Community Education and Resistance to State Takeover: Bridging Local and State Struggles

• In Event: Constructing New Visions in K-12 School Finance: The Past, Present, and Future of State Interventions into District Finances

Abstract

This presentation is a community-led reflection on the power of organizing against the takeover of their school districts and the role of research in policy advocacy. We are a group of community members and organizers from the Statewide Partnership for Local School Control (SPLSC), a coalition that started in 2022 to address state intervention and budget cuts. Through virtual biweekly meetings and in-person local community events, the coalition works with parents, educators, students, and community leaders to inform and activate community members around the impact of state receivership on our schools The coalition comprises three organizations based in Oakland and Inglewood, California (Oakland Not For Sale, Parent Voices Oakland, and Inglewood Rising) with organizers working with education leaders and parents in other districts across the state. Participants will share their experiences with education funding inequity, including their experiences navigating the state audit agency, school finance politics, and education conditions in their respective public schools. First, we will reflect on our organizing in our school communities, and the nature of state and county intervention in our local public schools. Then, we will outline the evolution of the coalition and the grassroots and policy strategies for tackling these financial and political problems. Lastly, we will outline the opportunities and challenges in creating a bill to return local control to Inglewood Unified and Oakland Unified.

Like any coalition, SPLSC members hold a range of views about the nature of their district’s financial problems as well as the political strategies to engage state policymakers in addressing these problems. Participants will theorize the nuances of policy dilemmas from grounded knowledge and scholarly perspectives, with a focus on the role of research evidence in their current legislative campaign.

Author

• Yaritza Gonzalez, ING Rising