Education
Stephanie Benavidez has worked at the Rotary Nature Center for over 35 years, but now thanks to city budget cuts she is its only full time staff member. With only one full-time person on the job, and five part-time employees, it’s harder for the center to keep up with all of its work.
If you want to ride with the scraper bike king, you better wear a helmet. Tyrone “Baybe Champ” Stevenson Jr., known around Oakland as the “king” and creator of the scraper bike movement, announced his new rule of the road Saturday near Oakland City Hall.
Several hundred people gathered on Saturday in Frank Ogawa Plaza, where promises of free back-to-school supplies attracted a wide range of students, from kindergarteners to college freshmen. Many parents arrived hours before the official start time, children in tow, in order to ensure a good place in line for the give-away.
After weeks of threatening the closure of seven Oakland childhood development centers, the Oakland Unified School District announced Friday that five of the seven centers will remain open until at least the end of December.
Despite plans to close eight early childhood development centers Monday, Oakland schools’ Superintendent Tony Smith said Friday that funds had been found to keep six of those centers open. However, North Oakland’s Golden Gate Childhood Development Center is still slated for closure. In response, members the local group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) began what they called an all-night occupation of the center in the early afternoon. “I believe that the only success is if we keep fighting,” Mark Airgood…
Despite many heartfelt pleas to keep arts programs and continue running early childhood development centers, Superintendent Tony Smith told the audience at Wednesday night’s school board meeting that there just isn’t enough money for all the programs people care about. “If we can’t pay for it,” he said, “we can’t have it.”
A simulated walk through the solar system takes hikers through a roughly four-mile loop in the East Bay Regional Parks, starting at the Chabot Space and Science Center and ending in the dark.
Teachers searching for new jobs and parents looking for new childcare options got some last-minute good news—the seven childhood development centers slated to close last Friday due to budget cuts will remain open for another month. The Oakland Unified School District announced it was allocating $400,000 in federal stimulus money to keep the centers running through the end of August.
Judy Lee has already begun packing her boxes. Full of art supplies and Shel Silverstein books, the boxes sat neatly stacked near the wall of her spacious classroom at the Piedmont Avenue Early Childhood Development Center on Wednesday, a telltale sign of the center’s imminent closure.