Ashley McBride

2 weeks ago | oaklandside.org | Ashley McBride

The Oakland Unified School District board is discussing a plan that could bring Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell’s tenure to an end, according to one school board director. On Wednesday in closed session, the board’s meeting agenda includes “Public Employee Evaluation/Discipline/Dismissal/Release.” The agenda item doesn’t say whose job is at stake, but District 4 Director Mike Hutchinson said the board began talking two weeks ago to change the superintendent’s transition plan.

3 weeks ago | oaklandside.org | Ashley McBride

Earlier this month, middle school students at Lighthouse Community Charter School were in the middle of a unit on gun violence and its impacts on their communities when 15-year-old Derbing Jose Alvarado Gonzalez was shot and killed in an attempted robbery. It hit close to home for students, many of whom have had their own experiences with gun violence. One eighth grader drove past the scene with her parents soon after the shooting and mentioned it in class.

1 month ago | oaklandside.org | Ashley McBride

Throughout the 20th century, the principal job of Oakland’s mayor was to mediate among different and often competing interests in the city — business leaders, industry bosses, unions, Black migrants, landlords, renters, neighborhood groups, even the Ku Klux Klan. The factional conflicts shifted as the makeup of the city changed, but the essential role of the mayor remained more or less the same: to broker among power blocs in a growing Oakland. This is not the job that former U.S. Rep.

1 month ago | oaklandside.org | Ashley McBride

In an unusual move, the Alameda County Board of Education declined to stop the closure of American Indian Public Charter School II, or AIMS K-8, but trustees will reconsider their decision if the school can come to an agreement with the county by June to address concerns they have raised. At a hearing Tuesday night, dozens of students, families, and staff of the school made their case to the board about why AIMS K-8 should not be shut down.

1 month ago | berkeleyside.org | Ashley McBride

Five years after Alameda County voters approved the Measure C sales tax for early childhood education and health care, child care providers across the county are expecting the first influx of cash — bolstering a section of the care economy that was decimated by the pandemic. Preschools and child care centers are slated to receive nearly $166 million from Alameda County after the Board of Supervisors tentatively approved a batch of emergency stabilization funding from Measure C.