Education

Acta Non Verba celebrates Nine years of helping the youth in Oakland with a silent reading fundraiser.

Researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Irvine released a study last month regarding an Oakland Unified School District program focused on boosting achievement for Black male students. The study showed that the program has led to an increase in graduation and retention rates among participating students over the last dozen years.

At the auditorium of La Escuelita Elementary school Wednesday evening, Oakland Unified School District police officers were notably absent. So, too, were the barricades that had been set up to block protestors during a previous school board meeting on October 23, which had ended with the arrest of several protesters who oppose school closures and charter schools. Instead, camera crews from multiple media outlets were present, along with a predictably large crowd of protestors.   Several people in the audience…

On a suitably chilly and foggy Friday morning, streams of children entered the heated auditorium at Martin Luther King Elementary School on 10th Street in West Oakland and were received with an equally warm welcome by dozens of FedEx employees who were distributing winter coats. The volunteers, wearing purple Santa hats and t-shirts emblazoned with the words “FedEx Cares” guided the boisterous children to rows of tables stacked with fleece-lined and hooded coats in a dizzying array of colors in…

Last month, Dr. Regina Stanback Stroud took over as chancellor of the four-college Peralta Community College District.

Nearly 100 people—mostly formerly incarcerated people—graduated from BOSS’s Career Training and Employment Center this year.

A new Oakland Unified School District policy will ensure students graduate with an understanding of climate change–including how they can be advocates the environment. But there’s still a lot to do before climate change gets taught in all Oakland schools.

On Tuesday evening, about 15 new high school graduates with various developmental and intellectual disabilities gathered in an echoey elementary school auditorium in Oakland for an event called Ramping Up Independence. For many, it was the first time meeting staff from the organizations that would help them transition out of special education classes and into the next phase of their lives. The event was organized by East Bay Innovations (EBI), a nonprofit that helps disabled adults work and live independently….

For the last three Oakland school board meetings, protesters from the newly-formed Oakland Is Not for Sale Coalition have tried to prevent the meetings from taking place, chanting, raising banners and attempting to take over the stage where board members are seated in order to hold what they call a “people’s board meeting.” The group is protesting the “The Blueprint for Quality Schools,” a district-run plan that supports the closure and merger of under-enrolled and underperforming schools. The protests coalesced…