At a meeting this summer, a small group of parents, teachers and students from West Oakland was simply given the name of BEST High School’s new principal.

It’s a different story for the much larger and more organized high school in the redwoods. Chris Dobbins, the school board member who represents Skyline High School, said that the district was allowing people at the school to interview and rank the candidates, as schools throughout the city once did.

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday night, teachers, parents, students — and anyone else with a stake in the selection of Skyline High School’s new principal – meet in the high school library to elect the members of a 13-person hiring committee. Dobbins said the committee will include four parents (one from four different parent groups), three teachers, two students, two non-teaching staff members, one administrator who is not at Skyline, and one community member.

The goal is to hire someone by Read the rest of this entry »

I only had part of the story yesterday on the leadership changes at BEST High School, when I wrote that “This spring, families learned that Principal James Gray would be sent packing at the end of the school year.”

Apparently, for a period of time this spring, Gray and others thought he might be allowed to stay on the McClymonds campus, after all. But on June 13, after most of the students had scattered for summer vacation, Gray told his staff that he was being reassigned to another Oakland school. (Jumoke Hinton Hodge, school board member-elect and the wife of board member Greg Hodge, said Gray was being sent to be an assistant principal at Roosevelt Middle School in East Oakland).

Most families don’t yet know what has happened.

“I was wondering when people were going to find out that there was going to be a new principal,” Malcolm Gattis, 17, asked Alison McDonald, the district administrator who supervises BEST High School, during a meeting last night. “Everybody right now is thinking Mr. Gray is staying.”

A group of McClymonds students, parents and teachers aren’t ready to let Gray go. Tomorrow, they plan to urge the school board to delay the appointment of Karen Todd, who has been tapped to replace him. Todd is the director of Project SOAR and the former principal at Merritt Middle College, an alternative high school that closed in 2007, apparently because Merritt College wanted to expand into the area occupied by the high school.

Here is a copy of the petition being circulated by the West Oakland Education Task Force, and Read the rest of this entry »

Want to have a say in the direction that Interim Superintendent Roberta Mayor will take when she officially starts her job next month?

The board is holding a special meeting at 5 p.m. tomorrow to discuss the district’s priorities for next year, and the goals for Mayor’s work.

Don’t let my rant last week about the board’s never-ending meetings scare you away. I hear this session might actually be reasonable in length.

Another central office administrator, Harriet MacLean, is leaving 1025 Second Ave. at the end of June (And she doesn’t sound too broken up over it, either).

MacLean was a principal at Helms Middle School in the West Contra Costa Unified School District for years before coming to Oakland in September 2006. Come fall, she’ll be a principal once again, in another district — though she won’t say where until the offer is finalized on Monday. As a “network executive officer,” she oversees a number of Oakland middle schools, including Explore, Bret Harte, Madison, Melrose Leadership and Montera.

Chelda Ruff, who has been principal of Crocker Highlands Elementary School since just December 2006, is moving on — ostensibly, for personal reasons. Here is a copy of the letter that was recently sent home to families.

At a news conference this morning, a group of teachers spoke out against the removal — or “reassignment” — of Anisa Rasheed, principal of the Paul Robeson School for Visual and Performing Arts (Fremont campus), among other concerns. More on the Robeson issues later.

Jonathan Klein, the special assistant to the state administrator and acting communications director, is also leaving the crumbling administration building. The Broad resident has taken a job as a Chief Program Officer with the Rogers Family Foundation, an Oakland-based organization directed by the former school board candidate Brian Rogers. Rogers and Klein work together on the board of the Oakland Small Schools Foundation.

Here’s an excerpt from Klein’s farewell dispatch: Read the rest of this entry »

Speaking of people leaving the Oakland school district … I’ve been meaning to tell you all — who don’t already know — that Eric Nelson, a “network executive officer” who oversees more than a dozen elementary schools, is leaving at the end of the month. He’s taking a job with School Turnaround.

Nelson’s area includes ASCEND, Bella Vista, Cleveland, Crocker Highlands, Franklin, Garfield, Glenview, International Community School, La Escuelita, Lazear, Manzanita SEED, Joaquin Miller, Montclair and Think College Now.

And Allison Sands, a Broad resident who you might have seen at any number of school “engagement” meetings — about closures, enrollment priorities, and school interventions — has already left.

Here’s a letter Nelson sent out a couple of weeks ago:

Read the rest of this entry »

Heidi Green, who has been principal at the diverse, 2,000-student Skyline High School for just over one year, told her staff yesterday that she wouldn’t be back in the fall, according to two teachers present when she made the announcement.

Tim Jollymore, an English teacher at Skyline, confirmed this afternoon that Green said the district had offered her a position at another Oakland high school — she didn’t say which one — but that she declined the job.

Green’s tenure was a bit rocky from the start, partly because some teachers and parents were unhappy with the way in which she was chosen. Her predecessor, Amy Hansen, quit in August 2006, shortly before the start of school, leaving little time to hire a replacement. For months, there wasn’t a principal in place.

Green’s supporters, such as parent Wandra Boyd, say she is a strong, student-focused leader. But critics have complained that the young principal lacked the experience to run a large, urban high school such as Skyline — and the people skills to smooth over inevitable bumps in the road. Read the rest of this entry »

She wasn’t born an auditor. 

Roberta Mayor’s path to the Oakland school district superintendency began back in the 1960s, when she was an English major at the University of Hawaii.

Curious about her career and credentials? Check out her resume, here.

That’s right. Tonight, just one day after State Superintendent Jack O’Connell gave the school board the OK to hire a superintendent, they named an interim leader: Roberta Mayor.

Mayor is a chief management analyst for FCMAT (you know, the agency that rates the district’s progress under state control?). A pretty shrewd move on the board’s part, since Mayor’s team has dissected and rated OUSD’s operations from the low point in 2003 until now.

With high FCMAT ratings this fall in fiscal management and academic policy, the state-run district could regain full local authority within a year.

Mayor officially starts July 1, and is expected to serve for up to one year. Meanwhile, State Administrator Vince Matthews will remain on Second Avenue, overseeing the budget and academic policy. (A more apt illustration would have two birds at the top post.) Read the rest of this entry »

Marco Franco, the well-regarded principal of East Oakland’s Sobrante Park Elementary School, told his staff today that he will keep his job, and that he will be back in the fall.

In February, Franco learned that he might be assigned to another school or fired over a February confrontation with two reportedly aggressive parents. His teachers formed an ad hoc committee in his support and wrote letters to district staff urging them to reconsider. (Read the blog post.)

According to Read the rest of this entry »

I came across an interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about the growing demand for superintendents, especially in struggling urban districts.

If what they say is true — that some 20 percent of school districts are looking for one right now — I wonder how Oakland will fare in the competition.

As the Oakland school board decides what to do with its soon-to-be-restored authority to choose the district’s first superintendent in five years, should it go for a “rock star?”

Considering that the average superintendent (nationwide) stays in place only a few years, how much emphasis should be placed on a district’s top dog?

image from JasonRogers’s site at flickr.com/creativecommons