1) I agree that we need to recognize that not all high school graduates either will or should go to college. We should have an educational system that recognizes this, but as many have pointed out this is the third rail of education.

2) But if you have ever spent any time in OUSD high school you will know that in at least some school the the 9th text books and expectations are so dumb downed that the disservice down to the capable is greater than the good, if any, done for those in the bottom quartile.

3) If you want to minimize some of the tracking discussion, one must create a system where all children get a real education in the early years. hopefully, they will then have the tools to decide what they want to do. I’ve talked to Oakland 9th graders who do not know that 1/2 and .5 are the same thing. I don’t know about you but these are not exactly the people I would want constructing my house or preparing my food.

4) i think more students should attend a university away from home – but you sometimes run into first time college syndrome and other factors which make it cost prohibitive. I’m at a school where most of the kids don’t see beyond their ‘hood. When dealing with a population that doesn’t have the college experience you need to start early – work with the student and parents to get them involved and aware about getting in and paying for it.

5) i probably had more but i am tired and hungry.

6) Based on my math 8K spent on CA student seems about right, but when you do COLA that number drops and becomes equivalent to what they spent when I was a student 30 yrs ago on the east coast

have any of the school board candidates stated support for bringing back high school vocational training with strict monitoring to prevent tracking? The only mention I’ve seen of it was something in Nancy Skinner’s brochure.

Vocational training is politically radioactive in Oakland but it’s time has come. When something like 30% (or is it less?) of ninth graders go on to graduate a relatively good school like Oakland Tech, and who knows what percentage of those go on to finish a four year college degree, what the heck good are we doing for those kids to say we didn’t allow them to be tracked into “dead end” blue collar jobs like plumbing, electrical, sheet metal, auto mechanics that pay more than many white collar clerical jobs and are at lower risk of being outsourced?

Granted the failure to even teach many of those kids to read and do basic math in the lower grades, makes it hard to train them for many good paying secure blue collar jobs, but at least the kids could see that there was a future for them, that selling drugs or worse is not their most rational economic choice.

and yes Pat McCullough candidate for City Council advocates bringing back vocational training to city high schools if accompanied by strict measures to prevent racial or economic tracking. Pat is both an attorney and a tradesman (electronic tech for the City of Berkeley). I was an auto mechanic for many years before I became a CPA.

-len raphael
volunteer treasurer for Pat McCullough, City Council District 1 Campaign

I asked Judy if she knew how much money the State gave Oakland for each student enrolled in OUSD and she said she didn’t know but could find out. She guesstimated that it was about 1,200/student. Since Rogers wasn’t there I couldn’t ask him the same question.

(Another resident had asked me the same question earlier that day and I didn’t know the answer, told me that it was 8k, but I’m not running for a seat on the board of ed, and I’m not claiming that the new board is going to be a whole bunch more financially intelligent than the old board that allowed Superintendent Chaconas to bankrupt the district when he gave teachers money that the district didn’t have.)

(I just searched online, and the number appears to be approx 8k/student, but not obvious to me if that’s average the spent in the state or average the state gives per pupil)

Then I asked Jody how if teacher compensation packages couldn’t be more than say 125k/teacher, and average class size was on the low side 25 students, where does the remaining 75k per class go? buildings are paid for, sure they’re aging, utils, book and computers s are not cheap. But there must be a huge number of administrators or custodians or both? She said she’d have to research that.

Yesterday, I asked the same thing the other day of a former Oakland school teach who once sat on the salary negotiating team during the Chaconas era. He laughed and said that after the teachers presented their wage demands one of the then school board members had asked in all seriousness why they hadn’t asked for more.

I have to agree w my neighbor, an ex Carter middle school counselor, who says that the failing Oakland public schools will eventually pull down all of our best efforts to improve public security and economic development. It doesn’t seem that Jody has the command of the numbers to reverse that.

