Leadership Public Schools has room

In an e-mail to uprep.parents@gmail.com, principal Andrew Gordon writes:

We are a small, college preparatory, tuition free charter high school celebrating it's third year serving the families of East Oakland. Our mission is to lovingly and strategically prepare 100% of our students to ultimately gain access to, and success in college and beyond. We were featured in the Drive to Discover segment on the ABC7 News at 6p.m. as a school helping kids achieve their dreams and goals of success via going to college.

We celebrate having:

• a small student population, where we can develop positive relationships with students
  
• a standards based curriculum
  
• a safe campus
  
• a school with partnerships with UC Berkeley's College of Engineering and Laney College
  
• a heavy emphasis and focus on mathematics support
  
• talented and credentialed teachers

LPS College Park is 10 blocks away from your current location and we are more than glad to help your children continue their work towards preparing for college. I currently have space for 30-35 students who will be 11th graders and 25-30 students that will be 10th graders. I am happy to sit down to chat with as many parents that are looking for options for their students. We are confident that our educational program will support your children and ask that as you make decisions about a new school, that you consider us.

Respectfully,

Andrew Gordon, M.S.
Principal, LPS College Park
510-633-0750
510-290-5630

8601 MacArthur Blvd., Bldg 100
Oakland, CA 94605

Lighthouse Charter has room

Down in the comments, principal Stephen Sexton writes that
Lighthouse Community Charter High School is one school that notified CCSA that we would make or had spaces available for interested UPrep students. Lighthouse Community Charter High School is located in downtown Oakland and we currently enroll 9-11 grade students and we will be a fully enrolled K-12 in the 2008-09 school year. We have a few (<5) openings at 9th, 10th and 11th grade.

For those who are interested, you can call my administrative assistant Arlene Aldrette at 510.271.8403 to learn more about the school. I hope you all find the best educational option for your children in this difficult time.

Meeting on Saturday - or not?

According to a student comment at The Education Report, there will be a Board meeting on Saturday after all, at 10 am. Can anyone confirm that?

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.

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."

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.

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.