Teacher at Madison Park Academy, Site of a Alleged Accidental School Shooting, Speaks Out

On August 29, at the beginning of this school year, there was a shooting on campus at Madison Park Academy, a middle school in the East Oakland flatlands. One student allegedly brought a gun and accidentally shot another student. 

Oakland Voices’ alumni correspondent Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross chatted with Taiwo Kujichagulia-Seitu, a teacher at the school who is on the school’s safety committee, about what the school needs and why people need to pay attention. Kujichagulia-Seitu is a Performing Arts Educator who teaches dance, vocal music, drama, and West African drumming at the school, and she is also a mom. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you sum up what happened recently at your school?

There was a shooting that happened between two students. It was during that break right after the kids were done eating and so they’re out there by the blacktop. It was an accident. The one who had the gun, he was 12 and shot a classmate who was 13. And it was in the middle of the day when kids aren’t in class. 

It was one of those worst case scenarios. Like every time we have a drill, kids are already in class. It’s like, lock your doors and all the things, but this happened when kids are not in class. And so that just kind of adds a layer of more hectic-ness to the circumstances because it’s a matter of people scrambling. 

We have drills, but I feel like people aren’t really ever prepared for weapons on campus. And I am on the safety committee. Now we are revamping all the drills: what are the things that are necessary? Coming out of the pandemic, we are literally in a different world. There’s more violence, right? We’re seeing things that we haven’t really seen before in Oakland at a level that we hadn’t seen before and in the schools that we haven’t seen before. So it’s kind of like that reality check, like this is where we are and this is where we need to prepare for. We’re developing it now, but it’s in a situation where we’ve already had that [shooting] on campus. 

It’s interesting that you say that Madison Park Academy is just now trying to figure out a response. Isn’t Oakland one of those cities where lots of shootings happen? As a parent, I would request that the schools do something to get everyone prepared, because it’s happening in the city. 

I think most parents have that assumption. You’re sending your children to school and you’re trusting that the school is keeping your children safe. Historically, we have had a lot of violence in Oakland, it’s just not necessarily been on the campuses’ of schools. 

That’s where we are and it’s going to have to take a lot of people to acknowledge that and it’s going to take more parent involvement, because a lot of people, parents specifically, are under the assumption that school is a safe place. And it should be, but what things should be and what they are in reality aren’t always completely in alignment. 

What’s it like being a teacher at a school where the incident happened? And what is it like for you as a parent?

It’s frustrating, because I feel as a teacher, I’m [one of the people] who’s like, “Hey we need to listen to this thing, hey we need to do this thing over here.” I’m the person with the bullhorn going, “We’re looking at all this, but we’re totally ignoring all that.” I feel like I should not be in the minority when it’s a basic need like safety. Things like keeping doors locked. You know, basic common sense things. And so that to me is draining. 

I am like one of the few teachers who I feel like is actually listening to the kids. After everything happened I was like, “So how do you guys feel? “Do you feel safe?” “What are the things that make you feel safe?” But that wasn’t a schoolwide conversation. As a teacher and as a parent, that was important to me. And I don’t know if teachers really feel comfortable engaging students in that way. They had counselors on campus and conversations with students one-on-one, but it’s like for the students who don’t necessarily feel the need to go to a counselor, they’re still observing things, they’re still looking at things, they still have unspoken needs and desires that are not being met and we’ll never know what they are if we don’t engage them in conversation. 

“They had counselors on campus and conversations with students one-on-one, but it’s like for the students who don’t necessarily feel the need to go to a counselor, they’re still observing things, they’re still looking at things, they still have unspoken needs and desires that are not being met and we’ll never know what they are if we don’t engage them in conversation.” 

What you as an adult feel is important versus what the students feel are important are sometimes two totally different things. Like I’ve heard students say, “I feel safe if we had metal detectors.” But I’ve heard some adults say, “Oh! That’ll never happen!” And there’s the parent piece. Where are the parents in this conversation? We’ve not involved parents enough. 

You know, the assumption that parents have is that their students are safe on campus and as a teacher and a parent who happens to work in the school, I’m like, parents shouldn’t make that assumption. We need more parents to show up. We really, really need more parents to show up and be like, “Hey! What’s going on? Why are we not involved in whatever the planning process is?” 

Can you tell me the demographic of your school and do you think that’s one of the reasons why OUSD was slow/reluctant to respond? 

