Southern California, February 8—A multi-racial group of over 40 people, young and old, students and workers, participated in a forum on public school closures in a Southern California city here today. The forum was sponsored by a statewide Coalition for Local School Control and a local non-profit. The group resolved to carry on the struggle against these closures, which are scheduled to take place at the end of this school year. Many of those who attended were open to a class analysis of these racist attacks on the mostly Black and Latin workers who live in this city, and responded favorably to calls for revolutionary struggle against racism and the capitalist system behind the attacks.
State bosses use debt to take over
This public school district has been under the control of the State of California since 2012, when it was forced to apply for an interest-bearing loan from the State to bail it out of its then precarious financial state. As a condition of the loan, the state seized control of the local school district, depriving the local school board of all its power. The loan is not scheduled to be paid off until 2034! In June 2024, the current State-appointed County Superintendent running the schools announced plans to close 5 schools, including one of the two high schools, effective June 2025.
Several of the speakers at the forum referred to the racist nature of state takeovers of public schools in California. An audience member pointed out that all nine of the public-school districts currently run by the State serve predominantly Black and Latin populations.
Racist conditions for Black and Latin youth
The city, once a major U.S. manufacturing center, has suffered from the ravages of long-term racist unemployment and, more recently, racist gentrification. The construction of two new billionaire-backed sports complexes sent real estate values through the roof. As rents rose, and school conditions deteriorated under the mismanagement of State-appointed superintendents, parents were forced to relocate outside the city, resulting in declining public-school enrollments. Since state funding is based on enrollment figures, this exodus of working-class families provided the rationale for the closures.
The panel included a nine-year-old student. Her school was shut down in 2024 by order of the same State-appointed school boss. The student spoke passionately about the struggle last year to keep her school open. A video was shown of a protest against that closure last year involving scores of young students and parents. It was heartening to see parents raising their children to fight back- these same children have the potential to one day tear down the capitalist system that is behind the shut-down.
There was some discussion in the forum of the need to vote for the right politicians in order to solve the problems of the working class. However, there is no clearer example of the Democratic Party’s role as abject servants of the ruling class in California than these school takeovers and closures. California has a Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. The Democrats have a veto-proof supermajority in the legislature. But, until a few days before the forum, all state and local representatives of this City (all Democrats) had refused to even meet with the Coalition to discuss the hardships these closings will inevitably cause.
School faculty, students make their voices heard
The highlight of the forum took place when antiracist students and teachers from local high schools, who had recently walked out of school along with hundreds of other students against the racist mass deportation plans of President Donald Trump and Co., spoke in solidarity with the parents and students who are faced with school closures. The students’ vow to keep up their campaign against the racist attacks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was met with loud and sustained applause from the audience and set a shining example for those of us involved in the struggle against racist school closures. It is the same capitalist system that needs anti-immigrant racism and terror to divide the working class that also promotes budget cuts based on racist lies about the inability of Black and Latin students to learn.
Going forward, Progressive Labor Party members will continue to participate in this fight. Under capitalism, the education of working-class children serves the needs of the ruling class of billionaires. The role of schools is to miseducate students with bourgeois ideology, and to reproduce the class structure of capitalist society. When the rulers don’t need schools that serve their class interests, they shut them down. Under communism, education would be universal and would serve the needs of the working class as we build an egalitarian society, without racism, without billionaires who profit off our labor, and without politicians who are puppets for the rich.
