Education
Experience Corps, a national service program for adults 55 years and older, has enlisted Bay Area seniors—known as corps members—to tutor and mentor children in Oakland’s public schools since 2003.
Nationally, the program reaches roughly 20,000 students in 20 urban communities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Oakland’s corps is operated in seven elementary schools and includes roughly 50 corps members, many of whom are retired.
In their first meeting since the November election, Oakland’s school board members reflected somberly on the near-passage of Measure L, the $195 property tax that would have raised $20 million per year for ten years, increasing salaries for school employees.
Despite cell phones’ distracting effect on students, and the nuisance they present to teachers, efforts around the country to ban the phones in schools have been met with resistance and even lawsuits from students and parents.
It was barely 3 p.m. at Hoover Elementary School in West Oakland, and the strawberries at the Tuesday farmers’ market were almost sold out. Hoover is just one of 25 schools part of “Oakland Fresh,” a recent OUSD effort aimed at providing fresh, locally grown organic produce for parents to purchase when they pick their students up from school.
Members of the Oakland teachers’ union voted tonight on whether to reaffirm its rejection of the teaching contract imposed by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in the spring, and authorize actions up to and including a district-wide strike.
Created In Oakland, a nine month business consulting program, is helping local small businesses grow their businesses through workshops and individual advising. The program, which enrolls roughly 15 businesses each session, has worked with organizations ranging from hair salons to architectural design firms.
About 200 people attended the long delayed launch celebration for the Africa Channel-a digital station that focuses entirely on Africa programming- Tuesday night at Oakland’s Chabot Space Center. At the event, an Africa Channel executive announced the results of DNA tests revealing the ancestries of three African-American attendees.
One week after Oakland voters defeated Measure L, a parcel tax that would have boosted city public teacher salaries, members of the city’s public education community are frustrated and disheartened. “I’m pretty disappointed, because it almost made it,” said Sam Davis, an adult education teacher at Manzanita SEED Academy in East Oakland. “It was so close.”
The Chabot Space and Science Center will take on climate change in a big way this month when it opens a new exhibit with the help of a little scientific star power. Science educator Bill Nye, popularly known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” came to Chabot on Friday to introduce the new “Bill Nye’s Climate Lab,” which opens to the public on November 20.