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Davis Organization of Parents for Education in the Neighborhoods
(Davis OPEN) is a voluntary organization of Davis parents who believe that every elementary school child should have the opportunity
to attend a neighborhood school regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, language, or social class.
Davis OPEN's
immediate goal is to keep Davis neighborhood elementary schools open for all, hence our first campaign, which helped
secure the opening of Korematsu as a K-6 school by the fall of 2008: Keep Davis OPEN for all!
To learn more about
how this campaign fared, click on the tab "Signature Campaign."
We are
very disappointed, however, that the Board of Trustees of the Davis Joint Unified School District could not find a way of
keeping all of our nine elementary schools open and instead voted on March 19, 2007, to close Valley Oak by the
fall of 2008.
We greatly appreciate the support we received from the President of the Board, Jim Provenza,
and from the Vice President, Dr. Sheila Allen, in our efforts to keep all of our nine elementary schools open.
We
believe that we can find creative solutions and Keep Davis OPEN for all!
We do not,
however, agree with the members of the Board who believe that the creative solution is to place the burden of running
two political campaigns on the shoulders of the poorest neighborhood in Davis: one for the general parcel tax and the
other ostensibly for keeping Valley Oak open--as everyone in Davis knows, this tax is for running nine elementary
schools, and it should be named for what it is.
If the Board had adopted this tax as part of a general
tax measure, a unique opportunity would be born for all neighborhoods to unite in one campaign to pass it. Then, we could
truly reach unity with all of our diversity. Or at least, the Board could suggest a "nine-elementary-schools
tax," which would bring the Mace Ranch and Valley Oak neighborhoods to cooperate in a political campaign. Unfortunately,
though, the majority of our Board failed to make use of these opportunities that could unite us as a diverse city.
Organization News
We will be in recess for a while but you may expect to hear from us later in the year. Please take this opportunity to
learn more about Davis neighborhood schools, the Final Report of the Best Uses of Schools Advisory Task Force, which is available
on the website of the Davis Joint Unified School District, and its critique by our members, which you can access by clicking
the tab "A Critique of the Task Force Report" on the left.
These reports will be continually
discussed in the next year and a half as the residents of Davis will face the trauma of the destruction of the only
majority-minority school of the city and the most successful English Learners Program.
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