Last week- celebrating Black educators, a look at school diversity, Integration in Oakland? Some interesting work at Castlemont, a really important article on skyrocketing housing costs in the most affordable neighborhoods, will schools get more state aid? all that and more, please, read, share and get involved
Oakland:
- Celebration of Black Educators
- CRUNCHED: Diversity in Oakland Schools
- Should Oakland Schools Finally Try to Integrate?
- Update from Jody London, District 1 School Board Director
- Castlemont SUDA Open House
- Black Student Union Cultural Arts Night
- Health care giant funds mental health therapists in East Bay schools
- CRUNCHED: 5 Years of SBAC; 4 Views on Differentiated Assistance
- Who Betrayed the Opportunity Ticket; How Hills Parents Won and Flatlands Parents are Losing
- HOUSE POOR: How price hikes hurt the most vulnerable
California:
- Will schools get more state aid?
- California’s schools stagnating, failing black students
- California should stop short-changing kids. Here’s how to help
- How California measures academic success is changing at some of the state’s largest districts
- LAPD officer allegedly caught fondling corpse
- Interactive Map: Understanding Teacher Shortages in California
- Inglewood Unified School District: The Canary in the Coal Mine
- San Francisco 49ers’ Richard Sherman clears over $27,000 in schools’ cafeteria debt
- Homeless crisis at California colleges hurts Hispanic and black students most, report says
Other Stories:
- 74 Interview: Law Professor Jack Coons on Rethinking School Funding, Restoring Authority to Low-Income Families Through Education and His Role in the Historic Serrano v. Priest Case
- 74 Interview: Howard Fuller on Schooling Elizabeth Warren About Charters, African-American Families, School Choice & Her Education Plan
- Hundreds of Thousands Are Losing Access to Food Stamps
- Teachers’ implicit bias against black students starts in preschool, study finds
- Looking for a home? You’ve seen GreatSchools ratings. Here’s how they nudge families toward schools with fewer black and Hispanic students.
- For Us, By Us: 3 Reasons Why Teachers of Color Need Their Own Professional Development Spaces
- 8-YEAR-OLD COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER BEING BULLIED IN SCHOOL; SCHOOL DISTRICT SAYS THEY NOT RESPONSIBLE
- Guatemalan boy who died in federal custody was on the floor for hours before anyone found him, video shows
- Midwood residents protest charter school that may bring ‘dangerous kids’ to community
Resources:
- Don’t Miss the Feb. 7th Deadline to Apply-Choose or Lose in Oakland’s Public Schools
- Alameda County Office of Education Offers Students Opportunity to Learn and Create at Hour of Code Event on December 9
- Oakland Education 2019: A Reflection of the Year and What’s to Come
- Choosing the Best Oakland Public School For Your Child– What Families NEED to Do NOW
- Questions and Answers for Families on Reading; The NAACP, The Oakland REACH and Oakland’s New Literacy For All Campaign
Oakland:
- Celebration of Black Educators
- Please join the State of Black Education in Oakland (SoBEO) to break bread, share a drinks and celebrate some of Oakland’s Black heroes and sheroes. Doors open at Kingston 11 at 430, we have a quick program with our honorees starting at 5 and will be celebrating with community until 7. There will be light snacks, drink tickets for folks who arrive earlier, and a great opportunity to hear from and connect with community. Spaces are limited so please register now.
- CRUNCHED: Diversity in Oakland Schools
- At the November 20 OUSD Board of Education meeting, I was heartened to hear our board members discussing and asking about data. One data point that they asked about was whether students in the charter schools up for renewal reflected the diversity of the students in Oakland. For this blog post, I’ll be looking at diversity in all public schools in Oakland. How reflective is any one Oakland public school of the overall public school student population in our city?
- Should Oakland Schools Finally Try to Integrate?
- OUSD, like the city itself, is highly segregated. But unlike Berkeley, Oakland has never attempted to desegregate its public schools.
- Update from Jody London, District 1 School Board Director
- The newsletter this month is short – an invitation to a meeting next week on the future of our schools and our district, a remembrance of long-time Facilities leader Tim White, information on upcoming Board meetings, and an update on several charter school renewal petitions.
- Castlemont SUDA Open House
- Please join us December 20 to see how our Castlemont SUDA young people are envisioning the future of a vacant lot at 73rd Avenue and Foothill Boulevard.
