Gated Community

 The morning after the Big Meeting, there was a line of kids outside the gate. They were waiting to get in. They were waiting to get into the school that had been their home away from home for most of their lives. I was on the inside, so I unlocked the gate and let them in to start another day. 

I was a tad bleary, having stayed up way past my bedtime to take in as much of the Big Meeting as I could. I sat through the commissioned fiscal study that came with a slideshow that presented the Oakland Unified School District's plan to close schools. I sat in front of my desk at home, staring at my computer as the Zoom event unfolded. My wife brought me dinner there as I waited for the axe to fall. All the while I mused on metaphors and analogies. The one I settled on initially was the one in which I went to a doctor to see about the pain I was having in my leg. To which the doctor replied, "Well, it looks like you've got another leg right there next to the one with pain. I think what we'll do is just take that painful leg off and leave you with the one good one. How about that?"

I would seek out another opinion. These closings of thirteen public schools were leaked to us all a week before the Big Meeting. We had just enough time to attempt to organize our community around this highly charged decision, and there was some concern that this outrageous choice would sail past our families without a chance for rebuttal. 

I needn't have worried. Thousands of people, young and old, queued up to speak their minds about the "consolidation" process. Once the floodgates were finally opened, there was a seemingly endless stream of parents, students and community members waiting to have their voices heard. It came as one, loud, continuous voice of dissent. To say that this voice was saying "Thank you, no," would be doing a disservice to the eloquence and periodic ferocity of those who were allowed in to speak their minds. Many of them focused on the vague frailty of the one choice offered by the district, backed up by numbers collected by an outside consulting firm. Headed by, I am not making this up, a man named Barry Dragon. 

So while I sat there, eventually hearing folks from my neighborhood and my school, I wondered how these elected officials might respond. In the face of all this outrage, would they simply pivot and allow for other directions, other possible solutions? Finally, after sitting in front of a computer for five hours, I knew that I had to pack it in. I was going to be needed the next morning.

I had to be there to open the gate.