Renegade summer classes begin at shuttered Oakland school

OAKLAND, Calif. - Parents and community members took over a closed school in Oakland to offer summer school to neighborhood kids.  

A handful of people can be seen outside Parker Elementary School, a K-8 public school in East Oakland that the district officially closed for good last week.

They are part of a group of community members who have gotten together with the goal of reopening the school, beginning with offering summer school for neighborhood kids at this site.  

Parker Elementary school and others were also the sites of several rallies and protests this spring. 

The Oakland Unified District's board decided to close Parker and three other schools permanently due to declining enrollment. 

But summer school organizers at Parker hope to reopen the school as a community school in the fall and years ahead. 

The Oakland Unified School District asked organizers to leave the school, but didn't say what their next steps would be if they don't leave the school. 

"We recognize that some individuals are upset at the closure of Parker. We would ask that they choose a different means of protest - one that doesn't disrupt the normal year-end procedures of staff and the need to close out the year," the school district wrote in a statement. 

The vast majority of the 200 or so children that went to Parker Elementary have been assigned to other schools in Oakland and are willing to go to those other schools, the school district said.