The Oakland Education Week in Review 4/7-4/14


All the Oakland Ed News from last week–more on the budget, how OUSD can use land for the public, the first Middle Eastern honor roll, some great events, the Measure AA drama, a new school idea, celebrating our champs, student and educator stories, all that an much more, please read, share, and get involved

The 2 Numbers You Need to Know to Understand the OUSD Fiscal Crisis

Alameda County school community rallies legislators for more funding

Hundreds of Proud People Come Together to Celebrate Student Success in First Ever OUSD Middle Eastern Honor Roll Event

The Risk and Opportunity in Selling OUSD’s Land; Put Public Housing over Private Profit

Educating the Black Child ft. Dr. Shawn Ginwright, Zaretta Hammond & YGB

Annual Pacific Islander Spring Celebration

Oakland Community Leader Envisions School For At-Risk Youth; Faculty May Include Prisoners

The Oakland City Council Should Implement Measure AA and Honor Voters’ Voices

All Star Teacher 2019

MS. MAC ON HER LOVE FOR SENTENCE UNPACKING

TurnUP the Volume: Hip Hop and Writing Workshop

SOBEO Rants on Spotify

Board Watch: April 10

Finding His Roots

Opinion: Oakland should collect Measure AA tax during court review

Month of Celebration for Oakland’s Twin State Champion Basketball Teams Culminates With Parade and Rally on Friday

Annual Bay Area student trip to South Africa canceled due to lack of funds

Standing in Solidarity with Muslim Communities

Oakland High, Oakland Tech Girls California Basketball Champions Honored By City

Opinion: Oakland shouldn’t collect likely illegal Measure AA tax

Unstitching Third World Girls and Education

East Bay Educators Coalesce Around Increased State Funding for Public Education

California:

Other Stories:

How You Can Help:

Resources:

Oakland:

