Staff at Oakland’s new alternative middle school have learned many things this year, through trial and error. But, perhaps above all, they came away with this: When you put 90 adolescents with educational, emotional and/or behavioral challenges under one roof, you’d better be ready for them. Really ready.

But the Alternative Learning Community wasn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

I just came across this video, titled “Life Academy Eviction,” and others produced by media students. They’re posted on Google Video, all to dramatic soundtracks:

I got home after midnight from last night’s school board meeting — and I left early. (Next to me was Moyra Contreras, the principal of Melrose Leadership Academy, who had waited for hours to discuss a future dual language immersion program at her school. By the time she leaves the meeting, she’ll probably have a full 6-7 hours before she needs to be back at work.)

Before I call it a night, though, I wanted to report the latest chapter in the Life Academy saga. Or an executive summary:

Life Academy is moving, at least temporarily, because of recently discovered earthquake safety concerns. The 7-year-old, bioscience-focused high school in the San Antonio/Fruitvale area will probably squeeze into the Calvin Simmons middle school campus on 35th Avenue, or in the building where MetWest High School is located, near Laney College.

“It is absolutely painful to uproot a school that is working, that is serving this neighborhood,” said board president David Kakishiba. Read the rest of this entry »

There was standing room only in the Havenscourt auditorium tonight.

Parents and teachers crowded into the large room to listen to what the Oakland school board hopefuls had to say, while small children scampered up and down the aisles.

Unlike the painstakingly neutral League of Women Voters events, the organizers of this forum — Oakland Community Organizations — made their case for certain school reform policies at the get-go.

“We cannot afford to go back to the way things were before small schools and charters,” Deanita Lewis, a parent at Havenscourt’s Coliseum College Prep, told the people on the stage.

The climate was so favorable for candidates who embraced independently run, public charters and small schools (loud, mid-sentence cheers, vs. polite silence and half-hearted courtesy applause) that few on the stage dared to say much to the contrary.

Even District 7 incumbent Alice Spearman, Read the rest of this entry »

I stopped by a West Oakland Education Task Force meeting tonight, and one of the issues discussed was the future of two small high schools — EXCEL and BEST — at McClymonds.

McClymonds High School, like many other middle and high schools in Oakland’s flatlands, was swept up in the small schools movement. The difference between Mack and the other once-comprehensive high schools is that it was pretty small to begin with.

In 2006-07, the combined enrollment of BEST and EXCEL was just 532, and it might be lower now.

This spring, two major developments happened: Read the rest of this entry »

Life Academy teachers and families were in for a shock this week when they learned the small, 7-year-old science-focused high school will soon have to move from its spot in the San Antonio district to another, yet unknown, school campus. 

The problem? Life Academy is located in a converted American Red Cross building, rather than in a structure designed to house a school.

photo courtesy of Life Academy

A letter sent to families this week stressed that the building meets the city’s standards and that it was not damaged in the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. Still, it says that it ”probably” does not comply with the Field Act, a decades-old state law that regulates the safety of K-12 school facilities (with the notable exception of charter schools). The matter apparently popped up on the central office radar after the school applied for a grant to build a science wing.

Clifford Lee, a teacher at Life Academy, said many fear the school will have to move miles away from the Fruitvale/San Antonio neighborhoods where most of its students live. They also suspect they will have to share a campus with another school. Read the rest of this entry »

In the realm of school board meetings, tomorrow is an important night.

• State Administrator Vincent Matthews decides whether to close Sankofa Academy and Burckhalter Elementary, as his staff recommends, or to give the schools a chance to improve and attract more students.
• The board, with its new powers, decides whether to shrink Hillcrest’s boundaries and change the attendance lines for all of the district’s middle schools — or to wait.

David Kakishiba, the board president, told me today that he feels the board needs to re-evaluate its policies about boundaries and enrollment before Read the rest of this entry »

I just observed a very different community meeting tonight. It was at Youth Empowerment School in the East Oakland hills, another one on OUSD’s intervention/potential closure list.

After hearing a presentation about test scores and enrollment trends, people divided into two groups, by language. Parents told the central office administrators things they loved about the 250-student school and the things they’d change about its academic program. They were also asked to speculate about why the test scores might be so low.

The problem with my group, YES principal Maureen Benson noted afterward, was that most people had nothing but praise for the school. Everyone feels so good about it — the staff, the students, the parents — but the positive atmosphere isn’t reflected in the test scores, she said.

(Aside: I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.)

It looks good for the Youth Empowerment School, though. Read the rest of this entry »

Update: I just spoke with Alison McDonald, the district administrator who oversees both schools at McClymonds. She said the Tuesday lunch meeting at BEST wasn’t a formal part of the community engagement process, even though it appeared on the list. She said she wanted to make it, but that there was a meeting at the same time that she needed to attend.

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Late this morning, I dropped by BEST, a small high school at West Oakland’s McClymonds campus, in hopes of catching an intensive discussion about school reform.

BEST is one of the five schools which the school district is monitoring because of low enrollment and low test scores. By the end of the calendar year, district staff are expected to announce whether the high school — and other schools — will close, merge, be redesigned, or receive other interventions.

Those decisions are supposed to be heavily influenced by the insights of the parents and staff, a candid exchange that is supposed to take place at a series of “community engagement” sessions — such as the lunch time meeting today (designed for parents who work night shifts).

But I left today’s meeting, nearly an hour after it was scheduled to start, when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. Besides Renato Almanzor, director of the new Family & Community Office, no district administrators attended. Only one or two family members did. Read the rest of this entry »

I predict Wednesday’s school board meeting will be a long one. But it might be of interest if you’d like to…

• Meet Vince Matthews, OUSD’s new interim state administrator, who will be introduced at Wednesday’s board meeting
• Comment on a study that assessed the effects of small schools in Oakland (or hear the board discussion about it)
• Listen to the continued discussion about the 2006-07 financial situation

Here’s the agenda. Maybe I’ll see you there.