Racial slurs, violent language disrupt Oakland schools online workshop
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This file photo shows Oakland Unified School District board members attending a meeting in the Great Room at the LaEscuelita Center in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, June 12, 2019.Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle
A “small” group of people participating in Oakland Unified School District’s Early Literacy Summit and Family Workshop on Zoom disrupted the livestream with “expletives, racial slurs, and violent language” and an “obscene video,” district officials said Thursday night.
School district officials did not specify the exact language used or the video that was displayed, but Sondra Aguilera, the district’s chief academic officer, said the conduct on Thursday afternoon prompted officials to temporarily shut down the chat function and remove the “offending indivdiuals” from the Zoom only for it to happen again “a short time later.” The chat function was shut
In a major overhaul of the Los Angeles School Police Department,
the Board of Education on Tuesday approved a plan that cuts a third of its officers, bans the use of pepper spray on students and diverts funds from the department to improve the education of Black students.
The unanimous decision comes after a yearlong campaign by students activists and community members to reimagine the school police force, which they maintain disproportionately targets Black and Latino children. Their drive and recent calls to completely defund the school Police Department intensified following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, which forced cities and school districts across the country to consider how police use of force has disproportionately hurt Black Americans.
Paso Robles Joint Unified School District had 554 kindergarten grade students during 2018-2019 school year, according to the California Department of Education. Los Angeles Unified School District had the highest number of kindergarten grade students enrolled in California with 59,185.
According to numbers provided by the National Center for Education Services, California is expected to see a decrease of three percent in public elementary and secondary school enrollment from 2017-2029. The state expected to see the largest drop in enrollment is New Mexico with a projected 12 percent decrease, while Washington D.C. is projected to see a 14 percent increase over the same time period.