About the Author: Sophia Sobko is a former teacher and current graduate student at UC Berkeley. Last Friday evening E14 Gallery in Downtown Oakland buzzed as 7th and 8th graders from Lighthouse Community Charter School shared their research, artwork, and writing on gun-related violence in Oakland. The exhibit was the culmination of a year of…
charter schools
Privileged Oakland Parents Need to Clean Their Own House Before They Meddle in the Deep East
It was a heartfelt moment recently when a member of the Alameda County school board asked the question that many of us were thinking, why are some Oakland families so opposed to charter schools in Deep East Oakland. A question doubly important, because there are some serious hostile environment issues playing out at the Hills…
A Charter School “Moratorium” in Oakland Would Be Wrong, Illegal and Stupid
Rather than asking why so many families attend charters or even more pay for private school in Oakland, there is a misguided effort at a charter moratorium. This is not only illegal, it’s counterproductive—which makes it stupid. Case in point: Unnamed Charter School, a school soundly denied by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), was…
The Predator, The Snake, and The Thief; Why I Couldn’t Wait to Get Away from Paradise
My name is Jeremias Arevalo. I am a junior at Lighthouse Community Charter School. I have always enjoyed writing in the forms of poetry, scripture and memoirs. I hope that my work shows you an insight into the life of a mixed-race, 17-year-old growing up in a turbulent time, in a turbulent place. I love…
The Spook Who Sat by the Charter School Door
I am the fly in the school reform buttermilk. An outsider, now marginally on the inside, trying to plot the revolution. Young, gifted and Black, I founded a charter school support organization in Oakland at the dawn of the movement in the ’90s, followed Katrina into New Orleans to help resuscitate the (charter) schools, and…