Development
At the Occupy Oakland encampment at Snow Park near Lake Merritt, cooking equipment that used to serve hot meals in the middle of the camp is gone, and the library and clothes donation area are a shell of what they once were–but, since the evacuation of the Frank Ogawa Plaza Occupy camp this Monday, the number of tents at Snow Park has been growing.
On October 26 representatives from three of Oakland’s public elementary schools –ASCEND, Learning Without Limits, and Lazear—presented petitions to the school board to convert into charter schools. Closing the five schools, by the school district’s estimate, would save about $2 million. But if these three schools become charters, the district could lose as many as 1000 students from its rolls, pulling more than $4 million from OUSD.
Three weeks after the OUSD board voted 5-2 to close five elementary schools—Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell Park and Santa Fe—and relocate or merge several other schools, parents and staff affected by the closures are working to figure out what they will do. Their array of “options,” which will be handled by “transition coordinators,” includes no guarantees.
The Oakland City Council approved new requirements Tuesday night that would grant local businesses exclusive rights to demolition and remediation contracts for the Oakland Army Base redevelopent project.
All three Oakland city ballot measures failed to pass in a special election held today. Of a total of 196, 851 registered voters, only 49,058 (24.92 percent) cast a ballot.
On Tuesday afternoon, about 400 people marched to the UC Berkeley campus from Frank Ogawa Plaza, which was the home of the Occupy Oakland camp from its inception October 10 until November 14, when the camp was shut down by police in an early morning raid.
Oakland city officials plan to reopen Frank Ogawa Plaza to the public this afternoon, Howard Jordan, the interim chief of police, said at a press conference in downtown Oakland Monday afternoon.
Police officers raided the Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza early Monday morning, evicting scores of protesters, arresting 32 people and closing off the plaza. There were no injuries, according to police.
On Sunday morning around 9 am, the Mayor Jean Quan issued a statement thanking Occupy Oakland protesters who have left the camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza voluntarily. The text is reprinted in its entirety here: