Tag Archives: oakland unified school

Local

SFGate: Oakland Measure J to upgrade school kitchens

October 11, 2012
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Public schools in Oakland are looking for major kitchen remodeling with a measure on the Nov. 6 ballot.

If approved, Measure J would authorize the Oakland Unified School District to issue as much as $475 million in bonds to improve school facilities.

Along with seismic upgrades and lead-paint removal, the bonds could help underwrite a planned overhaul of school kitchens in the district, including building a new central kitchen in West Oakland. It’s part of an effort to improve the food the district serves to students, 70 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.

Oakland has made strides toward serving healthier and fresher food in recent years. For instance, the district now buys more fresh fruits and vegetables from within 250 miles of Oakland. There are salad bars at 67 schools.

‘Kitchen dinosaurs’

But it’s infrastructure, not ingredients, that has become the biggest barrier to making lunches healthier and tastier. Many schools have antiquated kitchens – if they have a kitchen at all.

“It’s a very attractive museum of kitchen dinosaurs,” said Zenobia Barlow, executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The facilities limit what food can be served.

“A lot of what is served is processed and prepackaged and frozen,” said Ruth Woodruff, who has a first-grader and a fourth-grader attending Chabot Elementary School. “It gets unwrapped and put on trays and heated.”

Some schools, like Piedmont Avenue Elementary, don’t even have a kitchen. Meals there are reheated in the corner of a multipurpose room.

Local, National

KQED News: Oakland School District and Feds Agree on Changes to School Discipline

October 1, 2012
By Barbara Grady

The Oakland Unified School District board agreed Thursday night to take  specific steps to eradicate racial bias in school discipline, voting unanimously to enter a voluntary resolution with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

The resolution focuses on replacing suspensions – which historically OUSD meted out to African American boys with much greater frequency than to other students – with restorative justice and positive behavior intervention practices and requiring training for all OUSD staff in these practices as well as in classroom management. The resolution includes about a dozen other specific actions the school district must take, many of which it has already begun.

At a packed school board meeting Thursday night, OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith called the agreement “an exciting opportunity to continue work,” along a path that OUSD started with its strategic plan of creating Full Service Community Schools in the district and launching the African American Male Achievement Initiative. But he and others acknowledged the resolution means accelerating those efforts.

“We will further work that is already underway” Smith said. What have been pilot projects in restorative justice will need to be expanded and brought to every school, starting with 38 the DOE cited for disproportionate use of suspensions as discipline of African American boys.

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