Mine

 I maybe have only my own lack of awareness to blame. It was a colleague who sent me a text that included an amendment that the Oakland school board was considering. I had, at this point, stopped paying laser focus to the shenanigans' of my district's governing body. After they had voted not once, twice, but three times voted to close my school along with a dozen others despite loud and angry disItsent from the community that they allegedly serve. Instead, I had taken to the business of proving them wrong. Organizing. Marching. Speaking out. 

Little did I know they had surprises left.

At their "regular" meeting of March 9. 2022, an amendment was introduced that would take the playground reparations and improvements and move them to two other schools instead of mine. At this point, I feel compelled to recognize all this "my me mine." I have beat the number of years I have worked at this site into the ground, perhaps to the point at which it means less. But I feel a personal connection to the place where I have spent the majority of my adult life. And a great portion of that time has been spent out on the yard at Horace Mann Elementary School. 

I have delivered countless Friday Morning Messages out there. Supervised more recesses, lunches and free time there than I can remember. For a year, I watched it sit empty while our kids were in distance learning. I wondered back then if the district would use that opportunity to renovate the stretch of asphalt that serves as a soccer field, a basketball court, a four square grid, a play structure and a vast expanse for imaginations and energy to spill out. 

That never happened. But when we returned to in-person learning, some of my younger colleagues banded together to formulate a plan that would bring some relief to the aged and ever more dangerous plains of Horace Mann's yard. Trees. An additional place to climb and play safely. And a surface under it all that was not crumbling. Plans were drawn up. Supervisors and architects visited with clipboards and maps. 

In December of 2021, the Oakland school board approved the plan, with support from Kaboom, a group whose stated mission is to "end playspace inequity." In late January that same board voted to close our school. The last shoe to fall in this process was for the board to give our new playground away. Which brings us to present. 

I walked out on that yard the next morning and surveyed the cracks and holes that have only become wider over the years. The aging mat underneath the monkey bars. The surface that is constantly covered with gravel due to the ongoing disintegration of the asphalt where children have been running and playing every day. Before I got here. The whole time I've been here. 

At the beginning of this school year, as we welcomed our students back to our campus, a group of dignitaries visited us. There were news crews. There were reporters. There were community members. Along with the district superintendent and members of the school board. I made a point of walking our superintendent out onto the yard, and asking her why our playground had been ignored for more than twenty-five years. She assured me that it was on a list. 

No mention of the other list that we were on: The one that would close our doors. And make our new playground an afterthought. The night I heard the news, I was beyond words. But I seem to have gotten over that. But I will stick with the ones that I know for sure: This is my playground. This makes me angry. This place I call "mine."