Like Oakland Unified School District’s K-12 system, Adult Education is facing massive cuts and administrators have had to narrow the program’s focus to the district’s highest needs: foundational literacy, basic skills and workforce training.

On Friday, students from across the city competed in the 31st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Oratorical Fest, reciting speeches and poetry and performing dramatic skits in front of an audience of about one hundred people.

This summer, Oakland High School environmental science students used to studying the ecology of Lake Merritt will travel to new turf — Costa Rica.

While nearly 2,000 people were protesting cuts to higher and K-12 education on the Oakland streets, most Oakland Tech students were in class. Those that stayed – including one particular Spanish class – got a lesson about California’s funding crisis.

At a quiet school board meeting on Wednesday night, Oakland’s school board renewed the charters for two local schools: North Oakland Community Charter School (NOCCS) and Lighthouse Community Charter.

Friendly Cab in Oakland has put 15 Ford Escape hybrids on the road in the last month in an effort to reduce its carbon emissions.

The agenda item that garnered the most attention and public comment was the board’s adoption of a resolution stating its support for the Day of Action that has been called for by the California Coordinating Committee.

Happy Monday Oakland, Well, the Saints won the Superbowl, but most of the blog chatter seems to be about the commercials. Slate.com dedicated an entire two page post to dissecting the various commercials. Slate also ran an amusing bit on what the Superbowl would be like if directed by certain well-known directors. And this ABC7 story is technically from last Tuesday, but visiting teachers-in-training from South Africa, were in East Oakland last week, where they connected with students at Oakland’s…

Good morning Oakland, A fight of sorts broke out this week between John Burris, the lawyer representing Oscar Grant’s family and friends in various civil suits against Johannes Mesherle and BART and KTVU 2, the local TV station that reported a possible change in eye witness testimony on Thursday. (Warning: The links to KTVU start an auto-play, including sound.) The testimony is for the criminal case the city has brought against Mehserle, but may affect BART’s liability in the civil…

Hi there Oakland, On Tuesday night the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to approve stricter gun control laws.  This was the first vote in favor of the measure proposed by Larry Reid of East Oakland.  An interview with Reid and the complete story was reported in the New York Time Bay Area Blog by Oakland North’s own Melanie Mason. The first permanent piece of the bridge deck was hoisted into place yesterday, the Trib reports, marking a milestone for the…

Good morning Oakland, Don’t let the sunny morning fool you, Phil the Punxsutawney Groundhog has seen his shadow, which predicts six more weeks of winter. In brighter news, four of the Trib’s 2010 “Cream of the Crop” announced over the weekend — high school foot ball players who have been recruited to play for top college programs — come from Oakland and three of them will be wearing Oakland Tech’s own purple and gold on graduation day. The country’s newest…

In early March, the First Presbyterian Church will be opening its doors to Early Head Start, a non-profit that works in conjunction with the City of Oakland’s Health and Human Services department to run preschools and early childhood development centers for children up to age 3.