the more than 275 million French speakers across the world, including those in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Canada, South America, and Europe. While many of our families originally come from these countries, many Oakland natives see this school as an incredible opportunity for their children to become bilingual global citizens.
As a public charter school, we are free and open to all Oakland students. We are governed by a volunteer board of directors and are incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Our board and committee meetings are public. We receive public funds and small donations, just like any other public school. The families, children, educators and board members of Francophone are your neighbors, friends and fellow community members. They deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
Why would anyone try to intimidate our school? As many of you may know, over the past few months, a small but vocal group of individuals has urged Francophone Charter School of Oakland not to co-locate with any other school. To be clear, most schools, including ours, would rather have their own facility, and we have certainly struggled to serve our students in far too little space (making the cafeteria into classrooms, and resorting to using tents and former storage closets for instructional space). However, private facilities are often unaffordable, and the law requires that OUSD must provide a reasonable facility to charter schools within Oakland’s boundaries. That offer, called the Prop 39 facilities offer, is based on the California law which tries to create an equitable sharing of school sites (facilities) among all public school students. The law provides a way for public charter schools to have buildings to be in, without which they can’t exist. All public school children have the right to public school facilities.
Charter schools pay their fair share of facilities costs to the district for these shared spaces, often paying for upgrades to decaying facilities themselves. And while Prop 39 is well-intentioned, its implementation in Oakland has been challenging for all of us, and some groups are choosing to in-fight rather than look for collective solutions. There are better options, and attempting to pit families and educators against one another is not one of them. This article from Great School Voices provides a starting point for those looking to advocate for something which serves every public school child, and to understand Prop 39.
What are our options? For two years, many of our students have been co-located at Howard Elementary. For the 2020-2021 school year, we again have to consider a Prop 39 facility, for lack of any better options. OUSD has made an offer for half of our school to co-locate at Brookfield Elementary; the other half would remain at Toler Heights. We would prefer to be on a single campus and are exploring private facilities, but again, affordable and acceptable facilities are difficult to obtain.
We have been and will be a good neighbor. The beginning of our co-location at Howard elementary held challenges for both schools. However, we have learned many lessons, and have since formed a strong relationship with Howard’s Principal. Our two school communities have come together to find ways to make our co-location work for each school. Howard and Francophone have shared equipment, monthly breakfasts, gardening, and even held a joint end-of-year celebration. Wherever our school lands, we will find positive, creative, and inclusive ways to partner and build community.
Where do we go from here? There are no easy answers, but we are certain that nothing will be solved by tweeting falsehoods or sowing conflict, as OEA is doing. Especially at this time of chaos and danger in the world, we believe in coming together to find collective solutions and putting children at the center. We acknowledge that the American system which we all operate within is an inherently unjust system, and that great strides are needed to create an equitable and thriving society. We are committed to push forward to change that system so that all students have access to a great public education. And we will always do this with respect, humility, and partnership. We invite others to do the same.
Signed: Board of Directors, Francophone Charter School of Oakland