Posts Tagged ‘Oakland Unified School District’

To give students more time to obtain a Clipper Youth card before the school semester is in full swing, the AC Transit Office in downtown Oakland will offer special evening hours Wednesday, closing at 8 pm instead of 5 pm.

Horace Mann Elementary School in East Oakland was locked down by school officials this afternoon while the Oakland Police Department conducted a series of arrests at a nearby home.

About two dozen protesters jammed the entrance of the Oakland Unified School District’s office building near Lake Merritt on Wednesday afternoon, demanding the dismissal of recently-appointed OUSD interim police chief Barhin Bhatt, who was involved in the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Raheim Brown earlier this year. Bhatt was appointed to head the district’s small police force earlier this month after the previous chief stepped down.

Oakland school district police chief Peter Sarna stepped down from the force today in the wake of a formal complaint filed against him in early August, school district spokesman Troy Flint announced today.

Oakland mayor Jean Quan announced on Thursday morning that as an effort to reduce crimes that involve Oakland students, a group of organizations will open their doors to kids until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Prescott Circus Theatre started in 1984 in a second grade classroom at Prescott Elementary in West Oakland. The program has now spread to six other Oakland schools, including Piedmont Avenue Elementary in North Oakland. Kids in the program perform regularly in Oakland and the greater Bay Area. Now they are running low on funds and looking for local business sponsors to keep the juggling bats flying and the unicycles rolling.

More than 100 Oakland residents—mostly parents, teachers and students from Claremont Middle School and Oakland Technical High School—will ride their bikes to Sacramento on Saturday to raise money for their schools and protest state cuts to education funding.

Next year, Peralta Elementary in North Oakland will have overcrowded classrooms—while one classroom will sit empty. Despite the fact that Oakland Unified has announced a dramatic plan to shield elementary schools from layoffs of credentialed teachers, Peralta is still slated to lose one fully qualified teacher from its small staff of 12.

Lacy Lefkowitz teaches ancient history at Claremont Middle School, but last night she gave her students a lesson in current affairs. Six of Lefkowitz’s sixth graders stood before the board to read their letters about what they thought ought to be cut, and what ought to be saved, at their school next year.

There will be no budget-based layoffs of elementary school teachers in Oakland next fall, Deputy Superintendent Maria Santos announced at Wednesday night’s school board meeting. About 230 teachers had received lay-off warning notices in March.

California’s state legislators aren’t the only ones uncertain about Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed cut of redevelopment agency funds. Even though schools stand to gain if lawmakers approve the proposal, Oakland educators worry that taking funds from affordable housing could put more students at risk of homelessness.

The Oakland School Board meeting began last night with a cheer. Literally. The Sobrante Park Elementary cheerleaders have returned from a first place finish in the statewide competitive cheer competition in Los Angeles, and they saluted the board and meeting audience with kicks, twirls and pom-poms.

On Wednesday, the International Community School put on a Dr. Seuss pajama party—with the help of local PBS affiliate KQED—during the time when their after school program normally meets. The party started out with an appearance by a costumed avatar of the Cat in the Hat (the real deal if you ask any of the students) and branched off into story time in each of the Kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms.

At a time when local governments talk more about cutting public services than providing new ones, Oakland’s newest library branch bucks the trend. No modest affair, the new 81st Avenue Library opens its doors Saturday in one of the city’s most troubled areas.

Teachers in Oakland can expect a 2 percent raise next year, but that was the only positive budget news from Wednesday night’s school board meeting. The district is expecting to lose more of its state funding this year, is running low on much of its one-time-use federal funding and continues to struggle with low enrollment.

Only one generation ago, almost half of all children in the United States walked to school. But today a look at the car-jammed streets outside of schools in the morning and afternoon tells a different story. Only one in ten children now walk to school regularly, with the number of walking and bicycling trips to school…