Washington Post
June 1, 2012
Maggie Severns
A couple weeks ago, the Census bureau announced that minority babies made up the majority of births in the United States in 2011. I wrote an opinion piece for today’s Washington Post about why this symbolic shift should be a wake-up call for the public school system: Student demographics are changing, but policies revolving around how we instruct English language learners have yet to catch up.
Read the full article here.
Oakland North
Posted on April 27, 2012
Written by Ryan Phillips
Teachers want parents to be more involved, and parents want to know teachers are doing their best to educate their children. While that may sound easy to accomplish, it becomes impossible when the two sides don’t communicate.
On Thursday evening, parents and teachers from schools around the Oakland Unified School District gathered in the gymnasium of the International Community School in the Fruitvale area to talk about how to overcome communication barriers and learn how parents and teachers can better work together.
Learn more about: “Parent-Teacher Summit: Parents and Teachers Working Together”
Several months ago, Perspectives editor Mark Trautwein received a package containing 31 Perspectives, the work of a sixth grade Humanities class at The San Francisco School, an independent, private school. The Perspectives impressed him; many were deeply personal and revealed the struggle of young people starting to form their own opinions of the world. Trautwein worked with the teacher of the class, Ruth Corley, to present the pieces as web-exclusive Perspectives.
Education Report Blog
February 5, 2012
Written By Kathy Murphy
In preparation for a public radio show this week, I asked readers to write in with stories about what was working in their schools, despite the lousy economy and perpetual state budget crisis — and ways people have coped with diminishing state funding. It was inspiring to read the responses. Here are some of them:
David Orphal: Skyline High had created a great teacher collaboration system in 2010-2011 for our freshmen core teachers. Each teacher worked in a team of four who shared 130 kids. These four teachers each got two of our six class period to work without their kids. …
This costs money. We used a grant to pay for the extra time these teachers used to collaborate.
This year, we wanted to expand this tool to all of the teachers at school — but, of course, there’s no money. But we solved it.
We moved from a six- to a seven-period day. Now every teacher has five classes with kids and two periods without. Five days a week, we can meet with our colleagues to talk about kids we share or help each other with lesson planning or professional growth. Additionally, we all still have one period each day for individual grading, photocopying and calling parents.
Learn more about budget cut coping tales.
Education Blog
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
Written By Katy Murphy
This evening, after the Oakland school board picks a president and vice president for 2012, it moves onto its facilities master plan.
The presentation posted on the agenda (links below) covers enrollment and demographic trends, facts about the number, age and size of district buildings, and a list of projects that might be undertaken if OUSD had the money.
If OUSD tackled every project on that list it would cost an estimated $1.46 billion, not including change orders and cost overruns. (The figure is listed on one slide as $1,460 million, which — though probably standard for these kinds of reports — sounds a little like someone saying they’re five-foot-twelve.)
It includes: $145 million in projects from the 2005 master plan that never materialized, such as upgrades to fire alarms; $333 million in seismic safety improvements; $457 million in modernization projects; $53 million in solar and energy efficiency; $300 million to replace portable buildings and $172.5 million for community kitchens, health care centers and other “site optimization” projects.
As most of the Measure B funds have been allocated or spent, this project prioritization appears to be in preparation for another bond measure campaign, which the board discussed last fall (election date and amount TBD).
You can find links to the relevant documents here and the projects list below. Come 6 p.m., you’ll find a link to a live video stream of the meeting here – and something called “eComment,” which I hadn’t noticed before.
What’s your take on the facilities master plan?