- Black Student Union Cultural Arts Night
- Envision Academy high school’s Black Student Union is hosting a cultural arts night for the community on December 12th from 5-7pm at 1515 Webster St Oakland, CA! Envision families and members of the community are welcomed to attend. Join us in celebrating the Black talent at Envision Academy!
- Health care giant funds mental health therapists in East Bay schools
- Oakland-based Blue Shield is bankrolling a $10 million program to put more mental health counselors in nine East Bay schools, stepping up its philanthropic efforts in the area after moving its headquarters there.
- CRUNCHED: 5 Years of SBAC; 4 Views on Differentiated Assistance
- A couple posts ago (before the posts on charter renewal and school diversity), I looked at SBAC results overall citywide and by subgroups. In this final post on the 2018-19 SBAC trends, I’ll be looking at school-level 5-year trends. To accompany this post, I created this Tableau dashboard that lets y’all dig deeper into individual school results. We also talked to representatives from OUSD, ACOE, Aspire, and Pivot Learning to get four perspectives on how key organizations are using this data to support differentiated assistance for schools.
- Who Betrayed the Opportunity Ticket; How Hills Parents Won and Flatlands Parents are Losing
- Black parents in Oakland do not have access to quality schools. 1% attended a school above the state average and making progress, 2/3rds attend a school below average and going backwards. We are locked into those schools by enrollment rules, segregated housing and the legacy of discrimination.
- HOUSE POOR: How price hikes hurt the most vulnerable
- An exclusive analysis shows the Bay Area’s poorest ZIP codes endured the largest percentage increases in rents and mortgages. Residents say there’s nowhere to go.
California:
- Will schools get more state aid?
- To the denizens of the state Capitol, the onset of the holiday season also marks the beginning of the state budget cycle. Gov. Gavin Newsom and his budget staff will soon decide the hundreds of individual appropriations that will make up the 2020-21 budget he will propose in early January, touching off five months of public hearings, backroom negotiations and horsetrading before the final version is enacted in June.
- California’s schools stagnating, failing black students
- The Nation’s Report Card on education is in and the news isn’t great —with most states receiving low marks in the latest round of National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) exams that measure student achievement. California’s scores were largely flat compared to 2017, the last time NAEP was administered, except for a troubling decline in 8th grade reading, from 263 to 259, that mirrored the nationwide trend. But the news is much worse for the Los Angeles Unified School District.
- California should stop short-changing kids. Here’s how to help
- From criminal justice reform to environmental stewardship to humane immigration policies, California’s leaders make the state a model of effective governance for the federal government and other states.
- How California measures academic success is changing at some of the state’s largest districts
- Los Angeles Unified on Wednesday is expected to become the latest California school district to publicly share data showing how its students improve year to year, a move the district expects will provide deeper insights into how individual schools are helping students progress academically.
- LAPD officer allegedly caught fondling corpse
- An officer with the Los Angeles Police Department is under investigation after his body camera allegedly caught him fondling the body of a dead woman.
- Interactive Map: Understanding Teacher Shortages in California
- A district- and county-level analysis of the factors influencing teacher supply and demand
- Inglewood Unified School District: The Canary in the Coal Mine
- According to the California Education Code, all California school districts will have to submit a first interim budget report by December 15. This report compares the school district’s ongoing fiscal condition to what was projected in the budget they submitted in July. The report includes the latest student enrollment and attendance figures, data on staffing, year-to-date accounting, and projections of expenditures and cash flow.
- San Francisco 49ers’ Richard Sherman clears over $27,000 in schools’ cafeteria debt
- San Francisco 49er Richard Sherman is making his mark off the football field by paying off thousands of dollars in school lunch debt for public school students.
- Homeless crisis at California colleges hurts Hispanic and black students most, report says
- California’s Black and Hispanic college students are most likely to face homelessness while in school, according to a new California Student Aid Commission analysis.
Other Stories:
- 74 Interview: Law Professor Jack Coons on Rethinking School Funding, Restoring Authority to Low-Income Families Through Education and His Role in the Historic Serrano v. Priest Case
- It was a warm, sun-splashed day when Emmeline Zhao and I visited Jack Coons at his cozy bungalow in Berkeley, California. That day his son and granddaughter, an accomplished dancer, happened to be visiting for spring break, and the mood was light, with three generations under the same roof. A law professor by training, Coons was a fixture on the education landscape in California for decades and — unbeknownst to most — an influential character for public education across the country. He litigated the three landmark Serrano v. Priest cases, which challenged California’s school funding structure, arguing that the state created a gross financial disparity between wealthy and poor districts due to its reliance on taxes on local real property.
