Bishop O’Dowd High School, the 75-year-old college-preparatory Catholic school in East Oakland, removed LGBTQ+ Pride flags ahead of the first day of school yesterday to comply with a directive from the Oakland Catholic diocese.
The flags, at least one of which had been hanging in school classrooms for more than 30 years, were taken down after the end of the 2026 spring semester, according to someone who works at O’Dowd. The flags were sometimes placed in classroom windows, so their emblematic colors could be seen from the outside.
The move was publicly criticized by alumni who saw it as reversing decades of LGBTQ+ acceptance at the school and by Bay Area advocates for people who have experienced homophobia.
Rick Oculto, an LGBTQ+ community advocate based in San Francisco and former Catholic school student, told us that he saw the removal of the flags at a school that has been seen as supportive to the community as a betrayal.
“ To have an organization that has said, ‘ We care about you. We see you. We support you,’ to then take that away, in many ways, it hurts more than an organization that has always said, ‘No, you are not accepted here,’” he said. “ It’s deeply hurtful, and it feels like they are pandering to the aspects of Christianity that we left a long time ago.”
The Oakland archdiocese, which leads East Bay Catholics, asked the O’Dowd administration to remove rainbow and transgender Pride flags at the school last winter, according to the O’Dowd employee.
On June 1, the Pride flags were removed without any formal communication to students or families, according to the person who works at O’Dowd. The employee said the moment was marked by a ceremony attended by staff.
The employee told The Oaklandside that everyone from top administrators to teachers has tried to push back against the conservative-leaning archdiocese for years, but ultimately, O’Dowd is a diocesan school, which means O’Dowd answers to the diocese and its archbishop, Michael Barber. The archbishop was a member of a national Catholic committee, the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, that has authored guidance this decade that has been seen as anti-trans, including the “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body,” which defined bodies as biologically male or female.
An Oaklandside investigation into pressure from the diocese on another local high school, St. Joseph’s Notre Dame in Alameda, found the diocese sought to limit the use of alternative pronouns for the school’s trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students. At the time, Oakland Catholic Diocese superintendent Andrew Currier told us that he and other church leaders were looking for guidance from the US Conference’s “Doctrinal Note,” which had recently been released. Currier is a member of the Board of Regents at Bishop O’Dowd, according to the school website.
The Oaklandside has reached out to the archdiocese for comment on the removal of flags at O’Dowd or any other diocesan schools, but it has not responded yet.
In a statement sent to parents last Thursday and shared with The Oaklandside by the school, Kim Walsh, O’Dowd’s president, explained the school’s thinking regarding its “core charism value of Community in Diversity and the ways we continue to support every student.”
Walsh said that over the last year, tensions with the Catholic Church over Pride flags had become a “lightning rod within our own community” and that the school did not want a “symbol to become the source of division that diminished our ability to care for students.” She said that faculty, staff, counselors, parents, the Board of Regents, LGBTQ+ community members, and student leaders met and eventually came up with what they said was a compromise: an “inclusive O” made up of multiple colors to represent O’Dowd’s LGBTQ+ community and “affirm that our LGBTQ+ students, families, faculty, and staff are seen, known, loved, and belong here.”
According to the school’s statement, the new symbol is now displayed across campus. We asked whether students would be allowed to wear the Pride-like “O” on their school uniforms, but the school did not immediately respond.
A photo published by the school on its Facebook page yesterday shows the Pride-like “O” inside a larger “O” at the school’s main entrance, alongside other affinity O’s.
The statement from Walsh noted that the school’s Pride Arts Club and Inclusive Family Day will continue, and that a new LGBTQ+ family retreat and an inclusive advisory council were being created to help the community feel represented.
Reaction from students, parents, and alums
The O’Dowd employee told us that in the hubbub of the first few days of school, students have not yet expressed public outrage over the removal of the Pride flags. The school did not immediately respond to a query about how parents have reacted to the flag removals, including whether the school has received any calls or letters. But LGBTQ+ families have told other outlets they were disappointed.
In an interview with ABC-7, O’Dowd parent Mujinga Mwamufiya said their child, who identifies with the Pride flag, didn’t think the removal of the flag represented O’Dowd.
“Their response is just that they know what O’Dowd is about,” she said. “They know that it is an inclusive school and they feel welcome there.”
Posts from alumni indicate many are less than thrilled about the compromise.
In an Instagram post, an alum named Dani Clement said they were ashamed of the rainbow flags’ removal. “This is hurting a community within your walls, and you are moving toward no flag at all. Call it what it is. FLY THE FLAG!”
Tammy Kama Udkow, who identified as an O’Dowd alum on Instagram, said that flying pride flags and creating a new inclusive “O” were not mutually exclusive actions.
Someone posting on Instagram under the username jagfilm, who also identified themselves as an LGBTQ O’Dowd alum, said it was upsetting to see the school she was proud of shied “away from true inclusion.”
“Bring back the O’Dowd that found ways to stand by its LGBTQ community in the face of criticism, that proudly put on The Laramie Project in the early 2000’s,” she wrote. “Removing the flag so many look to as a sign of belonging and support from their community to replace it with a less public logo that you’ll display somewhere inside a private building is not only cowardly but enables dangerous discourse to continue.”
Andrea Bradley Wade, another alum, exclaimed “YUCK” to the school post on Facebook and said the custom “O” “does the inverse of making those it represents feel included.”
“O’Dowd has always been about inclusiveness. My comment goes back to that old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’” she wrote.
Rett Bergmark said that alums like him would be withholding their “donations, participation and support until full expression is allowed for people (not harming anyone) just being people.”
One commenter, Grace Telcs, said she was considering O’Dowd for her child but “not so much now.”
And Octavio Sandoval, another self-identified alum, said on Instagram under the username @juanitocuetes that the flag removal sent “a harmful message.”
“High school is already a vulnerable time for teenagers. Stripping away visible markers of support tells LGBTQ+ youth that they are unwelcome, unseen, or that their identities must be hidden to fit an institutional mold,” Sandoval said. “Decisions made behind closed doors — seemingly under pressure from outside leadership — without meaningful input from parents, teachers, and students show a profound lack of transparency and respect for the school community.”
The Oaklandside has reached out to other high schools in the Oakland diocese to ask whether their Pride flags have also been removed. Those schools include St. Joseph’s Notre Dame High School in Alameda, which had allowed students to put up rainbow flags on campus in the past, Holy Names in the Oakland hills, and Moreau Catholic in Hayward. We’ll update this story if they respond.
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