The Trumpian trick of not testing people in order to be able to deny that there is an epidemic should be utterly discredited, and yet here we are in 2021 and the Oakland School District has committed itself to a testing program that can not possibly test even 20% a week of the eligible members of the community.  Why would a district with the federal funding for COVID response come up with such a plan?  The answer has something to do with the successful pressure on the district to privatize, to make themselves  more accommodating not only to charter schools but also to the vision of education as a corporate enterprise.  OUSD’s response to the need for testing was to turn to Vestra Labs, a self described “concierge medical service” which was only “affordable” at 10 locations and only during school hours. Students would miss school and parents would miss work, and  the real demand for testing (about 50,000 a week) could never be met.  

   At the first School Board meeting of the year on August 11, two days after the first day of school, many parents and staff came to speak in support of two items Board member Mike Hutchinson had put on the agenda – for accessible, frequent COVID testing and available, appropriate distance learning.  With a strictly enforced time limit of 60 seconds per speaker, testimony went on for well over an hour of pleas for adequate testing and stories of failed attempts to get services.  The Board then moved on to their important business of extending the Superintendent’s contract and awarding her a raise and sabbatical.  When interrupted by irate parents who demanded a response to their concerns, the Board President, Shanthi Gonzalez, packed up and left the room to resume an hour later online.

   What was going on? On one side you had a board majority that was dismissive and tone-deaf (at best) to its constituents, and on the other were the community and Mike Hutchinson, long-standing advocate for public schools and fierce opponent of privatization.  Because that is what this fiasco/ bizarre drama is about.  OUSD is so steeped in the privatization culture that their response to the need for testing was to identify Oakland as a low infection community and sign a contract, ignoring the three zip codes that have consistently been double the surrounding areas.  They ignored these children and their families when they hired a company with no roots in the community and a lack of standards for employees.    

   Board member Hutchinson did what OUSD should have done–reached out to the Alameda County Health Department and the clinics that were already providing testing and vaccinations in his district in East Oakland– and managed to set up weekly testing at each of the schools in District 5.  He understands what community schools mean- that schools are an integral part of our communities and must be connected with all community agencies.

   The failure of OUSD to serve its students comes from an ideology that rejects public schools as a fundamental social institution and prefers a neoliberal vision of individual profit, selling distance learning programs, and outsourcing what should be basic community services like meals and health care– and COVID testing. 

 Deirdre Snyder