Oakland Unified School District
Open Enrollment / Quasi-Lottery Options Program
What is an Oakland Public Education Really About?
What kind of Success are they really asking us to expect?

I went last night to a community forum at Bret Harte Middle School regarding OUSD School Admission and Attendance Boundary Policies. In Oakland there are good school, dismally failing schools (such as the one in my neighborhood) and many schools in the middle that are good (not great) but slipping under the radar of public school shopping community-organizing-bent Oaklanders. The good schools - mostly in the hills - and I'll name them (Hillcrest, Chabot, Montclair, Thornhill, Redwoods Heights, Lincoln, Crocker Highlands) are all over-crowded. [School information & rating here. Find your neighborhood school here.] Everyone wants to go there...those that can afford the high priced homes in those areas (except for Lincoln downtown) and all those that will do anything to get in - use a fake address for registration, appeal, appeal, appeal and anything else in their means. So what do you do?

The School Board is reviewing the policies of boundaries and the Options Program, looking to help ease the overcrowding of these schools. I'd ask though is that the real question? Is that what the School Board is really looking at, or is that the lone value they want to affirm?

What's the real priority in our school district?
Keeping folks happy?
Keeping families together at the same school?
Improving all the schools?
Ensuring equitable access and just education for all families across socio-economic and ethnic/cultural diversity parameters?

I was moved by several comments at the forum (which was well led) and feelings that I share, including:

What are the real problems of the OUSD?

Why does the OUSD spend some much time tinkering around with periphial issues (like the Options Program details and boundaries) as opposed to address key and deeper issues (some of which I'd identify as 1) the need for help for those "under-the-radar up-and-coming-schools like Glenview, Sequoia, and Laurel; 2) the need to build up parent involvement so as to spread the wealth of parent-organizers who can create and sustain transformative energy for PTA leadership in every school - which seems to be one of the key indicators of elementary school success; 3) the need to do more targeted and intentional marketing/outreach to future parents who may be considering their neighborhood public school and may bring with them much-needed organizing skills and willingness - what would it take to motivate and empower such people to choose their neighborhood public school over the myriad of private schools in Oakland? 4) the need to encourage and empower partnerships between schools and communities of faith and/or neighborhood associations in view of expanding and maturing the success of the school through community solidarity and collaboration).

A last speaker stood and shared about the beauty and power of and in the Oakland Unified School District, of her children being blessed by being in a vibrant community of diversity, encouragement and challenge pushing them to be the best that they can as well as pushing our city to become all the best that it already is. Power and Beauty - a bold statement we so often overlook when we shrug our shoulders, admitting a seemingly defeat and acknowledge Oakland as a "not-as-good-as _________ city."

What are the values of the Oakland Unified School District?
What's an Oakland Public Education really about?
and finally
"The whole approach of the OUSD to recruiting, retaining and relishing families in the public schools of Oakland - in all of the schools - raises the question, "Do people even want to send their kids to Oakland Public Schools and if not, why not?" Interestingly enough this community forum was nearly impossible to find at Bret Harte School, located in the back of the labyrinth camps, with a handful of handwritten - nearly difficult to read - signs indicating the path, several of the early comers depended upon students still at the school at 6pm to show them the way. What does that say about our system and about those perseverant enough to find in and for it.

This difficulty of knowing what you're getting in to (will the school actually be any good? How can you tell that in one visit? What will the school be like when my second child goes to Kindergarten in 2-4 years? Will they get into the same school?) is what attracts so many quality folks to private and charter schools. Our daughter nearly went to one because of this whole process and the completely dismal suckiness of our neighborhood school. I'm a proponent and marketer for the Public Schools - I love love love the one we attend - and yet in the communities I'm a part of in Oakland, which contain many middle-class, multi-racial, organizing-type families, the majority of them choose private and/or charter schools over Oakland public schools. And they're just the ones that could push an under-the-radar/up-and-coming school over the top in terms of parent leadership and collaboration in and through PTAs. A lot of it is an image problem. Simply making out of date websites (the OUSD one still has the 2006-07 academic calendar on it) and signs that read "expect success" isn't going to get people to think that success is really there.