Saturday, July 28, 2007

Parent organization

A number of parents have talked about getting together do discuss what the students need now and how to get it for them.

Michelle Austin, Amani's mom, has started coordinating the efforts. To contact her, e-mail uprep.parents @ gmail.com and leave a call back number, especially if you don't check e-mail every day.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Letter from CCSA

Katy Murphy includes two new letters to Uprep's Board in her update today. One letter is from the OUSD and cites financial irregularities in addition to the issues dealt with in an earlier letter. The other letter is from the California Charter Schools Association, and it states that
The Association is prepared to assist you and the Uprep Board to close the school in an orderly fashion, and we are prepared to assist the families in finding appropriate placements in Oakland's other charter and District high schools that may have spaces at this time.
No further specifics are included about what kind of assistance is meant, but the letter notes that "Oakland charter schools could accommodate 200 or more Uprep students."

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Documents

A page element titled "Important Documents" has been added to the right, for parents who wish to educate themselves on the current process. So far the list includes the original report sent by teachers to the governing board and to the OUSD, and the OUSD's recent warning to UPrep that the charter might be revoked. What is missing is the Board's defense from end June, and of course it seems inappropriate to post only one side of the case here. The reason is simply practical - there are readily available online versions of the two former documents, as Novo Metro and The Education Report have published those already, and the links to the right simply lead to those sites. I'll add the Board's response as soon as I can access an electronic copy - stay tuned.

Friday, July 13, 2007

What next?

So Mr. Isaac has resigned, the newspapers report, and no-body knows whether the school will be shut down or be continued under new leadership. If it is shut down, where will students attend school next year? What about counseling about correct placement and choice of courses? How do students sign up for community college classes? If the school is continued, how will colleges regard UPREP transcripts? Who will lead the school? What can be done to make UPREP into a really great school? At this point there are mostly questions and very few answers.

Instead of having every student and parent figure out everything on their own, let's share information on this blog. This site is started by teachers, but the goal is to have a forum where students and parents can do much of the talking.

You can post your comments or answers to others' entries either anonymously or by using your Google account. If you want to publish an entry that is not a comment, e-mail it to uprepstaff @ gmail.com, or to any of your old teachers, and we'll publish it here. If you want to be a co-author of the blog you do need a Google account, which you can get for free at google.com, and then contact us to be added as an author.