So they need to spend it carefully.

It has initiated and implemented the findings of an audit of its organizational practices to see where savings may be found. These findings must be made public and otherwise well-publicized.

It has moved away from the “one-size fits all” approach to education, and adopts policies that allow more students to connect with educational opportunities that meet their varied needs and interests. This of course means many things to many people, but I am personally interested in more vocational opportunities for secondary students.

In short, Katy, I could not even consider your follow-up questions, until there was substantial progress on the items I listed above.

Oakland probably has not reached that level but it will in the forseeable future. The level of violence in this multicultural soup seems to be high. The various groups really hate each other and aren’t inclined to sit and talk things out. And they are heavily armed – knives, cutting instruments and firearms. Plenty of autos used to store weapons and narcotics both of which are used as currency. Autos feature extensively in trouble as in drive bys, sex crimes and assaults where the players drove to the scene and drove away, car crashed and DUI collisions. It’s nice if they had a license and insurance but it’s optional. Plenty of sexual assaults (at least she says so) where an auto was involved.

It’s the schools where basic discipline and responsibility are established – especially responsibility for what you let happen to you. Parents work and broken homes and single mothers are the norm in the lower classes. Public schools now have a majority of lower class students (Class status is strictly that of the parent(s) – a function of education, occupation and lifestyle much of which is derived from the present vs future orientation of the parent(s).)

Telling students in this soup that they really need UC entrance requirements is a reach. Only some go for it.

I agree that the point of division has something to do with puberty. As in before puberty. I also agree that Black and Brown students reach puberty much earlier and I believe the earlier puberty is part of the problem in educating them. Another way that people are not created equal.

I am not letting the criminality of the black and brown population get in the way of school. I don’t believe their criminality (numbers) are produced by having or not having a comfortable school to hang out in. They are what they are. I don’t believe we should run a school badly in order to cater to any perceived needs of a population to have a comfortable place to hang out – “or else”. They can have “or else”.

I do believe it’s the duty of a well run school to detect and identify those students who are conduct disordered or antisocial and expel them quickly without any attempts to “save” them or “fix” them. And by this I do not mean that little Johnny or Otis has a bad day or got into a fight, that just a nice challenge for a good administrator. I mean that it is noticed that the SOB is discovered to be without a conscience. Bad kids are to be labeled as bad kids and gotten rid of. Their handling is not a job for a normal school. They are a small number of people and if not stopped they can destroy any kind of educational environment.

Part of the reason the urban public schools are such jungles is the unwillingness of the Educrats to prune these weeds. Not a problem for me. Running them and their families off is really easy and kind of fun. It starts from the classical music on the PA system as the come into the property to the reading and writing assignments they hate after they sit down. Dress code, silence rules, constant calling on in class, strict insubordination rules, rules for addressing staff, the list goes on (kind of like my high school). I’m not saying you have to run Spartan High School, you don’t. You just don’t accomodate the ghetto in any way. They will leave or they can stay and change.

Of course we’d want to maintain a school for the ghetto youth who want to keep it real. Call it MLK Center or something (AKA Ditch Digger U). But OUSD needs to have “a choice” and enforce the differences.

Good schools can get the best that it’s students can put forward. They just need to sort the students into different schools. You’d find Black and Brown kids in the better schools and they’d no longer have lowlifes holding them back telling them to stop acting white. How many Black and Browns would be the issue because it wouldn’t be that many (when you don’t count the mixed marriages and the immigrants). At least in the beginning. I think the numbers would tend to rise in time as people decided it was worth striving for.

This is also why if one of these highly motivated kids gets off track the vast percentages will force the child back on the right track in a way that the culture in crime-ridden neighborhoods often force the minority of kids who are working very hard in school into lives of crime.

Once you build as atmosphere of success, it is easier to work in more success. Just as when there is one really rotten school in a neighborhood it is easier to create several poorly performing schools in that same neighborhood – then the community gets a reputation and things go downhill – this was the case in North Oakland near Clairemont Middle School and the surrounding elementary schools. As a result there may be school closures because of lack of enrollment as the reputation has changed much more than the school environments have changed – for the worse.

However, I still believe parents who can will need to supplement. And I hope to hold some science workshops offsite to help with kids who cannot afford tutoring.

“My child’s elementary teacher did not even know the standards in math or science and in recent benchmark tests was SURPRISED at the content on the test. The teacher did not know that the 5th grade science test is made up primarily of 4th grade material. The teacher did not realize that the material taught in fourth and fifth grade is used to build on in 6th – 8th grades. The teacher was also unfamiliar with how to access the released test questions and the state standards from the internet.”

Are you serious? Ok, I know you are. And I get why you’ve chosen the online name that you have. I’m curious – did you raise this to the principal? Talked with other parents about this? As a mother of a 4th grader I’m outraged for you.

I firmly believe the Educrats are well aware of this and for this reason have no intention of creating such a school system. They’d rather have no functioning academic track than have one that gives proof that all people are not created equal. They are here for idiology rather than to help children of any color get ahead. If they can’t have it their way they’ll crash the system rather than have anything “elitist”.

The families of bright children are aware of this mindset also and shun OUSD when possible. And there we have it.

The Brave New World. The brights physically move away and associate only with each other in residences, occupations and education. Previously (60 years ago) the residency wasn’t as critical and there was less emphasis on physical segregation because everybody went to the same school districts, saw each other and played on the same teams (and got drafted together). The differences were in the classes and programs within the district. We were in the large schools together and took some classes together but were in different tracks. This was OK with my parents back then because tracking and classes assured that we got our University of CA Entrance requirements in with high quality, and they knew that the school maintained iron clad discipline. Not anymore.

Now entire schools have been abandoned to lower class mores. Too bad for them. Wait till they have to find employment. And the bright minorities will not be able to pass into higher society – they won’t even know how to speak and act.

I say put the K-5, 6-8 and high school that allows students to learn as fast and in-depth as they want in deep East Oakland. When you do that, you will attract hard-wroking talented students and keep the entitled hills GATE-identified for the purpose of making people feel good students out. Too many GATE identified students are unmotivated (lazy), feel entitled and have parents that make sure their STAR test scores are high (the second way to become GATE identified – Ravens Progressive Matrices in the first) and feel the identification comes with privilege rather than responsibility. As a school district we would also get more bang for our buck by having students required to perform the work to get into these schools.

But, once again, when you limit it to high school – just as we do with Skyline and Oakland Tech, you loose a huge number of families in elementary and middle school because the students are not getting what they need. The parents of the math students I refer to cannot afford the tuition of private school, but if Orinda, Lafayette or Piedmont gave them a slot and transportation, they’d jump at the chance – and their parents would jump at the chance to give them the opportunity to be the next Nobel Prize winning mathematician or scientist. Students want these opportunities and are willing to work before and after school, often walking in the dark, to get the opportunity to learn at high levels. Give them the schools they need and I guarantee you will find a whole new group of brown, black and yellow kids that can and will perform at exceedingly high levels.