School Board
The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) will likely hire a new superintendent in the next six months.
Over the last year and a half, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has been making an effort to deepen its science, technology, engineering and math programs, but so far it has had to depend on donations from corporations to fund much of them. The district’s efforts to bring so-called STEM education to students have been funded in no small part by grants from Intel and Salesforce, in addition to partnerships with Code.org and the Oakland mayor’s office, among others. According…
Sitting Oakland city council and school board members won’t have to get out of their chairs; incumbents swept the seven combined seats up for re-election Tuesday. Still, many candidates say their victors were soured by the outcome of the presidential election. District 1 councilmember Dan Kalb, who represents North Oakland, took 80 percent of the vote in his district. His challenger, Kevin Corbett, received less than 20 percent. There were 18 write-in votes. Kalb was pleased by the passage of Measure…
Tensions ran high during an OUSD board meeting focused on teacher raises and charter schools renewals.
OUSD Superintendent Antwan Wilson called on Oakland to come together to break the “sorting machine,” or the historic system Wilson said was “specifically designed to sort those who needed a real education from those who didn’t.”
The Oakland Unified School District is initiating a major push to address the concerns of girls and young women of color with the African American Girls and Young Women Achievement Program.
Nine school board candidates took the mic Tuesday night at Lighthouse Community Charter School to introduce themselves to Oakland voters. They are vying for four seats in Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7. Each candidate took turns answering the same three questions, which were printed in the audience’s programs in both English and Spanish. Connie “Mama” Williams, a grandmother of a Lighthouse student, moderated the forum. She was joined by several students and a mother who took turns reading aloud…
Student safety and the role of the Oakland School Police Department were at the forefront of Wednesday’s Oakland Unified School Board meeting, as board members, parents and OSPD Chief Jeff Godown spoke emotionally of recent events which they say have damaged the security and wellbeing of Oakland’s young people.
The Oakland Unified School Board meeting Wednesday night was packed—and then it wasn’t. Hundreds of parents and children wearing pro-charter school t-shirts and waving roses filled the left hand side of the gym at La Escuelita Learning Center, spilling over onto the right side where union members from the Oakland Education Association sat. Over twenty cards for public comment had been filed on an item that did not appear on the agenda. But as the board opened the floor to…