  • The 2 Numbers You Need to Know to Understand the OUSD Fiscal Crisis
    • OUSD once had 63,000 students and roughly 90 schools, today we have 36,000 students and roughly 86 schools.  Esteemed Oaklandologist, Dr. Brian Stanley, dropped that knowledge in a long historical look back on OUSD enrollment and its finances.  And anyone wondering where the fiscal crisis comes from should just ponder that.
  • Alameda County school community rallies legislators for more funding
    • About 350 teachers, students, superintendents, union leaders, workers, parents and school board presidents from Alameda County rallied and spoke with legislators in Sacramento on Wednesday, calling for more public education funding in California, according to the Alameda County Office of Education’s director of communications and public affairs Michelle Smith McDonald.
  • Hundreds of Proud People Come Together to Celebrate Student Success in First Ever OUSD Middle Eastern Honor Roll Event
    • Hundreds of OUSD students in grades 6-12 came together at La Escuelita on Saturday, April 6 for a special first-of-its-kind ceremony celebrating academic success. It was the first annual Middle Eastern Honor Roll celebration for students whose GPA is at least 3.0, and in many cases above a 4.0.
  • The Risk and Opportunity in Selling OUSD’s Land; Put Public Housing over Private Profit
    • Oakland Unified has officially started the process to identify and sell land with the formation of the so called, 7-11 Committee.  The District is in dire financial straits, with many underutilized properties. This could be a boon for the public and the district, or another boondoggle, where district assets are put into private hands, and underserved families are no better off.
  • Educating the Black Child ft. Dr. Shawn Ginwright, Zaretta Hammond & YGB
    • It’s time for another edition of Educating the Black Child, Edutainment for Equity’s multi-disciplinary community dialogue for educators, parents, youth development professionals and other concerned community members.
  • Annual Pacific Islander Spring Celebration
    • Join us for the 2nd Annual Pacific Islander Honor Roll & Senior Celebration with food, fun & festivities next Wednesday on April 17th at Laney College 5-8pm!
  • Oakland Community Leader Envisions School For At-Risk Youth; Faculty May Include Prisoners
    • A man who grew up in a broken home and spent time in the juvenile justice system before becoming a top scholar and community leader is dreaming up a new school in one of the Bay Area’s toughest neighborhoods – one that could include prison inmates on the faculty.
  • The Oakland City Council Should Implement Measure AA and Honor Voters’ Voices
    • Access to quality education is one of the surest ways to assure the development of positive, productive, and high achieving children and youth. On this point, there is consensus. For that reason, Oakland voters overwhelming approved Measure AA this past November, a measure that will work to uplift a generation of children by securing much-needed funding for early education and continuity of resources from preschool through graduation and beyond to increase college graduation rates.
  • All Star Teacher 2019
    • Vote now for your favorite all-star teacher!
  • MS. MAC ON HER LOVE FOR SENTENCE UNPACKING
    • Ms. Logan McWilliams, known to her students as “Ms. Mac” teaches first grade at Madison Park Lower and is seeing exciting results using Sentence Unpacking for complex text. Thanks to this strategy, her students are not only spontaneously making connections between texts, but are also building a deeper understanding of the way complex language works.
  • TurnUP the Volume: Hip Hop and Writing Workshop
    • This interactive, Hip-Hop centered writing and performance workshop will provide participants an opportunity to tap into their creative linguistic minds and unleash the power in their truth by turning their own lived experiences into raw, creative content.
  • SOBEO Rants on Spotify
    • SOBEO Rants is now on Spotify!
  • Board Watch: April 10
    • Three big things on the agenda for this week’s Oakland School Board are:
      • A proposal that puts OUSD’s finances in jeopardy – A reserve is a district’s financial safety net – what happens if that net disappears?
      • Long term plans seek long term stability for Oakland students  – The Citywide Plan explores how OUSD facilities can best serve district and charter students.
      • Get to know OUSD’s 7-11 Committee – A new committee with a familiar name is responsible for exploring OUSD’s approach to handling their surplus property.
  • Finding His Roots
    • The Oakland school board has voted to close Roots International Academy after this school year. Roots will be the first of many Oakland schools expected to close or consolidate in the coming years. Here’s YR Media’s Danny Lopez on how he was shaped by his time at Roots.
  • Opinion: Oakland should collect Measure AA tax during court review
    • In November, Oaklanders voted for a historic investment in our schools and children through Measure AA, a 30-year parcel tax that earned 62.5 percent of the vote. Guided by a state Supreme Court analysis, which suggested that voter-led tax initiatives require a simple majority to pass, council members in December voted to confirm passage of the measure.
  • Month of Celebration for Oakland’s Twin State Champion Basketball Teams Culminates With Parade and Rally on Friday
    • They have been honored by their families, their classmates, their schools, members of the OUSD Board of Education, the Oakland A’s and the Golden State Warriors, and now the City of Oakland, state legislators, and OUSD will be honoring the city’s two State Champion Basketball teams on Friday, April 12.
  • Annual Bay Area student trip to South Africa canceled due to lack of funds
    • An annual trip to South Africa for students in and around Oakland was canceled abruptly last month when the trip organizer announced that she was unable to secure the necessary funding, leaving families scrambling for answers.
  • Standing in Solidarity with Muslim Communities
    • Don’t miss this important event to learn and stand in solidarity with our Muslim communities. April 24th is just around the corner. Put it on your calendar!
  • Oakland High, Oakland Tech Girls California Basketball Champions Honored By City
    • They have been honored by their families, their classmates, their schools, members of the OUSD Board of Education, the Oakland A’s and the Golden State Warriors, and now the City of Oakland, state legislators, and OUSD will be honoring the city’s two State Champion Basketball teams on Friday, April 12.
  • Opinion: Oakland shouldn’t collect likely illegal Measure AA tax
    • The City of Oakland should not collect Measure AA taxes until a court decides whether they are legal. It is wrong to make homeowners pay the city another $198 per parcel annually when it’s questionable whether the surcharge received the required voter approval in November.
  • Unstitching Third World Girls and Education
    • Unstitching Third World Girls and Education: A one-day symposium exploring the relationships between Gender Equity, Economy, and Empowerment in the Global South.
  • East Bay Educators Coalesce Around Increased State Funding for Public Education
    • On Wednesday, April 3, more than 350 people, representing every corner of the Alameda County’s educational community, gathered on the South Steps of the State Capitol to rally in advocacy of increased funding for public education in California. The rally was organized by the newly formed East Bay Coalition for Public Education, a group made up of teachers and classified employee unions, superintendents, school board members, parents and students from around Alameda County.

