The Berkeley students went to the papers and local TV. After that, the scrutiny on Oakland’s charter school movement increased. Mrs. Majesty’s custom-made job applications, with question after question about prior union involvement, came under suspicion; Glassdoor was inundated with anonymous complaints; meanwhile, Principal Fowler’s penchant for ridding his school of strapping young men, and his frequent cancellation of football games, pep rallies, and school dances suddenly seemed rather suspect.
And Principal Cash Hill, though he had only been in the booming business of high school education briefly, was not immune. A few mothers, wrung raw by the world and by Hill’s commandments, complained to the newspapers about the new push for an extended class schedule to ten or eleven months. Their children were not robots, they inveighed. The Ivy League was not the be-all and end-all of life in East Oakland, they said, just in case Hill was unaware. My blog even received some attention — mostly from the lame local media that plundered it for my “exclusive interviews” with employees from the school. I had yet to publish the really explosive stuff about racist dunce caps and locking kids in storage closets. I was holding off on that until a couple more shoes dropped. Also, the “legitimate” reporters had a bad habit of publishing my content without crediting me. Of course, I could have sued them, but in news everything is about timelines — nobody reads the retractions.
Then the Oakland Police Department reopened their investigation into the murder of Sobrante Prep’s namesake. A press conference was held, to which I was not allowed entrance. I waited outside next to a network news van parked between the plaza mall and the McDonald’s. The gathering was not large and I could hear the spokesman at a distance, describing how Shaun Sobrante was a college-bound student, a good kid, and what had happened to him was an unmitigated tragedy. But he had made a fateful mistake and had gotten himself kicked out of the public school system. Shaun had been asking around about the new charter schools; in particular, he was roaming the plaza halls trying to get a meeting with Principal Hill. Enrollment at what was then called Forging the Future Preparatory Academy was low. There was opportunity there, maybe even for a kid with a pending court date for drug possession. It was unclear if Principal Hill had ever met with Shaun, or whether the school had a policy then against accepting children with pending criminal charges. Charters could keep a lot of things private back then.
“That’s all we know right now,” the spokesman said. “That, and the fact that it’s a shame that Shaun never got a chance to attend the fine school that bears his name.”
I imagined the spokesman exiting stage left, cameras flashing on his retreating profile like a harried president disappearing into the White House’s inner sanctums.
I knew it was time to interview Cash Hill. Not the next morning, not that night, but right then. And unlike the local media, I knew how to find him.
I’d never dialed it before, but I’d had Hill’s cell phone number on speed dial for some time. It was given to me by the disgruntled janitor, who shall remain nameless. I called him while standing beside the network news van.
“Cash Hill?”
“Who’s this?”
“The closest thing you have to a friend in the Oakland media. I know you’re aware of the televised press conference that just went down at the police station right outside your school. I know you know there’s scrutiny on the charters right now. You need to set the record straight — about Shaun Sobrante, your school, and the proposed eleven-month schedule.”
“Eleven months isn’t shit!” he shouted. “Nothing comes by expectation alone; anyone who tells you success can be had without resistance is lying on their mama! Of course there’s people that hate me, so what? When we have our black Bill Gates, they’ll thank me. History will absolve me.”
“Fair enough. You want to go on the record with that?”
He repeated himself — on the record. “This over now? I’ve got work to do.”
“You’ve got a public image to maintain, Mr. Hill. People will begin to question the seemliness of naming your school after a murdered child whom you refused to enroll. Unless you get out front of this story. Tell me about yourself, Mr. Hill. I’m not interested in a hit piece or a shock story. I want the people of Oakland to know you, to know why you are enraged about education in the town, and the radical measures you’ve taken to change it.”
Apparently this struck a chord. Thirty minutes later, I was standing at the doorway of Hill’s Oakland Hills home. The big man, adorned in vaquero hat and boots, a Sobrante Academy blazer, and slim-fit jeans, summoned me in. He was an imposing man in person, just as he appeared in his newspaper advertisements and TV interviews. He was hard-jawed, broad-shouldered, tall, muscular, lean, and rough-hewn. He looked more like a boxer than a broker, and more like a broker than a school administrator. I could see him striding around Wall Street, but it was much harder to imagine him sitting down to give careful attention to a kid’s homework assignment. I wondered if he had any children of his own and scanned the walls of the front room for pictures, but I just saw photograph after photograph of Hill with a woman I took to be his wife. She was dark and striking, angular and alert in her posture, with typically round, lush African facial features that contrasted with her otherwise straight, narrow frame. She was beautiful and she was everywhere, but there were no children in evidence.
Shrouded and dark, curtained in deep blue and purple, the front room felt oceanic. I had the sense that I was sinking into something.
Hill led me down a winding staircase, typical of homes in the hills, and I felt I was wandering beneath the earth into a small, dark chamber. The room he led me to was crowded with shelves and was so tight we had to angle and sidestep our way around before arriving at an area where there was space to stand and furniture in which to sit. The shelves didn’t contain many books, I noticed. The few that were there were balanced against dozens of trophies and plaques. At a glance, the books were professional manuals and black nationalist tomes, while the memorabilia celebrated graduations, certifications, and administrations. There was a framed photograph of Hill shaking hands with Bush 43. Something, maybe a signature, was scrawled across the front.
Hill sat down on a large leather chair and motioned me to an office chair nearby.
“We gotta lynch Thug Life on every oak tree in Oaktown!” he thundered. There would be no small talk, I ascertained. “We’re making inroads, with President Bush’s emphasis on faith-based living and institutions, and the charters breaking up the bad public schools and the bloodsucking teacher unions. Once we get what Malcolm called them foxy white liberals outta office, we’ll be on our way to real change. Anyway,” he said, suddenly breaking from the rhetorical mode, “Shaun Sobrante was a political expedient.”