Politics
Despite the rain and cold, scores of Occupy Oakland protesters gathered Sunday morning around what remained of the group’s latest makeshift campsite, a vacant lot at 19th Street and Telegraph Avenue. Once again, earlier in the morning, police had cleared away tents and told Occupy protesters they could not camp in the city overnight.
Despite warnings from police and Mayor Jean Quan against setting up any more campsites in Oakland, Occupy Oakland protesters staged a peaceful march Saturday and then broke into a fenced downtown lot to begin staking more tents. Some neighbors pleaded with them, in vain, not to camp there.
The old Oakland Army Base, a 330-acre parcel that stretches from the city’s waterfront to the base of the Bay Bridge and into West Oakland, has lain fallow for more than a decade, as officials from the city and the Port of Oakland have mulled over how best to use the space. Over the past twelve years, plans for redeveloping the army base, which is owned in equal parts by the port and the city, have ranged from the spectacular…
A month after the Oakland Unified School District board voted to close five elementary schools, members voted Wednesday night to allow Life Academy, a small health and sciences high school in East Oakland, to expand to offer middle school classes as well. At a packed meeting that mostly focused on the district’s financial issues, board members also discussed the most recent state audit as well as a report on teacher and staff retention.
At the Occupy Oakland encampment at Snow Park near Lake Merritt, cooking equipment that used to serve hot meals in the middle of the camp is gone, and the library and clothes donation area are a shell of what they once were–but, since the evacuation of the Frank Ogawa Plaza Occupy camp this Monday, the number of tents at Snow Park has been growing.
Oaklanders voted Tuesday to reject three ballot measures, which would have imposed an $80 parcel tax on homeowners to hire more police officers, extended the deadline for police and firefighter pension payments to stabilize the city budget, and changed the city attorney from an elected to an appointed position.
Last month, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill designed to give kids more time in the extra protection of booster seats. State Senate Bill 929, which will go into effect on January 1, 2012, makes booster seats mandatory for kids up to eight years old, or 4 feet 9 inches tall.
On October 26 representatives from three of Oakland’s public elementary schools –ASCEND, Learning Without Limits, and Lazear—presented petitions to the school board to convert into charter schools. Closing the five schools, by the school district’s estimate, would save about $2 million. But if these three schools become charters, the district could lose as many as 1000 students from its rolls, pulling more than $4 million from OUSD.
Oakland North asked Oakland residents their thoughts on Mayor Jean Quan’s handling of the Occupy Oakland demonstration.