The Prescott Circus Theatre started in 1984 in a second grade classroom at Prescott Elementary in West Oakland. The program has now spread to six other Oakland schools, including Piedmont Avenue Elementary in North Oakland. Kids in the program perform regularly in Oakland and the greater Bay Area. Now they are running low on funds and looking for local business sponsors to keep the juggling bats flying and the unicycles rolling.
More than 100 Oakland residents—mostly parents, teachers and students from Claremont Middle School and Oakland Technical High School—will ride their bikes to Sacramento on Saturday to raise money for their schools and protest state cuts to education funding.
A dozen students from Marbella Rios’ fourth grade class lined up in front of the microphone on Wednesday night to ask the school board to allow their teacher to stay in her classroom.
The official Earth Day is today, April 22, but Oaklanders got started with hikes, clean-ups and plantings last weekend. Check out our slideshow of community-submitted photos. It’s not to late to send in your own photos! Just email them to lillian.mongeau@oaklandnorth.net.
According to the Oakland Police Department, Beatrice Burton, a 33-year-old female Richmond Resident was shot Monday night in the 3000 Block of Union Street in West Oakland. Burton was brought to the hospital by her boyfriend and officers connected her assault with reports of gunshots and evidence of a shooting recovered at the Union Street location. Burton suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced deceased at 10:31 p.m. Monday night. Oakland Homicide Investigators have assumed control of the investigation. Anyone…
Lacy Lefkowitz teaches ancient history at Claremont Middle School, but last night she gave her students a lesson in current affairs. Six of Lefkowitz’s sixth graders stood before the board to read their letters about what they thought ought to be cut, and what ought to be saved, at their school next year.
There will be no budget-based layoffs of elementary school teachers in Oakland next fall, Deputy Superintendent Maria Santos announced at Wednesday night’s school board meeting. About 230 teachers had received lay-off warning notices in March.
The Bay Citizen, a Bay Area non-profit news organization that partners with Oakland North and other community news groups, is offering a $5,000 Citizen of Tomorrow award.
AXIS Dance Company’s dancers are exceptional in more ways than most performers. Four of the company’s seven members, including artistic director Judith Smith, have physical disabilities and dance in wheelchairs. Since AXIS’s founding in 1987, its dancers have been exploding conventional notions of contemporary dance.
The Oakland School Board meeting began last night with a cheer. Literally. The Sobrante Park Elementary cheerleaders have returned from a first place finish in the statewide competitive cheer competition in Los Angeles, and they saluted the board and meeting audience with kicks, twirls and pom-poms.
Futures Elementary in East Oakland has raised test scores by more than 100 points since 2007. But according to state law, it does not matter: Every single teacher and administrator at Futures is facing the possibility that he or she will be laid off in May.
When Jean Quan began campaigning to be the mayor of Oakland, she promised to clean up Oakland’s neighborhoods and improve the city’s schools. Quan’s win surprised those who expected front-runner Don Perata to sweep to victory. But when the new, ranked-choice voting system took second choices into account, Quan pulled ahead. There are big roadblocks for the new mayor, but so far they haven’t slowed her down.
Oakland School Board members voted to send notices to 538 teachers warning of potential layoffs, renewed four charter schools, and approved the second interim budget in a marathon eight-hour meeting Wednesday night.
Oakland Unified School District may soon have to consider one of the least popular moves a school district can make: closing schools. In short, the district has room for 10,900 more students than it’s serving, and not a single extra dollar to spend on maintaining empty space.
As part of a packed agenda, on Wednesday night the Oakland school board heard presentations from two East Oakland charter schools hoping the board will grant them charter approval: American Indian Public High School and Aspire – College Academy.
A newly released poll of 600 young Californians shows that kids today are as optimistic about their futures as ever. The poll, conducted by New America Media and published on Monday, found that 82 percent of respondents believe their lives will be better in 10 years than they are now, and 95 percent believe that if they work hard they will achieve their goals. At the same time, the 16- to 22-year-olds polled said it was taking them longer to…