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Letters

Letters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Small Schools Success

    We want to thank you for highlighting the great young people of Oakland in your recent article “Beating the Odds” [May 2007], but we have a couple of comments. You used the wrong names of the schools in many cases. Also, the opening of the article cites the difficulties of the public school system as a challenge these students had to overcome, but you do not note that two of the students go to private school and the district has worked for eight years on a school reform movement that drove the creation of the innovative new schools that seven of these kids attend.
    Since the small schools movement began in Oakland Unified School District in 2000, the McClymonds and Castlemont campuses have been converted to small schools. You state that Porshia and Medina attend Castlemont—would that be Castlemont Business and Information Technology School or Leadership Prep? Mark and Michael attend McClymonds: BEST or EXCEL? Seven of the students go to new small public schools in Oakland; an eighth goes to Dewey, also an Oakland Unified public school. Two students go to College Prep, a private school.
    We appreciate your recognition of these outstanding Oakland young people who have beat the odds, no matter what school they go to. We do understand the point of the story is the kids, but it would have been more complete and accurate to acknowledge their schools and the district’s reform efforts as part of the story.

Reader Response

    I have been an avid reader of Oakland Magazine for some time, but lately it seems it is really nothing more than an advertisement of businesses. Every other cover story is a Best Of. Best Cheap Eats, Best Physicians, and in June, Best of Oakland. Your green issue was outstanding, and you’ve had some fine articles about unique things in the last couple of years. Off the top of my head, I recall an unusual story about horses and the story you did on Oaklanders over 50 was great, too.
    Please don’t turn Oakland into a directory of businesses instead of a magazine. While I’m sure the advertising folks love this, your readers don’t. More stories on who and what make Oakland great, please; fewer thinly veiled advertorials for local businesses.

Proud Oaklander

    I read the Oaklander article [“You’re an Oaklander If … ,” January/February 2007] with interest and some amusement. Though I only scored 5 points on the quiz, I still believe that I qualify as an Oaklander, because:
•     I went to preschool in a building on the shores of Lake Temescal, attended
      three Oakland public schools (grades K–12) and got my B.A. from Mills
      College.
•     I stood with my classmates around the flagpole during a moment of silence
      after Marcus Foster, Oakland school superintendent, was killed.
•     I was in the Christmas pageant at the Civic Auditorium twice—once as a
      block, once as a reindeer. My aunt had fond memories of the pageant
      (and its beloved leader, Mrs. Jorgensen), as she had been in the pageant
      as an angel some 50 years earlier.
•     I was in drama class with Tom Hanks when he spelled his first name “Thom.”
•     I took the bus to shop at Capwell’s, J. (not I.) Magnin and Home Yardage
      (all gone) and DeLauer’s Super News Stand (still there).
•     I sang with the Oakland Youth Chorus in its very first year.
•     I had a job selling books at the old Liberty House department store, where
      old-timers would come by and share their memories of when it was Rhodes,
      and before that Kahn’s.
•     I was sad when we stopped sharing an area code with San Francisco.
•     I still call the Oakland freeways “the Warren,” “the MacArthur” and
      “the Nimitz.”
And, yes, I hold a golden key to Fairyland—but not because I got it at a fundraiser, but because my grandmother took me there as a child. It is one of my most cherished possessions.