Three mornings a week before school, when it’s barely light outside, more than 100 teenagers are lacing up their skates at the Oakland Ice Center. They come of their own free will, even if it means showing up at 6:45 a.m. – more than an hour before they need to be at Oakland Technical High School.

photo by Laura A. Oda/Staff

Kelley Haskins, a physical education teacher at Oakland Tech, started the before-school P.E. class this fall. She said she worried that she wouldn’t meet the 35-student minimum, but her roster now includes 115 names.

I visited the class this morning with a photographer, and watched the teenagers swizzle, slide and speed around the rink. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday morning, a 13-year-old boy was apparently playing with a gun he brought to school when it discharged in his first-period classroom.

No one was hurt, but distressed families and other West Oakland community members met at Cole Middle School tonight to offer solutions.

photo of Cole Middle School Principal Ivory Brooks (center) by Kristopher Skinner/Staff

You can find the full story here.

What steps do you think schools should take to keep kids safe? Some students said tonight that they wanted bag checks or metal detectors at Cole. Is that the answer?

Teresa Williams, the principal of Oakland’s Bret Harte Middle School, said it seems like a brochure for some “Mean Girls” conference crosses her desk at least once a week.

Williams hasn’t attended such a seminar yet, but her school experienced a real-life example Nov. 7, when a seventh-grader was jumped at lunchtime by another girl – and then by two or three of that young woman’s friends. 

The 13-year-old girl, who had transferred to Bret Harte from another Oakland school this year, suffered head, neck and arm injuries and spent at least two nights at Children’s Hospital Oakland. She did not belong to a gang, Williams said, but one of the suspected attackers claimed there was a Norteño/Sureño conflict at play.

The girl who apparently instigated the beating is awaiting an expulsion hearing and “most likely will not return,” Williams said.  (That girl and the victim are Latina, and the others are African-American, according to the principal.)

The victim probably won’t return to Bret Harte, either – or any other Oakland school, for that matter. Her family apparently plans to move to Guatemala.

“That’s what’s sad,” Williams said, adding that many of her students were upset by what happened. Read the rest of this entry »

Ronald Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Green & Gold student newspaper on East Oakland’s Fremont campus, had this advice for his fellow students. -Katy

It’s great to see students excited about a presidential election. It’s great to see a minority make it all the way to the White House. It’s great to see the “equality” in America become a little more equal.

But we think there is a lesson here that students at Fremont Federation need to learn.

Obama was dedicated and committed to his goals. He used hard work and integrity to achieve what most would have called 20 years ago “the impossible.” He didn’t let race be an issue that stood in his way to success and neither should we.

Read the rest of this entry »

Raven Tarrance, a 16-year-old from East Oakland who is serving as a page for the House of Representatives, wrote this essay about watching the presidential election returns in Washington, D.C. with pages representing both parties. -Katy

November 4, 2008: the Election Day that would make history. This was the day that every person, young or old, had the right to let their voice be heard and vote. But the person that made the day so special was Barack Obama, the African American presidential candidate.

My classmates and I watched CNN anxiously while waiting for the results. Obama T-shirts and signs filled the room. As the room overflowed with pages, you could feel the tension rise between the two parties. Harmless teasing turned into candidate bashing. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know the Oakland school district has a city-wide governing council made up of high school students? One of its leaders, Arwa Omar (pictured below, second from right), asked if I’d share some information she had written about the council’s work, as well as some thoughts from her colleagues. -Katy

courtesy photo

All City Council (ACC) is a platform for youth empowerment and youth voice. We work with the leadership classes throughout the Oakland school district to push for positive change in our schools. We consist of eight governing board members: President, Vice President, Secretary, Historian, two Student Board Directors, Media/Outreach Director, and Treasurer. These positions are vital because they are the bridge linking the students to the decision makers (Board of Education).

Andrew Wilson, MetWest High School (President)
All City Council is important to me because first and foremost I am an advocate for student voice. It has shown me that with enough effort and determination anyone can push for positive social change. Read the rest of this entry »

A high school student featured this morning on National Public Radio said she started smoking cigarettes at age 13 (and recently quit, after much difficulty). Interestingly enough, she compared the initial experience to the feeling of re-hydration.

“They make you feel better when you first start,” Kindra Tanner told the reporter. “You feel good — refreshed, like drinking water after running all day.”

Interesting. I thought it was mostly about image Read the rest of this entry »

Hundreds of high school students from Oakland and Richmond flooded BART stations today while trying to get to a big immigration protest in San Francisco, causing BART service to be delayed.

Tribune photographer Jane Tyska, who took this photo in East Oakland’s Fruitvale district, was later detained by school district police while trying to film the demonstration with a video camera. OUSD Police Chief Art Michel reported that Tyska Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I covered a debate at Bishop O’Dowd High School between representatives of the Obama and McCain campaigns. Hundreds of students attended the optional event, which was organized by 15-year-old Julia Owens — who told me she thought it would be useful and fun for her classmates to watch a live debate.

The students’ questions were detailed and policy-oriented. One referenced the economic crisis, and another asked about the prospect of Georgia’s membership in NATO: “Is there anything that can be done to help people like my grandparents who are out of the workforce and are too old or ill to go back to work?” and “Why is defending Georgia in the national interest of the United States?”

Government teacher Bonnie Sussman, who’s been at O’Dowd since 1972 Read the rest of this entry »

The other week, we discussed the pros and cons of performance pay for teachers. But what about paying students for being good?

Thousands of Washington, D.C. middle-schoolers had their first payday last week. In exchange for good behavior, attendance and grades, they received checks for $20-$50 as part of a yearlong, $2.7 million pilot program called “Capital Gains.”

The kids’ reactions were mixed, according to a Washington Post story. One boy told a reporter that he felt insulted by the idea that he’d need to be paid to do the work. Others said the prospect of a paycheck made them work harder. Read the rest of this entry »