California:

  • The Latest Report on School Funding in the US Is Out; California Fails
    • California’s inadequate and broken school funding system was on display as a bottom dweller in overall funding, funding effort, and also student outcomes tied to funding gaps in the latest report from school financedata.org, The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Funding Systems.  As strikes echo across the state, districts cut, everyone fights for crumbs, and pension cost increases outstrip any new revenue, this report should be one more nail in the coffin of California’s school funding paralysis. It should drive us to action.
  • Calif. lawmakers propose taxing wealthiest corporations to pay for public schools to generate $5B/yr
    • Fresh off teachers’ strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland, three East Bay lawmakers are hoping to drum up money from the nation’s largest corporations who do business in California to generate billions more for K-12 schools, community colleges and early childhood education — while also helping reduce the state’s income-inequality gap.
  • California lawmakers seek to block Teach For America from the state
    • Democrats in the California State Assembly are pushing a bill which would effectively ban Teach For America educators from the state’s classrooms.
  • How a tiny California school district sparked calls for a charter crackdown
    • One was a charter school operator desperate for authorization after years of rejection by multiple school districts. The other was a teeny district in the rural high desert, hemorrhaging students, facing insolvency and in dire need of revenue.
  • Higher corporate taxes linked to CEO pay would raise funds for California education
    • As pressures mount on lawmakers in Sacramento to come up with additional funds to underwrite California education, Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and other lawmakers have introduced legislation that would substantially raise the income tax rates of over 2,000 of California’s largest corporations, based in large part on the size of the gap between what they pay their CEO and their workers.
  • Efforts to restrict charter school growth in California inch forward in state Legislature
    • Against the backdrop of rallies, protests and press conferences, three bills that would impose significant restrictions on charter schools in California took a small step forward when they were approved by the Assembly Education Committee in the state Capitol:
  • Sonoma Valley Unified’s special education department lacks cohesive curriculum, report says
    • The Sonoma Valley Unified School District’s special-education department is in for some changes – that was one take away from the April 9 meeting of the district board of trustees. Exactly what those changes will look like remains to be seen, but district officials said Tuesday they are committed to making improvements to the department – and formally apologized for any missteps the district has made along the way in its service to students with special-ed needs.
  • California plan for school construction bonds sparks debate for reform
    • For the past few years, a small group of advocates for equitable school construction has been examining how school districts with small tax bases and low-income families can get a bigger share of state funding to upgrade school facilities.
  • CHARTER SCHOOL CEO: AVOID BLACK KIDS BECOMING THE NEW COTTON HARVESTED FOR THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING
    • Tomorrow, the California Assembly Education Committee will hold its first public hearing on two pieces of legislation California Charter School founder Margaret Fortune says are designed to dismantle taxpayer-funded independent public schools in the state. If passed, 52,800 African-American children enrolled in charter schools across California could be affected.

Other Stories:

How You Can Help:

  • Reunite my student and his brother
    • This week one of my seniors (who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons) came to me with a very urgent one. His 17-year-old younger brother is being held in an immigration detention center in central Florida, and the family doesn’t have the funds to pay for his release and transport to San Francisco.

Resources:

  • Blended Learning: A Guide for Teachers
    • Today’s educators know that technology has had a profound impact on how teaching and learning work. One of the phenomena that has come to play an increasingly important role in education is blended learning. However, what is blended learning, actually?
What do you think?

More Comments