- 74 Interview: Howard Fuller on Schooling Elizabeth Warren About Charters, African-American Families, School Choice & Her Education Plan
- The night after the November Democratic presidential debate, Elizabeth Warren held a campaign rally at historically black Clark Atlanta University. A bid to win black voters, the event was pitched as a recognition of the historic role of black women in protest — and protest a number of black women in the audience did. Clad in matching Powerful Parent Network T-shirts, many had ridden buses from all over the country to voice their opposition to education elements of Warren’s platform, which proposes curtailing charter schools.
- Hundreds of Thousands Are Losing Access to Food Stamps
- The Agriculture Department gave its final approval to the first of three rules that are ultimately expected to cut more than three million from the food stamp rolls.
- Teachers’ implicit bias against black students starts in preschool, study finds
- Findings reveal subconscious racial bias of teachers, who directed attention more closely to black boys when ‘challenging behavior’ is expected
- Looking for a home? You’ve seen GreatSchools ratings. Here’s how they nudge families toward schools with fewer black and Hispanic students.
- Across the country, states and school districts have devised their own systems of letter grades and color-coded dashboards based on test scores and graduation rates. But arguably the most visible and influential school rating system in America comes from the nonprofit GreatSchools, whose 1-10 ratings appear in home listings on national real estate websites Zillow, Realtor.com, and Redfin. Forty-three million people visited GreatSchools’ site in 2018, the organization says; Zillow and its affiliated sites count more than 150 million unique visitors per month.
- For Us, By Us: 3 Reasons Why Teachers of Color Need Their Own Professional Development Spaces
- Throughout my years of teaching, I have attended many professional development sessions — some good, some not so good, and some great. This week’s Hidden Heroes: Building a Diverse Education Workforce Summit far exceeded my expectations, mostly because it was the exact opposite of my previous experiences. Not only was it a great professional development, but it was one where educators of color created it, specifically for other educators of color. Here are my reasons as to why teachers of color need more of their own professional development spaces.
- 8-YEAR-OLD COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER BEING BULLIED IN SCHOOL; SCHOOL DISTRICT SAYS THEY NOT RESPONSIBLE
- A parent’s worst fear is to have their child go to school and get beat up on. However, that is exactly what happened to Gabriel Taye, an 8-year-old student, who got jumped by a gang of classmates on the school premises, just days before he took his own life.
- Guatemalan boy who died in federal custody was on the floor for hours before anyone found him, video shows
- A sick Guatemalan boy who died in government custody was lying on the floor for hours before someone found him dead, a video first obtained by ProPublica shows. The boy, identified by a US Customs and Border Protection official as Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, 16, died on May 20 at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas, days after he crossed into the US and was apprehended by immigration officials, CBP said.
- Midwood residents protest charter school that may bring ‘dangerous kids’ to community
- An ugly battle has erupted over a Brooklyn synagogue’s plan to rent space to a pioneering charter school serving mostly minority students.
Resources:
- Don’t Miss the Feb. 7th Deadline to Apply-Choose or Lose in Oakland’s Public Schools
- Open enrollment closes on February 7th. So if you don’t get your application in by then, there may be no spaces left at high demand schools and you may not even have a spot at your neighborhood school.
- Alameda County Office of Education Offers Students Opportunity to Learn and Create at Hour of Code Event on December 9
- The Alameda County Office of Education will celebrate Computer Science Education Week by supporting student learners, their families and teachers as they participate in engaging and inspiring self-guided Hour of Code lessons!
- Oakland Education 2019: A Reflection of the Year and What’s to Come
- Join us for our final end of 2019 event, this Thursday, December 12th from 6:00-8:00 pm
- Choosing the Best Oakland Public School For Your Child– What Families NEED to Do NOW
- Though it may still feel relatively early in the school year, we’re officially in the thick of the Oakland public school application season for next school year. We at Oakland Enrolls aim to empower Oakland families to make informed choices about their public school options and make the process of selecting and enrolling in a public school easy, efficient, and equitable.
- Questions and Answers for Families on Reading; The NAACP, The Oakland REACH and Oakland’s New Literacy For All Campaign
- How well can your child read? Not what are their grades, but really, how well can they read? Are they on grade level? That was a question The Oakland REACH and Oakland NAACP started asking with families over the last year, and as the answers emerged, a new campaign was born, the Oakland Literacy For All. Last night was the first of several coalition trainings for families and it was powerful.
What do you think?