Tribune file photo of KIPP students on the Lowell campus by D. Ross Cameron

Until today, when I saw Oakbook’s report on a new OUSD asset management study and checked it out for myself, I didn’t know that:

• Oakland’s public, non-charter schools can fit almost two times the number of students that they hold right now.
• The district’s buildings, in all, are 5.8 million square feet, and its property spans 487 acres.
• The city’s school-age population (5 to 17 years old) is 68,436. Of that number, 2,504 attend public schools outside of Oakland; 1,386 are not in school at all; Read the rest of this entry »

Lincoln Elementary, a California Distinguished School in Oakland’s Chinatown, celebrated its new wing yesterday — a two-story building with 12 classrooms. It’s one of several schools that has undergone major construction with extra funding from local taxpayers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sobrante Park Elementary School in East Oakland has been plagued by suspicious fires in the last couple of years. This time, a 10-year-old boy – a student who was suspended from the school — was arrested on suspicion of arson.

What a way to end the school year.

photo of Tilden classroom by Sean Donnelly/Oakland Tribune

Tilden School is a fascinating study in special education — and, more broadly, in promising and potentially short-lived Oakland school district experiments. You can find today’s Tribune story here.

Tonight, the board is expected to vote to close the 125-student elementary school (a plan that might entail relocating its students to one of six different schools) at the end of the 2009-10 year because of facilities and enrollment concerns. It was originally slated to close this June, but parents quickly organized and pushed for another year to craft a stronger plan with more community input, which two board subcommittees approved.

One of the school’s biggest challenges Read the rest of this entry »

I referred to the closure of Tilden School in a post last week, but you won’t find that term on tomorrow night’s Teaching and Learning Committee agenda. You see, what district staffers have in store for Tilden is actually a “Restructuring of Instructional Program and Redesignation of Facilities.”

I know I keep harping on the dearth of plain English coming out of the central office, but I just don’t understand the purpose behind all of this jargon. Would any concerned parent see the Tilden agenda item and think: “Oh, my special needs child might have to go to a different school next year, but that’s OK, because her school isn’t being closed. It’s just being redesignated”? Read the rest of this entry »

photo from Tilden’s Web site

Tilden Elementary School might close in June.

OUSD staff have determined that the district can’t afford to complete the repairs necessary to make the school — which offers 16 special education programs — clean and safe, said district spokesman Troy Flint. Last year, I wrote about the lack of a functioning alarm and intercom system at Tilden. Flint said the school’s uneven terrain also creates access problems.

Tilden’s closure isn’t official, yet. The recommendation goes before the Teaching and Learning Committee on Tuesday night, and the Facilities Committee on Wednesday night – and then before the full board in March. Some parents are fighting to save the school rather than see their children splinter off into four schools: Bella Vista, Burckhalter, Brookfield and Howard.

Christa Dahlstrom, a Tilden parent, wrote about the closure today in her blog, Hyperlexicon: Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: OASES, an organization that works with Lincoln Elementary, is coordinating volunteer efforts. Those interested in lending a hand or donating replacement materials may contact Nhi Chau at nhi@oases.org, or at 510.891.9928 ext. 10. I’ve attached the school’s wish list here.

Imagine arriving at your classroom one morning and seeing this.

Two portable classrooms and the teacher’s lounge were badly vandalized over the weekend at Lincoln Elementary School, a California Distinguished School in Oakland’s Chinatown. Little was stolen aside from a TV set and some emergency food supplies, said Nhi Chau, a program coordinator with Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES).

“They splattered paint all over the classrooms. Everything went upside down,” she said. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, a group of Claremont Middle School’s super-parents raised money for a digital media lab so that kids could learn professional video editing and animation software. They lent a good amount of creativity and elbow grease to the project, devoting weekend days before the start of school.

photo courtesy of Mike Mages

Mike Mages, one of the dads who spearheaded the project, was there when the lab opened this fall. And last month, he came running to the scene after a major break-in. Mages said thieves ripped off four of the school’s 20 new iMacs, a projector and a 52-inch LCD display just before winter break.

The thing that really bothers Mages, though, is that the theft might have been prevented. He said school administrators had requested deadbolts months before the burglary, and that they never came — well, at least until after the damage had been done. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim White, left, showed Interim Superintendent Roberta Mayor around the district in July, when she first arrived in Oakland. About three months later, Mayor apparently asked White to resign, before changing her mind. TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO by Alison Yin

Not long ago, Oakland Unified’s assistant superintendent and facilities director Tim White thought he was out of a job.

According to White, an internal investigation into legal, construction-related contracts with the Bryant & Brown law firm initially concluded that he had entered into those agreements without the approval of the board or the state administrator, and he was asked to resign.

But White said that as soon as he showed Interim Superintendent Roberta Mayor the board minutes (which are posted online, for public access) that showed otherwise, the pressure suddenly lifted.

About two weeks ago, White said, he got a letter from the district saying that he failed to catch $20,000 in duplicate billing by the law firm, but that was it.

Now, he said, it’s almost like nothing ever happened. Except that it did. Read the rest of this entry »

Staff proposals for addressing overcrowding at Hillcrest and other popular elementary schools have been swinging back and forth in recent months, as if there were some sort of behind-the-scenes tug of war on Second Avenue — which, of course, is entirely possible.

If the latest set of staff recommendations to the Special Committee on School Admissions, Attendance & Boundaries holds its position, Hillcrest will keep its middle school — and its attendance boundaries — intact. And Montclair, which has a crowding problem of its own, would eventually expand.

Hillcrest-area kids who are rejected from their local kindergarten for space reasons would have the option of attending Kaiser Elementary School under this proposal. Read the rest of this entry »