Education
Wearing a shirt with ruffles running down the front and a bright golden bowtie, children’s author James Kennedy bounced up from a chair and briefly introduced a longtime children’s favorite, My Father’s Dragon, before pressing a key on his computer that started a video on the projector screen. Kennedy was hosting his annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival in Oakland on Saturday, showing short clips filmed by children and teenagers based on Newbery Medal-winning books. Between his wardrobe choices and excited…
Few members of the public attended the beginning of Wednesday night’s meeting for the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Board of Education. In a relatively empty room, the board heard a presentation from schools police chief Jeff Godown on arrests within OUSD schools and discussed budget priorities for the coming school year.
Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra will hold a winter concert on February 21 at the San Leandro High School Performing Arts Center.
Every Saturday morning, kids of all ages gather in the sunlit second story of a West Oakland community building. The kids come to attend a lesson unusual for most youngsters, especially those from a low-income neighborhood like theirs: These pupils are learning to fly.
Hella Damn Squirrels has been in full operation since 2013. The group only consists of two people, Hale and her boyfriend Toppano, partners in squirrel photography from the very beginning. They focus solely on the squirrels at Lake Merritt: Toppano, the squirrel feeder and “wrangler” of the duo, brings them over with the bag of walnuts and Hale, a professional photographer, snaps their photos to be posted on social media.
Darius Aikens, a junior at Oakland High School, and Bianca Ramirez, a sophomore at Fremont High School, are student directors for the school board for the 2015-2016 school year. They attend all board meetings and act as intermediaries between the board and the All City Council, the district-wide student union.
At the superintendent-parent forum on Saturday morning, parents, teachers and district officials gathered at West Oakland Middle School to discuss new changes for teacher recruitment and retention strategies in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD).
2015 brought another group of student reporters to Oakland North, and they covered the daily news of a changing city: The rising cost of rent and concerns about gentrification, the debate over raising the minimum wage, a controversial plan to ship coal through the Port of Oakland, efforts to stem crime and the lives of those lost to gun violence, the fate of refugees who have resettled here. But they also dug deep into stories about the people, places and ideas that…
Founded in April 2009, the Ger Youth Center is a non-profit organization based in Oakland dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Mongolian visual and performing arts, culture and language among Bay Area Mongolian and Mongolian-American youth. Its flagship program, the Bi Mongol — or “I am Mongolian” — School operates out of the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. The school offers biweekly classes in art, dancing, Mongolian language, chess, and more. The Ger Youth Center also coordinates a variety of cultural events open…