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 »

Have you ever wanted to see what an Oakland public school looks like from the inside, but didn’t want the hassle of setting up an appointment?

Now’s your chance to see a school at work.

An organized tour might not offer as candid a snapshot as if you dropped in one morning without the herd of parents, but it’s probably much better than going on hearsay alone.

For elementary school tour dates, click here. For middle schools, here. For high schools, here.

(The above photo, by Tribune photographer Laura Oda, was taken during a 2006 tour of Crocker Highlands Elementary School.)

The School Options window, during which families select their top school choices,  Read the rest of this entry »

I found an interesting column today in the The Root, an online magazine that features black perspectives on the news of the day, about the Obama family’s search for a new school for Sasha and Malia.

The author, Meera Bowman-Johnson, writes:

Most parents struggle with where to send their kids to school. But the decision can be especially agonizing for upwardly mobile black parents. There are worries about low expectations from teachers and peer pressure to value coolness over studiousness. Inevitable accusations of “acting white.” Then there’s an extra pressure to ensure that your children Read the rest of this entry »

FRIDAY UPDATE: The committee didn’t make any recommendations this morning, although Kerry Hamill made it clear that she was for keeping the middle school at Hillcrest. The committee agreed to meet two weeks from now, on Nov. 21 (same time), to discuss a scenario Hamill proposed that includes expanding Montclair, redrawing attendance boundaries and keeping the Hillcrest middle school intact.

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Hillcrest is one of the only public schools in Oakland that includes an elementary and a middle school.  Its grade configuration was hotly contested last year, since a number of pre-kindergarten families in the hills neighborhood — who paid top-dollar to live nearby — were turned away because of overcrowding.

Last December, the board decided not to narrow the school’s attendance boundaries or do away with the middle school, but to study the issue further.

But both issues have resurfaced, as you can see on this presentation from a previously canceled meeting. At 7:30 tomorrow morning (sorry for the late notice!), the district’s Special Committee on School Admissions, Attendance & Boundaries will discuss these scenarios. You can find the agenda Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re faced with the prospect of choosing a high school (or middle school, or elementary school) for next year, you probably don’t need me to remind you that the time to make a decision is drawing near.

But I thought I’d post information anyway about two upcoming information nights for prospective families. Know about information nights at other schools? Do tell.

Oakland Technical High School — 6 to 8 p.m. this Thursday, 4351 Broadway (in the library). Or you can sign up for a school tour offered at 9 a.m. on Nov. 13, Nov. 18, Nov. 20 and Dec. 4 by sending an e-mail to oaklandtechinfo@yahoo.com.

Skyline High School — 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, 12250 Skyline Boulevard.

image from Sofia Katariina’s site at flickr.com/creativecommons

The Oakland school board put a halt to talk about large-scale closures this month, but they never said school closures were out of the question. Some of these tough decisions will surface in less than two months, while others are slated to determined a year from now.

In December, the Oakland school board will decide whether to continue to phase out BEST High School at McClymonds (which is now grades 10-12) and Peralta Creek Middle School at Calvin Simmons (now just eighth grade).

They’ll also discuss the possible relocation of Life Academy and Tilden Elementary School.

In the fall of 2009, the board is slated to decide what to do with the following list of “focus schools” — those with academic and/or enrollment concerns: Read the rest of this entry »

There was plenty of drama leading up to the school board meeting tonight. The television trucks outside the Oakland Tech auditorium, the cameras, the crowd. Fittingly, the board members, the superintendent and the state administrator were on stage, under brutally bright lights, while the audience sat in relative darkness.

“This is not a show, it’s a meeting,” board member Greg Hodge said in an unsuccessful attempt to even out the lighting.

But it was a show, as these kinds of meetings often are. In this case — to everyone’s relief (except, maybe, for some of the journalists) — it was an anti-climatic one. Read the rest of this entry »

More than 1,000 people are expected to pack tonight’s school board meeting at Oakland Technical High School to speak out against the closure or merger of the district’s (new and old) small schools, according to Oakland Community Organizations organizers.

For all of you who are feverishly preparing your speeches, this bit of information might be helpful: The board appears likely to back off of the “right-sizing” idea entirely, at least for now.

David Kakishiba, the school board president (pictured here), told me today that there is no plan to close schools this year, and that he didn’t know how that notion took hold. He said he will likely make a statement tonight, at the beginning of the meeting, to assure people that OUSD will seek other ways to fix its budget other than shutting down schools.

“It’s absolutely backward,” Kakishiba said. Read the rest of this entry »

So many people are expected to attend Wednesday night’s Oakland school board meeting — where the board is likely to signal its direction on potential school closures — that the district has moved the meeting to a larger venue: the auditorium of Oakland Technical High School, 4351 Broadway.

No final decisions are expected Wednesday night, but the board could establish criteria for closure — or make it clear that it won’t support the large-scale closure plan proposed by Interim Superintendent Roberta Mayor as a cost-saving measure.

You can find the agenda here. The public part of the meeting begins around 5 p.m.

photo courtesy of Angie Taylor, Oakland Community Organizations

Overall, Oakland’s small schools initiative has been a success, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond told the superintendent and the school board – which commissioned the research — tonight. Hundreds of kids, teachers, principals and parents, many of whom wound up in the overflow room upstairs, applauded the findings before sharing their own stories.

I know, that’s a pretty simplistic thing for me to say about a movement that started with some fed-up parents some 10 years ago and that grew into a high-profile, Gates Foundation-funded strategy (or was it a tactic?) to improve education in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Oakland Unified has created dozens of new schools as a result. Not all of them have succeeded. Some are no longer open.

In the seven years since the first small school opened, however, the district’s enrollment has dropped from more than 50,000 to about 38,000 students, and its budget has shrunk accordingly. Interim Superintendent Roberta Mayor — who was brought in to help the district recover, financially — said as soon as she arrived that it was time to take another look at the small schools.

That, of course, made people pretty nervous.

Now, as the board considers whether to close up to 15 schools to save money, Darling-Hammond’s summary findings might help some of them remain open. She recommended, for example, that the board “try not to have undefined mergers Read the rest of this entry »