We know there is no cavalry coming to save our kids.  If there was it would have already done come.  Centuries of educational exclusion where it was illegal to teach Black slaves, followed by decades of legal educational neglect during Jim Crow, and now a formal equality that exists largely on paper, but not the…

Oakland has a golden opportunity to make real lasting changes at two of its most impacted schools, through a happy coincidence of funding.  Whether it will take the opportunity is to be seen. Last week OUSD announced  its receipt of the Federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) for two schools on the Havenscourt/Lockwwod Campus; Futures United…

Great news for Oakland families in the OUSD Board approval of Oakland’s first new school in response to its call for quality schools, the district’s internal school development process.  The newly approved School of Language (SOL), a dual language program, fills a key gap in the bilingual pipeline. OUSD has made huge strides in its…

Instability is bad for schools, and the churn of superintendents that Oakland has suffered has been bad for the system.  We are going on our 9th, correct that, 10th, superintendent in the last 16 years, with the inevitable stalls during transitions, and churns and learning curves as the new person comes in, with or without…

(this is a guest blog from a socially conscious mother, who deliberately took on and struggled with sending her child to a school where he was the “minority”, heartfelt and honest account of the journey) December 2015 Lest anyone imagine that our school integration story has been smooth, that my offspring are always on board…