Tribune file photo by Laura A. Oda

Ever since a parcel tax for Oakland teachers fell flat without the support of the local teachers union, a committee has been meeting to try again, this time with a broader support base. There’s been talk of placing a tax measure on the June 2010 ballot.

And once again, talks about ways to boost teacher salaries in the midst of ongoing state budget cuts – and tense contract negotiations — have run right into a teachers union sticking point: whether any of the money raised by local property taxes should go to the city’s 30-some independently run, non-unionionized, public charter schools.

No way, the union says, even if most of the money would go to its own members. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Chavis, former director of Oakland’s high-performing American Indian Public Charter School, surfaces again to promote his educational philosophy (and new book) — this time on CNN.com.

“I believe all the money in the world would not be enough to improve schools run by incompetent public school administrators,” he wrote in a commentary published this week. (Last month, he called to ask what OUSD’s total budget was. I gave him the figure I reported in June, a fact he attributed directly to me in the piece.)

An interesting assertion to make, especially at a time when schools are making such deep cuts, with more to come. In your view, is there any truth to his argument?

photo courtesy of Craig Gordon, Oakland Education Association

Oakland teachers, who have been working without a contract for a year, gave a new meaning to school board drama last night; they greeted the new superintendent and the school board behind theater masks. According to union president Betty Olson-Jones, the masks were “a visual representation of the state administration from a teachers perspective.”

“Teachers have been treated like cogs in a wheel, like pawns on a chessboard,” she said, before adding that “A teacher’s working conditions are a child’s learning conditions.”

So, yes, plenty of familiar rhetoric, but there were a number of new voices, too. Teachers talked about larger class sizes this fall, the scarcity of special needs aides, new testing for kindergartners (timing how fast they can read the alphabet), Read the rest of this entry »

Nedir Bey, a “spiritually adopted” son of the Your Black Muslim Bakery founder, Yusuf Ali Bey, wanted — and maybe still wants — to open a charter school in Oakland.

Yes, this is the same Bey who owes over $1 million to the City of Oakland and who was charged with abducting and torturing a man in 1994 (He pleaded no contest to a felony charge of false imprisonment). And, more recently, who was once a school site council leader at Fruitvale Elementary School.

Bey had proposed founding a middle school called the Marcus Garvey Public Charter School at 2628 San Pablo — a petition that he withdrew last week without explanation, via a one-sentence letter.

On the petition, he consistently spells his name “Nedar,” instead of “Nedir,” and he signs it that way, too. Another name change, perhaps? And, as one of my Trib colleagues pointed out, one of the members listed for the proposed charter’s board of directors was Natalie Bayton, who voted to loan Bey’s failed healthcare company the $1.5 million when she served on the Oakland City Council back in 1996.

Tribune file photo by Laura A. Oda

You wanted to know how the city’s independently run, publicly funded schools performed on the 2009 state tests. Here’s your answer, courtesy of the OUSD Charter Schools Office.

Of the 27 charters that were around in 2008, 15 made significant gains in both English and math.

The charters with the biggest up-swings were Read the rest of this entry »

Crystal Lauti hasn’t even started high school, and already she has earned $10,000 for her college education. 

Crystal just graduated from KIPP Bridge, a charter middle school in West Oakland, and was one of six KIPP students across the country to win the Doris Fisher award this year. About 1,000 students were eligible.

She sounds like a talented and hard-working kid, from the details I read in the below press release. I liked to see that she stepped up to run her school newspaper, although she’s probably smart enough to avoid the industry later in life. Read the rest of this entry »

Jerry Brown at the January opening of the new Oakland School for the Arts building at the Fox Theater

Carla Marinucci, a political reporter for the Chronicle, had a piece in today’s paper about the $9.65 million that Jerry Brown, California Attorney General and likely candidate for governor, has raised for his favorite educational causes since 2006.

The Oakland School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute – two independently run, publicly funded charter schools that Brown started while mayor of Oakland – received the contributions, according to the news report. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not yet for sale, but I recently received a book written by the (officially) former director of American Indian Public Charter School, Ben Chavis. It’s titled, “Crazy like a fox: One principal’s triumph in the inner city.”

The book begins like this:

Before I became principal, people called American Indian Public Charter School the zoo. …

The students smoked cigarettes, fought, drank, and broke beer and liquor bottles on Magee Avenue, the road lining the school. There were old, dingy mattresses nearby where they had sex. A staff member allegedly sold drugs to the students, some of whom snuck into a tool shed on campus to smoke pot. Students threw water balloons off the roof and computers out the class windows.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oasis High School, a 5-year-old alternative charter school that serves about 180 teens who have dropped out, been kicked out, or otherwise been displaced from other schools, will close its doors this summer. State Administrator Vincent Matthews decided tonight to close Oasis by not renewing its charter.

“Staff agonized over this decision, as I did,” Matthews said, as teachers and supporters listened in silence. Read the rest of this entry »

I blogged recently about Assembly Bill 980, which would require independently run charter schools located in state-run districts such as Oakland to help repay the state loan.

Well, the bill has passed the Assembly with a 48-31 vote. Here’s a quote from its author, Sandre Swanson (D-Alameda, pictured right): Read the rest of this entry »