OUSD’s board voted to close Kaiser and merge its student body and teaching staff with those already at Sankofa, to the dismay of Kaiser’s vocal supporters.
Ambitious questions about mobility, equity, housing, and safe streets in Oakland were heavily featured during a panel talk at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) on Monday evening. Around 100 mostly young professionals and design enthusiasts attended the event, held at SPUR’s downtown Oakland meeting space, across the street from a recently-renovated plaza. Staff from the urban planning policy think tank, with offices serving San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco, organized the event in partnership with Citylab,…
At the auditorium of La Escuelita Elementary school Wednesday evening, Oakland Unified School District police officers were notably absent. So, too, were the barricades that had been set up to block protestors during a previous school board meeting on October 23, which had ended with the arrest of several protesters who oppose school closures and charter schools. Instead, camera crews from multiple media outlets were present, along with a predictably large crowd of protestors. Several people in the audience…
On a suitably chilly and foggy Friday morning, streams of children entered the heated auditorium at Martin Luther King Elementary School on 10th Street in West Oakland and were received with an equally warm welcome by dozens of FedEx employees who were distributing winter coats. The volunteers, wearing purple Santa hats and t-shirts emblazoned with the words “FedEx Cares” guided the boisterous children to rows of tables stacked with fleece-lined and hooded coats in a dizzying array of colors in…
For the last three Oakland school board meetings, protesters from the newly-formed Oakland Is Not for Sale Coalition have tried to prevent the meetings from taking place, chanting, raising banners and attempting to take over the stage where board members are seated in order to hold what they call a “people’s board meeting.” The group is protesting the “The Blueprint for Quality Schools,” a district-run plan that supports the closure and merger of under-enrolled and underperforming schools. The protests coalesced…
Strings of colorful papel picado, decorative paper banners, were strung above the Oakland Museum of California’s outdoor stairways and concrete paths for the 25th annual Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebration.
On Wednesday afternoon, Oakland residents prepared for the power to go out, anticipating cuts that were initially expected to begin in Alameda County at noon. Parts of the Oakland hills and East Oakland are the most likely to be affected by the outages, which Pacific Gas and Electric estimates will affect 32,680 county residents. PG&E officials plan to cut power to parts of more than 30 Northern California counties as a wildfire prevention measure. This decision followed the last two…
Chris Colter, who has been working as a licensed barber for over a decade, hopes to open a barber academy in East Oakland. His mission for the academy is to provide opportunities for young African-American men to learn a viable trade.
On Saturday, Justin Mashouf, director of a new documentary “The Honest Struggle”, and Darrel “Sadiq” Davis, his subject, screened their film at the Lighthouse Mosque in Oakland. The documentary follows Davis, an African-American ex-offender and a Muslim, as he struggles to re-eintegrate into society.
Dr. Joy DeGruy, a researcher, educator, and speaker on race, historical trauma, and violence, held a talk at First Congregational Church in Downtown Oakland on Friday.
OUSD school board vote to merge two pairs of district schools draws outrage from parents, children, and educators, who turned out in force for a lengthy board meeting that continued until Thursday morning.
At a forum on tobacco use at the Oakland Coliseum, a panel of local health experts and advocates accuses prominent e-cigarrete manufacturer of targeting teens and young adults through its product design.