Phillip Wright, 16, didn’t even have a chance to open the door. Police said the gunman at his family’s doorstep didn’t seem to care who it was on the other side.

The Oakland High School junior died yesterday evening, his grandfather cradling him in his arms, Trib reporter Harry Harris reported today.

I just don’t get it.

Jonathan Trinh is a Skyline High School student.

This past weekend the Skyline community endured another devastating loss of a beloved teacher. Mr.  James Delbridge passed away after battling cancer for many years.

Monday morning began with a school-wide notification and touching eulogy by English teacher Mr. Tim Jollymore. Some staff and parents were informed of his passing the day before.

Many students that knew him shed tears as the announcement was made. Teachers were also broken up by the loss. Six substitutes, for instance, were ordered to fill in for teachers that appeared to be absent as a result.

Mr. Delbridge taught math in the Oakland Unified School District for twenty years and was an avid supporter of Skyline. Read the rest of this entry »

The city and school district are holding another free event for dropouts and their families this Saturday, Nov. 14. It goes from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

You can find a flier for the event here. Pre-register here or call (510) 238-7906.

Nia Lozano, whose daughter attends Edna Brewer Middle School, tells us her impressions of a recent open house at Oakland Tech. (At 6:15 p.m. tonight, Skyline High School holds its event for prospective families.) -Katy

photo from Oakland Technical High School’s Web site

Last Wednesday I attended the Oakland Technical High School open house. This was unusual, as I normally find it taxing to come out to any extraneous school events and have missed my share of Halloween parades and school performances. What is even more significant is that my oldest child will not start high school until the year after next, and I generally consider myself to be a pretty low key parent. But I was not alone. I ran into half a dozen other seventh-grade families I know, checking out this Oakland public high school early. 

The Oakland Tech building is architecturally striking, with huge columns and a white marble foyer, but what really struck me was the number of people swarming through the doors. We were directed to an auditorium that looked to hold about 500 people and was nearly packed!

The evening consisted of a series of six short periods in which you visit classrooms and learn about the various academic programs. Apparently, everyone had heard about the successes of Paideia and the Engineering Academy as there was a monumental rush to get into these classrooms. My daughter and I were turned away from the Paideia classroom twice, and when we finally got in, it was standing room only. Read the rest of this entry »

Lillian Mongeau and Becky Palstrom from Oakland North, a UC Berkeley School of Journalism blog, captured a quintessential slice of high school life in an audio slideshow about the Oakland Technical High School homecoming game (and the basic rules of football). Mongeau took the photos, and Palstrom interviewed the students and collected the audio.

I was highly entertained. You can find the slideshow here.

Photo of Benjamin Schmookler courtesy of Howard Ruffner

Benjamin Schmookler, principal of Media Academy – a small school on East Oakland’s Fremont Federation campus — agreed to be dunked today during a celebration of the school’s improved test scores. Media Academy’s state test scores went up by 79 points to 600 (on a scale of 200 to 1,000), the biggest gain seen in all of the district’s high schools this year.

Here’s a sobering statistic: Of the 2,890-plus Oakland Unified students who live in West Oakland, 1,270 attend schools in other parts of the city, according to school district data.

That’s 44 percent, and it doesn’t count children who go to public charter schools or private schools — or to Berkeley Unified, for that matter.

What to do? A new group of city, school and county officials and community leaders has formed to revitalize public schools in West Oakland during a time of ongoing budget cuts ($27 million out of next year’s OUSD budget).

The group is called the West Oakland Brain Trust, and it was convened this fall by school board member Jumoke Hinton Hodge, who represents District 3.

Some of OUSD’s top dogs came to its Tuesday morning meeting. Superintendent Tony Smith Read the rest of this entry »

photos courtesy of Katie Noonan, science teacher at Oakland High School

The small one weighed 20 pounds. Hoisting the big one onto a scale was out of the question, so the kids in Katie Noonan’s tenth-grade biology class at Oakland High School skipped that part and went straight to work with their forceps and scissors.

Two Humboldt squids were the source of the excitement — and the smell — coming from Room 345.

The frozen specimens were delivered to Noonan’s classroom through the Squids-4-Kids program, a partnership between Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University and NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz, CA.

Read the rest of this entry »

NOTE: OUSD spokesman Troy Flint says that while closure or merger is a possibility for each school, the district is not planning to recommend this outcome for all of the focus schools. Other possibilities include increasing enrollment, support, etc. So, the same as in previous years.

OUSD has released an updated list of schools that have not measured up academically, that have too few students to be financially viable, or both. They’re called “Focus Schools,” but as anyone who’s ever been on the list knows, it really spells the possibility of a merger or closure. Especially now, when the district is looking to cut $27 million from next year’s budget.

The list doesn’t look much different from last year’s, even though the criteria have changed slightly: Read the rest of this entry »

photo courtesy of Shuai Chen, co-founder of Splash

If you know a middle or high school student who has a free day this weekend and might be interested in, say, neuroscience, dancing, artificial intelligence, juggling, or painting, keep reading!

More than 100 Stanford University students are playing teacher for the weekend in a marathon learning session on the Palo Alto campus. It’s called Splash, and it runs Saturday and Sunday. The full price is $40 for both days (and $20 for siblings), but the event organizers say that participants who can’t afford the fee can just say so and they don’t have to pay anything.

You can learn more about Splash, and its (literally) 209 course offerings, here. This is the third time students have organized the event, and they expect up to 1,000 kids to participate. Those who haven’t registered online can just show up on Saturday or Sunday.

Can’t make it this weekend? They’re planning another one in April.