Posts Tagged ‘Oakland Unified School District’

Oakland resident Wallace Lee crammed himself into a small room in Oakland’s Chinatown with nearly three dozen other parents on Saturday afternoon to hear plans for what many East Bay residents see as an unfilled gap in the area’s education system: a public school with a Mandarin-English curriculum.

Public school students in Oakland now have one more way to let authorities know if something is making them feel unsafe on campus: texting. Beginning last Thursday, a new program at the six major high school campuses in town—Oakland Tech, Skyline, McClymonds, Fremont, Castlemont and Oakland High—allows students to send anonymous text messages to Oakland…

Four charter schools presented petitions to renew their charters at the Oakland Unified School District board meeting last night. Students, teachers and parents from the Oakland schools crowded the boardroom and took turns asking the board to let their schools continue to operate for five more years.

2010 was a tumultuous year for Oakland as both the city and state faced a heated election season, the courts weighed the validity of controversial measures passed during previous elections, and the effects of the 2008 financial collapse continued to reverberate throughout the local economy, but it was also a year of new beginnings. Oakland North presents a guide to the year’s top stories.

It’s that time of year again—time for school-age kids and their parents to pick which Oakland public school they’d like to attend. Starting on December 6 and running through January 14, Oakland’s “options process” is meant to provide students and parents with greater flexibility and allow them to select the schools that are best suited to their particular needs.

“We did submit a balanced budget,” said Troy Flint, the spokesperson for Oakland Unified School District, of the interim budget report board members approved Tuesday, “but, we’re headed towards potentially the biggest mid-year cuts in the history of California.”

Until Monday morning, Chabot Elementary School, like several other schools in the Oakland Unified School District, was still struggling to heat all of its classrooms in the cold days following Thanksgiving break. Last week in the school’s newly constructed “D-building,” which houses first and second grade students, teachers were forced to hold class in the hallways, administrators said, which were warmer than the unheated classrooms.

It was a question left unanswered in a press-release issued by the Oakland Unified School District last week: What do Oakland Schools, the Oakland Police Department, and a project to build a 60,000-pound bronze monument in downtown Oakland have in common? The answer: about $10.5 million.

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.

Piedmont Avenue Elementary has garnered attention as an up-and-coming school in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). This year, Piedmont was one of 12 OUSD schools that raised their Academic Performance Index (API) by more than 50 points. That’s twice the average increase for the district.

Students and staff from Oakland Technical High School presented the school board with more than 700 signatures Wednesday night, asking the district to support tenured statistics teacher Evelyn Francisco, who faces deportation back to the Philippines if her visa is not renewed before December.

Before the state finalized its budget on Friday, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) had already made $122 million in cuts for the 2010-2011 school year, and had scheduled several child development centers for closure. Superintendant Tony Smith had called the further cuts “a possibility,” a scenario which district officials now say will be unlikely.

Tech’s improving reputation has made the North Oakland high school many students’ first choice for public school placement this fall–and administrators are now scrambling to find classrooms and teachers for everybody.

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.

At a campaign event at Redwood Heights Elementary, Oakland mayoral candidate Jean Quan sought to position herself as the “education candidate” and discussed the upcoming Oakland teachers’ strike.