Education
During a volatile meeting of the American Indian Model Schools (AIMS) board Friday, the board members lost two of the schools’ most fierce defenders: AIMS Director Sylvester Hodges was fired during a closed session, and board President Toni Cook resigned soon after the closed session and left the meeting. AIMS site administrator Jennifer Avelino was also fired. The four board members who were present conducted no public discussions on the matter and gave no reasons for the dismissals. Board members…
More than 500 people from around the Bay Area attended a launch party in downtown Oakland Monday to help HUB Oakland try and raise $100,000 so that it can move into a large, permanent space in the Uptown district of Oakland.
In early March, Skyline High School and the Oakland Unified School District resolved a complaint filed by the high school’s Black Student Union nearly a year ago. The resolution could change how students file complaints, allow random audits of students’ class schedules, offer training for teachers on how to deal with complaints of racial discrimination, and require the school to provide annual logs of complaints to the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. According to a statement from…
One year later, Oikos University and community members are still dealing with the aftermath of the campus shooting that killed seven.
Oakland Unified School District Superintendent Tony Smith is resigning, according to messages posted Friday morning on the district’s website.
Aalijahri Robinson, 18, found out about financial aid for college while she was a senior at Rusdale Continuation High School, located in East Oakland. The Oakland native hoped to attend college in California, but with unanswered questions about her Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) application and long lines at her financial aid office at school, she ultimately decided not to file her forms last March. “I was just discouraged,” said Robinson. She said her high school did bring in…
At a long-awaited special school board meeting, and after over six months of hearings and notices, Oakland Unified School District board members voted to revoke the three American Indian Model Schools’ (AIMS) charters. The 4-3 vote came after Superintendent Tony Smith recommended the board revoke the charters, and after a particularly emotional and dramatic series of public comments and discussion.
In a Castlemont High School classroom converted into a theater for the day, seven-year-old Junior returned home from school to face his parents after receiving a bad report card. “How the hell did you get an ‘F’ in English?” the father asked. “Are you stupid?” Junior kept his head down. “You should act like a man,” the father said. And that’s where Caheri Gutierrez, a 23-year-old woman who has dedicated her life to mentoring teenagers about causes and consequences of…
At a board meeting on February 27, the school board voted to cut all remaining adult ed teacher positions as way to create $1 million in savings for the next school year. OUSD superintendent Tony Smith said the proposal to terminate the positions was also in reaction to Governor Jerry Brown’s January budget proposal, which included moving adult education to community college systems. If layoffs ar