Monthly Archives: November 2012

Local

KQED Education: Oakland Schools Providing Education–and Health Care

November 2, 2012
By Caitlin Esch

In Oakland, schools are partnering with community health organizations to open clinics on campuses. On Thursday, the district celebrated its 14th such opening at West Oakland Middle School.  KQED’s Caitlin Esch visited a school-based clinic that opened a year ago to see how it’s changing the community.

The health center at Havenscourt Middle School is a cross between a pediatrician’s office and a teen clinic. Nurse practitioner Karen Gersten-Rothenberg says students can get sports physicals, vaccines, and pregnancy tests. They can even get their cavities filled.

“For some students, we are the primary care provider,” Gersten-Rothenberg says. “Many students don’t have access to primary care because they’re not insurable, because they’re undocumented.”

The clinic sees up to 50 students a week. The district is hoping on-site health centers will cut down on absenteeism.

“We see a student, they go right back to class,” says Gersten-Rothenberg. “When a student has to go a doctor in the community, they’re likely to miss at least half the day, if not the full day.”

The district will study whether access to health clinics at schools improves academic performance and reduces trips to the emergency room.

Original post.

Local

Oakland Local: OakTown Gardens: Reducing waste to ‘green’ Lincoln Elementary

October 30, 2012
By Irene Florez

This year, Lincoln Elementary did something few schools would have dreamt of 10 years ago: It formalized a green connection with Waste Management to exchange food scraps for compost.

Lincoln and roughly 50 other Oakland schools are now taking part in “Green Gloves,” a collaborative effort to reduce and sort the waste leaving OUSD during meal times.

The aim, says Nancy Deming, OUSD’s Sustainability Program Initiatives Manager, is “to have a program that the school and its students are directly involved in that provides a much more meaningful environmental impact.”

According to Deming, the main impetus at Lincoln Elementary was Lana Cheung, Lincoln’s head custodian.

With more than 600 students and two meals served every day, Lincoln used to send 12 cubic yards of trash to the landfill every week. These days they have reduced that by 33 percent. Most of this reduction was through incorporating compostable trays and sorting trash after meals.

Cindy Seh, Lincoln’s head night custodian stands in for Cheung during sick days and vacations. She says though the green change requires more work for custodians, it’s a change for the better.

“It’s good to teach kids to save the earth,” she says. “Stressing the importance of keeping clean and recycling is good for raising responsible children.”

Seh’s children attended Lincoln. Both are now at American Indian Public Charter School.

Annie Liu, a 7-year-old in Chou’s class, says that the process is easy.

“You just separate and stack,” Annie says, while munching on the pretzels that accompanied her chicken soft tacos and trading her classmates milk for carrots.

All told, Lincoln Elementary’s 20 minute per child lunch period results in three and a half hours of lunch related work for custodians. In the end, 8-cubic yards ends at the trash every week and the school receives compost once a year. In total, WMEarthcare is committed to providing OUSD Green Gloves schools at least 100-cubic yards of compost per year.

So far the compost is used in the school’s playground kale garden and in Cheung’s flower garden located at the front of the school.

“Unfortunately our school isn’t located in a green open space,” says Lincoln’s principal. “So, with composting and gardening we can each do a little to bring attention to our environmental connection.”

To learn more.

Local

Mercury News: Election 2012: Oakland schools get out the youth vote

November 1, 2012
By Katy Murphy

This week, a group of boisterous teenagers marched down to a ballot box a few blocks from their school. The first-time voter contingent and their sign-holding supporters whooped and chanted all the way to the Alameda County Courthouse, eliciting friendly toots from passing cars.

“I feel like I’m always complaining about what’s wrong with the world,” said Di’Jahnay Stewart, a Dewey Academy student who turned 18 on May 23 and registered to vote shortly thereafter. “I feel like if I vote, at least it’ll mean something.”

Many young Americans aren’t as quick to exercise their new electoral power. Although they voted in larger numbers in 2004 and 2008 than they had in decades, their turnout was still the lowest of any age group. For all the buzz surrounding the 2008 presidential race, for all the YouTube videos and the plugs on MTV, just 41 percent of 18- to 20-year-olds and 47 percent of 21- to 24-year-olds reported voting in that election. By contrast, 58 percent of all age groups and 68 percent of those 65 and older went to the polls that year, according to a survey of noninstitutionalized adults by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“I’m finding a shocking number of young people who just won’t vote,” said Deanita Lewis, a parent leader who has long been involved in Oakland’s public schools. The reasons she most often hears? “‘My vote doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to change.'”

To read more.