Education
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.
Dressed in black-and-maroon Nike basketball shoes, black Nike warm-up pants, and a black T-shirt that reads “Born to run things” in silver, Vladimir Radmanovic stood in front of—no, towered over—his audience.
Gabriel Rodriguez sat in the student center cafeteria at Laney College the day after the legalization of marijuana in California went down in defeat. Rodriguez, who voted in favor of the initiative, sounded resigned saying that Proposition 19 probably wouldn’t have benefited everyone anyway.
Measure L, the $195 parcel tax that would have raise money for teacher salary increases, was receiving 58 percent approval in early returns tonight, with just over 10 percent of precincts reporting. But that fell short of the two-thirds supermajority required in California to pass any new tax increase.
Marshawn Lynch, the often written and talked-about NFL player who graduated from Oakland Tech High School, made his hometown pro football debut during a trip to Oakland this weekend as a member of the Seattle Seahawks.
He was fresh off a trade that sent him from the Buffalo Bills to the Seahawks. But the visit home didn’t go quite as he had expected.
The district’s annual report on Measure B, the $435 million school facilities bond passed in 2006, prompted words of praise from principals on improved school facilities and a brief discussion about the lack of 10th grade bathrooms at Oakland High School.
The Youth Vote 2010 forum, hosted by All City Council high school student leaders, was designed to give local students an experience with voting and the chance to come face-to-face with Oakland’s candidates. The forum included audience-submitted questions, followed by a vote for the top candidates.
Although three of the seven board members are up for re-election in November, only one seat is being challenged. Incumbents David Kakishiba and Christopher Dobbins have no opposition, and so will automatically retain their school board seats. But Gary Yee, the current board president, has an opponent who is also a longtime adversary—former teachers’ union president Ben Visnick.