Economy
How Gentrification Is Reshaping Oakland's Schools
The city's incoming middle- and upper-class families are rallying around public schools.
This article is part of a weeklong America 360 series on Oakland, Calif.
OAKLAND, Calif.–Kathy Cash has promised her 7-year-old daughter that—from kindergarten through college—she'll fight to keep her in the best schools. So Cash went into panic mode when she realized that Sophia's public elementary school was threatened with closure. In the spring of 2011, 16 out of 17 teachers at Learning Without Limits, a college prep school in Oakland's heavily Latino Fruitvale neighborhood, received layoff notices. Most LWL teachers are young and new to teaching, and have zero job security when budget cuts hit California's seniority-based system.