Children at Risk

By Jovanka D. Beckles

Fixing the schools requires local control

by Jovanka Beckles (West County Times 12/03/09)

More than 11,000 Richmond children attend 20 public schools located in our city. Some 8,500 are children of color and many of our families have limited incomes. At least 50,000 Richmond residents are part of families with children attending a West Contra Costa district school.

Today, our children are experiencing the calamities of a collapsed system built on the wrong priorities. Cresting 30 years of greed, we now see the largest transfer of wealth ever from the public to the private sector, to the benefit of banks and corporations.

Richmond's children remain deprived and hopeless, crammed in classrooms with too many students and underpaid teachers without the needed resources. They continue to fall through widening cracks. Richmond's children are not the priority in Washington, D.C., or Sacramento.

Change will not come from there.

We, the residents of Richmond, must join with our dedicated teachers and their representatives. Together, we must push for real local control through alternative local governing bodies, which do not allow the people's elected school officials to continue doing the state's dirty work of cutting and slashing our children's future.

The quality of its schools make the quality of a city. Local schools blossom with local control.

Jovanka Beckles

Richmond

See more of my positions at my website <http://www.jovankabeckles.org>