News

It’s hard to believe that we wrapped up another successful school year of teaching and learning across the District last week. These annual times of transition often get me thinking, reflecting on our shared educational journey at the end of every school year.

Governor Gavin Newsom recently proclaimed April 7-13, 2024 as California Library Week, a week to “celebrate the essential services, resources, and opportunities that libraries and library workers provide.” So it’s the perfect time to highlight the importance of our own school libraries and to express our appreciation to our teacher librarians and library technicians across the District.

Paraprofessional Appreciation Day is observed every year on the first Wednesday of April, in honor of paraprofessional educators who work as paraeducators, early literacy tutors, academic mentors, early childhood instructional aides, and instructional support specialists.

March is Women’s History Month, and today is International Women’s Day - a time to lift up and celebrate the contributions that women have made and continue to make for the betterment of our society and world.

We are now well into the spring semester in the 2023-24 school year. I know that our students are working hard and growing every day in class, our families are gaining support where needed and building a stronger community, and our staff is becoming even more entrenched in the work to improve our schools and the outcomes we help our students achieve.

At its most recent meeting, the Oakland Unified Board of Education approved the 2024-25 academic calendar. It took a few days to finish formatting the new calendar, and today, that task was completed.

There is so much Black History to celebrate here in Oakland. Of course, we can always point to the Black Panthers and all they did for our society, or to Ida Louise Jackson who was Oakland’s first Black teacher and the first Black woman to teach high school in California, or to Vice President Kamala Harris who was born at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland. But this Black History Month, I want to celebrate people who are here in our district right now or products of OUSD. Let’s start with our amazing staff.

We hope that the new year is off to a great start for you and your family and we look forward to another year of enriching academic programs, exciting community partnerships, and above all, putting students at the center of everything we do.

In a fusion of technology, education, and community collaboration, Oakland Unified School District recently partnered with automaker Tesla for a special event to start the new robotics competition season. The December 21st event brought together 70 students from seven OUSD schools to tour the Tesla factory, participate in the season’s first robotics scrimmage, and experience hands-on engineering demonstrations.

Dear Oakland Unified Community,

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year which is accompanied by the longest night. Of course, that also means starting tomorrow, our days will grow longer little by little. We’ll have more daylight each day moving forward until we reach the summer solstice in June, the longest day of the year.

We’re live!

New websites for the District and all of our schools formerly housed on the Blackboard platform have launched. Please visit www.ousd.org or your school’s website and check out the new look and feel of District websites.