Campaigns

Since 2001, when CFJ began to focus on justice in the public school system, we have undertaken a number of campaigns to make concrete improvements to schools and the education system.

Improving School Health and Conditions

Many youth of color, low-income, and immigrant students attend schools that are overcrowded, have old and unsafe buildings, and have serious health hazards. CFJ student members report seeing roaches and rodents in their classrooms and school buildings.

One of the most disturbing and unhealthy aspects of these schools is the poor condition of campus bathrooms. Students routinely face filthy bathrooms that lack even the basics of toilet paper and soap.

In Long Beach, CFJ members decided to demand changes. The students took pictures of the clogged toilets, broken plumbing, and flooded bathrooms. They called the press and took the photos to a school board meeting. That evening every major television station in Los Angeles ran the bathroom photos along with students talking about the unsanitary conditions they face. The district suddenly decided to listen to the students and quickly agreed to make some real changes.

Dismantling the “Prison Track”

While some students in California schools are placed on a “college track,” with college preparatory classes and support, others are placed on a “prison track” by unfair school discipline. “Zero tolerance” discipline policies are often implemented in arbitrary and discriminatory ways that target African American and Latino students.

CFJ student leaders in San Diego responded by creating a set of proposals to improve the fairness of discipline in their schools and to reduce the overall number of suspensions and expulsions. District Superintendent Alan Bersin ignored repeated requests from the students to discuss the problems, so students held a rally and press conference in front of school district offices. With coverage from Fox, ABC, CBS, and KUSI-TV, the students were successful in bringing their concerns to the public. Superintendent Bersin quickly agreed to meet with them to discuss their proposals.

Equalizing Funding and Resources

The disparities between different schools in California can be so great that it appears there are two separate school systems. One has schools with modern buildings, the latest textbooks, and plenty of available computers; the other has schools that suffer from a lack of the most basic educational resources.

One of those schools without basic resources is Fresno High in the Central Valley. On November 14, 2003, the students there had sat through enough—over 500 of them walked out of their school and marched to the Fresno Unified School District offices to protest their school conditions.

In the days after the protest CFJ invited concerned students to a meeting to develop a strategy to push for concrete changes in Fresno schools.

Several students who had organized the walkout became CFJ members and joined previously existing Fresno CFJ leaders to  develop a “Quality Education Agenda.” This platform  included a detailed listing of the unacceptable conditions in Fresno schools and six immediate recommendations for remedying these problems. With the media still hot on the story, the students went to the next school board meeting organized and prepared. The board voted to support the Quality Education Agenda and created a district-wide task force on school resources.

Graduation and College Access

According to research by the Public Policy Institute of California, 25 to 30 percent of each California 9th grade class leaves school before graduating. The state does little to track this information and publishes an inaccurate and misleading “dropout rate” (recently ranging from 10-13%) based on students who are recorded as having officially left school during that year.

Of those who do stay in school, there are strong differences in courses taken—particularly college preparatory courses. Less than a quarter of the African American, Latino, Pacific Islander, and Native American students who graduate from high school in California are also qualified for college in the California State University (CSU) or University of California (UC) systems.

CFJ students in San Jose believed that there were concrete changes that could better the situation and make more students—and their parents—feel that youth of color could expect not only to graduate but to go on to college.

CFJ leaders presented proposals to send transcripts home to every student and to put posters with graduation and A-G college requirements in every classroom. The Eastside Union High School District agreed that these were great ideas and voted to implement them quickly.

Valuing Language and Culture

Anti-immigrant legislation such as the “English-Only” Proposition 227 (which CFJ fought against in 1998) tells millions of California students that their home language and culture is inferior to the “mainstream culture.” For too many students this message is only reinforced by their experience at school. Faced with these experiences, students can begin to lose pride in their own cultures and languages.

CFJ students in San Jose looked for a practical change that would improve the situation in their schools. Working together with ally organization California Tomorrow, they developed a proposal for “Bilingual Certification.” The idea behind this certification is that students who have been able to develop and maintain proficiency in another language, in addition to English, should be recognized for their achievement. This official certification can strengthen college and job applications as well as increase the pride and prestige of being fluently bilingual.

Since 2004, when the program began, 340 students have graduated with bilingual certification. When the Superintendent of the school district, Joe Coto, became a state assemblymember he decided to work with CFJ and California Tomorrow to take the Bilingual Certification idea to the state level. The proposed law sponsored by Coto would establish a State Seal of Biliteracy for high school students who have attained proficiency in two or more languages.

Don’t Deny Diplomas—Fix Our Schools!

Early on CFJ and our allies saw that the heavy emphasis on standardized testing hit hardest those students who were not receiving the basics of a quality education. “High-stakes” testing, which linked school resources to high test scores, only made matters worse in schools that lacked enough books, teachers, and supplies to educate students. The political rhetoric that claimed testing would hold schools “accountable” stole attention from the real problems in our schools, problems that needed to be addressed before students could achieve at higher levels.

The California High School Exit Exam presented one of the most pressing of these testing threats. The Exit Exam threatened to deny diplomas to students who failed it, beginning with the class of 2004.

Early results from the test confirmed our fears: the students who were already victims of the worst school conditions—students of color, low-income students, and English Learners—were failing the test at much higher rates than their peers. They simply had not been given a fair opportunity to learn the material on the test. And students with disabilities were unfairly denied alternative assessments that would allow them to show their knowledge.

CFJ and its coalition partners agreed that the Exit Exam itself wasn’t the root cause of unequal schools, but fighting the Exit Exam would allow us to put a spotlight on the terrible inequalities in the California public school system and to demand real change.

In 2003 CFJ and the Campaign for Quality Education alliance challenged the fairness of the exam and won a two year delay of the diploma penalty. We continued to publicize the unequal conditions in schools and called on the state to address those problems before denying diplomas to students who failed to pass the exam. The class of 2006 will be the first who is required to pass the exam. The last accounting by the state showed approximately 90,000 who have yet to pass the exam.