-len raphael, t emescal
(speaking only for himself)

I love the blog and have been lurking for months – but I must affirm what you have discerned about Brian. I have been in small district and charter schools in Oakland for the last eight years. During that time, Brian has had a single minded focus upon improving outcomes for students. That agenda is driven by one factor – his desire for a better Oakland. Any lazy analysis of his associations without the actually knowing the man and his work is misleading. Brian is the type of school board member this city needs – one who demands a better education for all students as opposed to pet projects in his district. Without an educational revolution – Oakland will be mired in violence and mediocrity because simple data analysis reveals that only about 10% of OUSD students graduate with a college degree. Forget the two Americas – welcome to the two Oaklands.

You mention that you are a supporter of vocational training. A lot of people would think that Oakland High Schools were providing some sort of vocational training to the many students who might not be bound for college. At last night’s Rockridge NCPC meeting the principal of Claremont Middle School and a representative of Oakland Tech said there is no vocational training going on at the Schools. Money is given as the reason. It seems to be now the Junior Colleges job to do the training. Also no woodshop at the Junior High. But our students are given computers to do Pixar like work. Any way I haven’t heard those running for school board address the problem of preparing our high school graduates for the work force (mechanics, woodworking etc) and not shift the burden to the community college.

do you even read what you write? This is like arguing that only a few cars should be let onto the road so as to not become over-competitive with carriage manufacturers…

I went to public schools here in Oakland (pretty recently too) and they stank. Why anyone would want to prop up that system is beyond me.

That Rogers is running for the school board as a Republican is less relevant given the local, insular nature of education policy & politics in a solidly Democratic county in a solidly Democratic state (I’m an Independent, myself). However, considering the fact that Oakland is a VERY diverse city with, for example, approximately 28-30% African-American constituents–isn’t it odd that the Republican Party nationally has exactly 0 (ZERO) African-American representatives out of 269 Republicans among the House, Senate, and state governorships. What that simple fact reveals is that there is both minimal Republican emphasis on issues that are of concern to African-Americans as well as minimal efforts to reach out to minority groups for future leadership. This paints the picture that Rogers, at least based on his political leanings, is more qualified and more appropriate to be a member of the Danville school board, not Oakland’s.

Separate from Rogers–since our hard-working if misguided author supports the candidate who is “strongly pro-charter” and is a charter school fan herself, permit me to present two critical points of an alternative view on the subject, copied from: http://www.pasasf.org/charters/charters.html

“The charter movement promotes itself by attacking and disparaging public education, constantly citing charter schools’ supposed superiority to traditional public schools (though academic studies show that charters perform no better than traditional public schools). This erodes support for public schools.”

and…

“It sounds great to blast the ‘burdensome bureaucratic regulations’ from which charter schools are joyously liberated. But actually, most of those ‘burdensome’ regulations are there for a reason – to set educational and teaching standards, to combat patronage and favoritism, to ensure access for disabled students, to keep students safe, to gain fair wages and working conditions for teachers. If needless regulations exist, they should be lifted for all schools, not just charters.”

I, like VSmoothe, once benefited from a non-public school education despite my parents’ lower middle-class background (& no college education)–over an hour from my home. And I believe charter schools could provide healthy competition to under-performing public schools. However, I think the school situation in Oakland is so bad right now (especially given the attraction here of drug-related/criminal vocations, among many many other factors) that this “healthy competition” is too healthy for public schools to make any kind of satisfactory progress in real-time. And what is this–our third or fourth district-wide administrator in the last several years? Charter schools should be a well-planned complementary part of the education strategy, not the primary solution.

Dick Spees wrote a great letter in favor of Rogers in Wednesday’s Trib.

And she’s got the dissembling down too: she has no position on charter schools, but wants a moratorium?

It really does seem that Brian Rogers is the most reform-minded of the contenders. And if they all agree that businesses should be providing more resources to schools, then the guy who has led corporate philanthropy to the OUSD seems like a choice on that front as well.