last week– the reopening saga continues, stories from community and families, its school choice time for next year and a look at the data, the state has new guidance on reopenings and a new ethnic studies curricula, all that and more, please read share and get involved
Oakland:
- Oakland teachers union approves school reopening agreement
- State of the Bay: Pandemic Learning Loss, School Reopening and Healthy Cooking
- Students, Staff and Families at Seven Schools Across OUSD Work to Green Their Neighborhoods and Help Fight Climate Change, Campaign Pays Tribute to Essential Workers
- Segregated Dumping in Oakland; Our garbage is choking our most vulnerable students and communities
- ‘I Can Do This’: Oakland Mom Reflects on a Year of COVID-19
- Some Oakland Schools won’t Reopen as Planned after Teachers Opt Not to Return Early
- Freedom Community Clinic offers whole-person healing in Oakland
California:
- California approves ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 schools after years of debate
- California adopts 3-foot-spacing rule for classrooms, changing reopening equation
- Special-needs children still seek help after year adrift
- Coaches, mentors at California schools key to helping keep recent immigrant students engaged during pandemic
Other Stories:
Resources:
- Elementary Schools that Showed Progress with Latinx Children, You Should Have Gotten Your Offers, Now Make Your Choice
- Elementary Schools that Showed Progress with Black Children, You Should Have Gotten Your Offers, Now Make Your Choice
- Middle Schools that Showed Progress with African American Children, You Should Have Gotten Your Offers, Now Make Your Choice
- How is Your School Doing by Black Families, Create your State of Black Education Report Card to Find Out
Oakland:
- Oakland teachers union approves school reopening agreement
- Members of the Oakland teachers union have approved a tentative agreement with the Oakland Unified School District to get some elementary school students back into classrooms by the end of the month, the district announced late Saturday.
- State of the Bay: Pandemic Learning Loss, School Reopening and Healthy Cooking
- This week on State of the Bay, we’ll talk about the state of school reopening with SF Chronicle education reporter Jill Tucker. Then we’ll do a deep dive into pandemic learning loss and how it can be addressed with Heather Hough, Executive Director of Policy Analysis for California Education and Lakisha Young, co-founder and CEO of The Oakland Reach. We’ll end with Joseph Pace’s interview of Dr. Linda Shiue about her new cookbook, Spicebox Kitchen.
- Students, Staff and Families at Seven Schools Across OUSD Work to Green Their Neighborhoods and Help Fight Climate Change, Campaign Pays Tribute to Essential Workers
- In what is becoming a tradition in OUSD, students, staff and families are distributing and planting trees that will help improve the environment, and as students have learned, produce fresh air. “Today we’re planting trees so there is less opportunity to get asthma and so that the air can get more moist,” said Santiago Duenas, a third grader at Korematsu Discovery Academy. He and his family picked up a fruit tree at school last Wednesday at their tree distribution event. He was excited to plant it at home saying, “it’s the second one.” Santiago received one of several hundred trees at a distribution event at Korematsu two years ago
- Segregated Dumping in Oakland; Our garbage is choking our most vulnerable students and communities
- Illegal dumping is a health hazard; it may cause fatigue and depression among the residents and families that live near frequent dump sites, and it is associated with high crime, but it is still one of the fastest growing problems our major cities are facing.
- ‘I Can Do This’: Oakland Mom Reflects on a Year of COVID-19
- A year into the pandemic, Carolyn Bims-Payne lives by her calendar. A single mom with two sons, she typically starts her day around 5:30 a.m. to get ready for work, Zoom school and other appointments.
- Some Oakland Schools won’t Reopen as Planned after Teachers Opt Not to Return Early
- More than a dozen Oakland elementary schools and preschools will not reopen as planned Tuesday after the majority, if not all, teachers at the sites opted not to return until required to do so in mid-April, despite an $800 incentive and prioritized vaccinations.
- Freedom Community Clinic offers whole-person healing in Oakland
- The Freedom Community Clinic combines western medicine with the strengths of indigenous traditional healing.
California:
- California approves ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 schools after years of debate
- Ending years-long and often divisive debate over ethnic studies coursework in California’s K-12 schools, the State Board of Education on Thursday unanimously approved a model curriculum to guide how the histories, struggles and contributions of Asian, Black, Latino and Native Americans — and the racism and marginalization they have experienced in the United States — will be taught to millions of students.
- California adopts 3-foot-spacing rule for classrooms, changing reopening equation
- Students in California are now allowed to sit three feet apart in classrooms — instead of four or six feet — in guidelines state officials issued over the weekend, a major change in policy that will exert pressure on local officials to consider a faster and more complete reopening of campuses that have been closed for over a year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Special-needs children still seek help after year adrift
- One year after schools shuttered, the fears of many parents of California’s special-needs students have been realized. Many of those students — whose disabilities can range from autism to deafness, and most of whom have gone more than a year without in-person services such as speech therapy — appear to have regressed physically and academically.
- Coaches, mentors at California schools key to helping keep recent immigrant students engaged during pandemic
- Fernanda Salazar, 19, struggled to learn English after moving from Guatemala to Los Angeles about three years ago. She was finally feeling like she was able to communicate freely with classmates and teachers when the pandemic hit and learning became a mix of new school schedules, video calls and virtual connections.
Other Stories:
- Chicago Suburb Shapes Reparations for Black Residents: ‘It Is the Start’
- Officials in Evanston, Ill., were weighing how to distribute $10 million in reparations to those who suffered housing discrimination.
Resources:
- Elementary Schools that Showed Progress with Latinx Children, You Should Have Gotten Your Offers, Now Make Your Choice
- Where you send your child to school is one of the most important decisions you can make. We haven’t had new school quality data from the state due to distance learning, so the data is from the 2018-19 school year and I wanted to highlight some of the schools making progress with Oakland children, and encourage families to visit. Every child is different, and I will break it down into subgroups (schools showing progress with Black, Brown and low income students) in the next few weeks and highlight these schools that have open seats for next school year. You can also take a look at the schoolfinder tool to find local schools.
- Elementary Schools that Showed Progress with Black Children, You Should Have Gotten Your Offers, Now Make Your Choice
- Where you send your child to school is one of the most important decisions you can make. We haven’t had new school quality data from the state due to distance learning, so the data is from the 2018-19 school year and I wanted to highlight some of the schools making progress with Oakland children, and encourage families to visit. Every child is different, and I will break it down into subgroups (schools showing progress with Black, Brown and low income students) in the next few weeks and highlight these schools that have open seats for next school year. You can also take a look at the schoolfinder tool to find local schools.
- Middle Schools that Showed Progress with African American Children, You Should Have Gotten Your Offers, Now Make Your Choice
- Where you send your child to school is one of the most important decisions you can make. We haven’t had new school quality data from the state due to distance learning, so the data is from the 2018-19 school year and I wanted to highlight some of the schools making progress with Oakland children, and encourage families to visit. Every child is different, and I will break it down into subgroups (schools showing progress with Black, Brown and low income students) in the next few weeks and highlight these schools that have open seats for next school year. You can also take a look at the schoolfinder tool to find local schools.
- How is Your School Doing by Black Families, Create your State of Black Education Report Card to Find Out
- The first step to healing is admitting we have a problem. It’s not a district problem, or charter problem, or a private school problem. It’s a problem that underlies our societal fabric, and infects our institutions. And until we step on the scale and look in the mirror, we probably won’t even know the true extent of the problem, much less how to address it.
What do you think?