OAKLAND — A coalition of school families, educators and others has sued Oakland Unified School District over its plan to close, shrink or merge schools, alleging that district leaders violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it did not analyze whether the plan will exacerbate “significant environmental harms” to Black and Latino communities affected by the decision.
The lawsuit, filed by the Justice for Oakland Students coalition this week in Alameda County Superior Court, says the school district was required by CEQA to analyze the environmental impacts of the school closures, which it says will lead to increased traffic and pollution, or to explain why the plan to close schools is exempt under that law.
Students who currently walk or bike to their neighborhood schools will now have to commute, often by car, the lawsuit explains. That could lead to increased traffic and worse air quality in the the neighborhoods where the students from closed schools will be going.
The district “voted to close these schools in a process that was rushed, not transparent, and we now know, in violation of its obligations under CEQA, Pecolia Manigo Awobodu, a member of the coalition and Oakland parent, said in a written statement. “OUSD needs to start over in a thoughtful and lawful process that protects not just its students but the East Oakland communities already suffering from asthma and other health issues related to pollution and emissions before closing neighborhood schools that our families can walk to.”
Azlinah Tambu, a parent of children at Parker School, which is slated for closure, added, “some families don’t have transportation at all, so those children will be walking on streets that already weren’t safe and now will be worse.”
District spokesman John Sasaki declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the district’s policy of not speaking publicly about pending litigation.
When it approved the closure plan, the school board cited a need to save money so it could invest in better programming for students and higher salaries for educators. It also said the move would help reduce a looming budget shortfall, since its funding has been spread thin operating more schools per student than most other school districts in California.
But opponents of the school closure plan have blasted the school board for approving the plan without further analysis of the impacts of school closures on students’ wellbeing, particularly in Black and Latino communities. After announcing which schools were on a list for potential closure in January, the board approved its plan less than a month later.
Last month, the ACLU of Northern California filed a complaint with the California Department of Justice on behalf of the Justice For Oakland Students coalition, asking state Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the board’s plan to close schools without an equity analysis.
At six of the seven schools slated for closure, Black students are either the majority of those enrolled or are enrolled at a higher percentage than across the district. Black students make up about a fifth of students districtwide.
Similarly, the lawsuit filed this week asks the court to require Oakland Unified to conduct an environmental
equity analysis to determine the impact of the closures on schools that will absorb the extra students, which are mostly in East Oakland.
This lawsuit hits the same points addressed in the ACLU complaint, said Erin Bernstein, an attorney representing the coalition.
“They just pushed this through on a very expedited basis,” Bernstein said in an interview Thursday, noting there was no real analysis of the racial equity or the environmental impacts of the decision.
While CEQA is brought up more often in decisions involving large construction developments, there is legal precedent for its bearing on school closures.
In 2015, a California appellate court ruled that the Barstow Unified School District’s decision to close two schools and transfer the students to other schools was not exempt from CEQA, as the district had claimed.