Education
The last bell of the school year rang for Oakland school students on Thursday. But where to swim, travel or play sports aren’t the only questions these newly liberated youth—or their parents—have on their minds. How to provide a daily, nutritious meal is a more immediate concern this summer for low-income families and the 20,000 children that depend on reduced-price meals during the school year.
Big ideas about education and emotion flowed through the Craneway Pavillion at the TEDxGoldenGateED conference over the weekend. The ideas found a receptive audience in the roughly 700 in attendance at the Saturday conference that attracted teachers, parents, therapists and others from throughout the Bay Area. The day included a packed schedule of speakers, performers and workshops that revolved around the central theme of compassion.
North Oakland Senior Center had some young visitors on Friday as a group of third graders from Peralta Elementary School came to visit the seniors of an adult day care program in the center. Together with the elderly, the kids prepared salad and lemonade for lunch.
Oakland mayor Jean Quan announced on Thursday morning that as an effort to reduce crimes that involve Oakland students, a group of organizations will open their doors to kids until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.
The College of Alameda celebrated the first fifteen students to graduate from the Violence Prevention Initiative Certificate Program last night at Humanist Hall in Oakland. Crystallee Crain, Adjunct Faculty at College of Alameda, and the instructor of this one-year program said this certificate is the first of its kind in California.
Equipped with whistles, banners and plastic noisemakers, hundreds of people crammed into the City Council Chambers on Thursday evening to voice their concerns about the city’s proposed budget cuts at a special hearing held by the city officials. The crowd was so large that many had to be relocated to another hearing room for safety reasons.
Oakland-based solar company Sungevity announced on Tuesday that it will partner with the Sierra Club, an environmental organization headquartered in San Francisco, to launch a campaign asking homeowners to install solar panels on their roofs. Sungevity will donate $1,000 to the Sierra Club for every Sierra Club member who leases or purchases a solar energy system from the company.
Oakland library supporters crawled down Telegraph Avenue Saturday evening in their zombie finest to protest the potential closure of 14 of the 18 city libraries. The living dead groaned “Zombies need brains, keep libraries open!” to passerbys in cars, restaurants, and at Oakland’s Uptown galleries.
The Prescott Circus Theatre started in 1984 in a second grade classroom at Prescott Elementary in West Oakland. The program has now spread to six other Oakland schools, including Piedmont Avenue Elementary in North Oakland. Kids in the program perform regularly in Oakland and the greater Bay Area. Now they are running low on funds and looking for local business sponsors to keep the juggling bats flying and the unicycles rolling.