Education

Despite the gloomy weather, Bay Area skywatchers will be eagerly awaiting tonight’s total lunar eclipse, which falls on the northern winter solstice—the moment at which the Earth’s axis is tilted farthest from the sun, giving us our shortest day and longest night of the year, and heralding the first day of winter. According to NASA Science News, there’s only been one other lunar eclipse on the northern winter solstice in the last 2,000 years … and that one was back in 1638.

The Crucible, Oakland’s non-profit arts education center began in a small Berkeley warehouse in January 1999. Listen in as reporter Mary Flynn explores The Crucible and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

It’s that time of year again—time for school-age kids and their parents to pick which Oakland public school they’d like to attend. Starting on December 6 and running through January 14, Oakland’s “options process” is meant to provide students and parents with greater flexibility and allow them to select the schools that are best suited to their particular needs.

“We did submit a balanced budget,” said Troy Flint, the spokesperson for Oakland Unified School District, of the interim budget report board members approved Tuesday, “but, we’re headed towards potentially the biggest mid-year cuts in the history of California.”

Sitting before a semi-circle of her peers at Chabot Elementary, fifth-grader Nyah read aloud from her story, Alia and Andrew and the Story of the Odd Objects. It’s a novel, and she wrote the whole thing this fall. Her audience, consisting of nine fellow classmates and instructor Sondra Hall, were gathered on a Tuesday for the semester’s last session of “Take My Word For It!,” an afterschool workshop developed by Hall.

Mariella Cordova and Jeff Derenthal, both seniors at Skyline High School, sat in the fifth row of the theater red seats laughing and talking over each other in their excitement to explain the dance-musical-comedy performance they were about to take part in—the school’s new fall musical, A Cinderella Christmas.

McClymonds High varsity football players have had one of the most successful seasons in school history, during which they earned a perfect 12-and-0 record on their way to winning the Oakland Athletic League championship this fall and are now making a serious bid to play in a state championship game.

Until Monday morning, Chabot Elementary School, like several other schools in the Oakland Unified School District, was still struggling to heat all of its classrooms in the cold days following Thanksgiving break. Last week in the school’s newly constructed “D-building,” which houses first and second grade students, teachers were forced to hold class in the hallways, administrators said, which were warmer than the unheated classrooms.

Oakland mayor-elect Jean Quan, Assemblymember Sandre Swanson, and other local leaders joined a handful of Oakland students on the steps of City Hall on Thursday afternoon to urge Congress to pass the federal DREAM Act, which would give the children of illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.