Education
Two masked kendokas faced off with long bamboo sticks, their feet planted firmly. Each strike was accompanied by a yell that reverberated across Lil Bobby Hutton Park, continuing Oakland’s more than 50-year legacy of martial arts. This live demonstration took place at the “Life is Living” Festival” in West Oakland Saturday. The free annual event was founded by Oakland-rooted creatives in 2008. This year’s “Party for Self-Defense,” theme came from the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was the original name…
The packed gymnasium at La Escuelita Elementary School erupted in cheers on Tuesday night as the Oakland Unified School District board voted to approve AIMS High School’s charter renewal petition. The room was filled with students, family, and staff with matching red T-shirts and posters in support of the charter school. With this approval, AIMS High School in Oakland, which has an enrollment of 367 students, will enter a five-year renewal term from July 1 through June 30, 2032. Freshman…
Wearing a hand-crafted fish-themed jacket, James “Jamie” Freid showed off his rainbow-painted ukulele to a group of about 20 onlookers. They smiled at the Kermit the Frog design he painted on the front and elements he woodburned on the back. This art piece was one of several Freid, 31, shared last week as the public toured Creative Growth, an art center in Oakland that supports artists with developmental disabilities. Freid, who has autism, led the tour as part of Creative…
Kristie Le made a spontaneous decision last weekend to get her first tattoo. That it would be for a good cause made her more adamant. At the Black Needle Tattoo shop near Lake Merritt, she scanned her options — flowers, animals, fish, a skeletal hand — all drawn by students from Oakland School for the Arts. Choosing a goat to match her Vietnamese zodiac sign, she mustered the courage to have a needle etch the design on her inner left…
Oakland public school students are bracing for a “bell-to-bell” cellphone ban as the school district’s new policy comes into effect when the school year begins on Monday. Students will have to turn in their cellphones and any other devices capable of calling, texting or accessing the internet at the beginning of the school day, and will only get them back when the final bell rings, Oakland Unified School District said in a communication to parents last month. Elementary school students…
This story was first published in The Mercury News. When Pecolia Manigo’s eldest daughter lost out on a $20,000 scholarship after a breakdown over a grade dispute, Manigo heard more than one family’s frustration with a school system. She heard the harm she had spent years trying to prevent. As a co-chair of Oakland Unified School District’s original Black Thriving Task Force, Manigo had helped build an unprecedented framework aimed at repairing the harms Black parents and community leaders say…
This story was first published on EdSource. Lillian Ansari’s daughter, Atrina, endured two years of hourslong commutes from Oakland to Marin County to attend her nonpublic school. Cars provided by Oakland Unified School District shuttled Atrina, then 12, across the busy Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for round-trip school commutes that could take up to four hours. One such drive left Atrina, who has tuberous sclerosis complex, autism and epilepsy, “a mess when she got home,” her mom said, recalling her daughter’s…
Oakland Unified School District narrowly avoided a teachers’ strike in late February by agreeing to raises of up to 13% over three years. But as the deal moves forward, it remains unclear how the district will finance it. The agreement came as OUSD faced a projected deficit of roughly $100 million and had approved layoffs of more than 400 positions. School Board President Jennifer Brouhard said in late March that the cost of the agreement was still being finalized and…
When Oakland teenagers voted for the first time in the city’s 2024 School Board election, the moment was hailed as a breakthrough for youth voice and local democracy. But nearly a year later, that excitement has turned into reflection and a push for reform. Passed by voters in 2020, Measure QQ made Oakland one of the first major U.S. cities to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in school board elections. The measure came after years of organizing…