School Closures Coming to a Close?

By Children Rising | March 22, 2012

It has been a long school year for Oakland with the Occupiers making the New York Times while the OUSD board members met quietly to draw plans to close and consolidate five public schools.
The board stated that additional schools would close, in accordance with their 3-year downsizing plan. Now, this month, the board has stated that those five schools ( Lakeview, Lazear, Maxwell Park, Marshall and Santa Fe Elementary) will be the only schools that will close as a part of the budget overhaul.
After all the back-and-forth: There will be no more planned school closures.
Now the district can concentrate its energy on the schools that are closing and the myriad of issues that will result in teachers, students and staff looking for an open school.


In other news, Michael Krasny’s KQED program “Forum” was at Castlemont High School today. In a two-hour long program, he focused on California’s unacceptable dropout rate. In the first half of the show, Krasny interviews various people from within the Castlemont campus. In the second half of the show, there are interviews with people who are more familiar with the outside workings of the system: Superintended Tony Smith, the president of the California State Board of Education.
Stay tuned for when the show will be released as public audio files here and here.