The demographic is like 78/79 percent Latino, like 18 percent Black, and the remaining other (Asian students, Middle Eastern students), and we had like one white student or two once upon a time. It’s a flatland school. We’re in Sobrante Park. That’s as East as you can get. That’s deep, deep East Oakland. People like to assume that classism isn’t a thing, but it very much so is, that racism isn’t a thing, but it very much so is. So what we see in OUSD is that the flatlands get the least services and the schools in the hills get more. They are more responsive to the hills schools where people who are more affluent in their students. That’s just the fact of what it is and has been historically. We have flatland schools that have a huge environmental pollution thing happening now at McClymonds and some of the other schools where the water is unsafe to drink. Basic health and safety things and necessities that aren’t being met. And you go to the hills schools and it’s totally different. I.e., the heatwave. It felt like a sauna in our school and I teach dance. I told my students, “We’re not gonna dance, you’ll pass out from heat exhaustion.” My daughter teaches in the after-school program at Redwood Heights in the hills and asked if they had air conditioning and she said, “Yeah.” Hills schools have air conditioning, they are fine, they can continue life as usual in the middle of a huge heatwave. Here, no air conditioning. It’s kinda like at a certain point, do we even try to instruct kids? The kids were wiped out. It’s simple things like air-conditioning that would make a huge difference. So yeah, we get the short end of the stick all the time. 

“So what we see in OUSD is that the flatlands get the least services and the schools in the hills get more. They are more responsive to the hills schools where people who are more affluent in their students. That’s just the fact of what it is and has been historically. We have flatland schools that have a huge environmental pollution thing happening now at McClymonds and some of the other schools where the water is unsafe to drink. Basic health and safety things and necessities that aren’t being met.”

If you had the opportunity to sit with current, incoming city officials, school board reps, what are some things that you would want them to focus on?

One, I would not want to sit down with any of those people by myself. I would like to see a group of parents, students, and OUSD staff members–I mean custodial staff, librarians, teachers, kitchen staff–not just teachers, because we who work here see it. And I’d like to see that they understand that this is not just one squeaky wheel, this is an entire community of people who see everything that is wrong and who are demanding that they fix the things that are wrong in order to do justice for our students. No one should have to advocate for basic necessities like the things we need to keep students and staff safe. We shouldn’t have to have months and months of requests fixing half of the inoperable security cameras on our site. The second it breaks, there should be someone here fixing it and replacing it, right? 

We’re not asking for anything outrageous. We’re not even asking for anything super revolutionary. You got hired or elected whatever it was to do a job, please do your job, so we can do our jobs. I can’t educate kids if they’re not safe! If something happens in that chain where something is broken, there’s like one broken piece, there’s a missing link that affects the rest of the chain. 

[Since the interview, Madison Park Academy announced that “Staff was recently informed that we will not lose any of our teaching positions and that the safety issues we identified on our campus (i.e. the need for security cameras, air phones and radios) are being installed, or have been ordered. Furthermore, OUSD is planning to install a motorized gate to help keep our campus secure and hire additional culture keepers (security guards).”].

How does it make you feel when there was a shooting at King Estates, after the shooting at Madison Park Academy?

God always drops a few pebbles like, “Hey, by the way you need to pay attention to this.” Oh, and you didn’t get this first little hint or nugget of information? Here’s something else right. So by the Grace of God, nobody was killed in either shooting. The student here survived the shooting and did not sustain any life-threatening injuries. We were very, very lucky. That it was only one person here. And that the person didn’t die. And now these other six people also did not die. 

We’ve had two shootings at this point [within OUSD]. I am an OUSD staff member, an employee, do I know what the safety updates are for all schools within OUSD? No! And that is unbelievably irresponsible to me that as a staff member and as a parent with children within the district, I have no more information than someone who is totally not affiliated with OUSD at all.

With all that has been said, do you have hope for your school, for OUSD, for your students? Do you have hope right now?

I absolutely do. I mean, our students are powerhouses. They’re very outspoken. They’re very aware of what’s happening. They want to be engaged in the process of devising solutions and then putting them in place. I happened to mention in one of my classes that I’m on the safety committee, and they’re like, “We have a safety committee? I want to be on the safety committee.” They’re not leaving their safety in the hands of someone else. They want to be engaged. I know parents who would be engaged if they knew what was happening and had that information. If people were transparent with them and said, “Look, there’s schools in our OUSD that are getting gun threats of violence on a regular basis, what are the things we should do?” I know there are parents with solutions. I know that there are staff and teachers. I know there are students with solutions; the problem isn’t the lack of the ability to devise a solution, the problem is we don’t have the information, we’re like being kept out of the loop. So I have hope which is why things just need to be made public. 

“People do still care about their fellow human beings and there will be the people who will absolutely step up if they have the information, and they know what to do, and who to contact, and what are the things that we need assistance with. So that gives me hope. The way that the community showed up. All these things that are good and loving and kind and true exist inside of people. If we can tap into that and we can have the information to keep people safe, and if we can all organize around that, then I have no doubt that all of our students will be safe and our schools will be safe spaces where students are actually learning and growing and thriving.”

We had a lot of people respond and advocate on our behalf who aren’t necessarily affiliated with Madison Park Academy and that’s what gives me hope. People do still care about their fellow human beings and there will be the people who will absolutely step up if they have the information, and they know what to do, and who to contact, and what are the things that we need assistance with. So that gives me hope. The way that the community showed up. All these things that are good and loving and kind and true exist inside of people. If we can tap into that and we can have the information to keep people safe, and if we can all organize around that, then I have no doubt that all of our students will be safe and our schools will be safe spaces where students are actually learning and growing and thriving.