Oakland School for the Arts

Coordinates: 37°48′27.97″N 122°16′15.28″W / 37.8077694°N 122.2709111°W / 37.8077694; -122.2709111

Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) is a performing arts charter school in Oakland, California. OSA is located on the Fox Oakland Theatre at 530 18th Street across from Telegraph. On April 1, 2009 OSA was selected to be a California Distinguished School.

Founding and history

Oakland School for the Arts is a college preparatory, arts middle and high school. It was founded in 2000 via charter from the Oakland Unified School District. It received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in October 2001. In September 2002 OSA opened its doors to its first freshman class, the class of 2006. The school was the dreamchild of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and its first director was Loni Berry.

The school started at the Alice Arts Center building in downtown Oakland. It was moved to portables near the Fox Oakland Theatre during the 2004-05 school year, and moved to the Fox Oakland Theater building in January 2009. Mr. Loni Berry was director of the school for the first four years but was asked to leave by the school's board of directors the summer before the 2006-07 school year. Mr. Saul Drevitch replaced him in fall 2006. San Francisco School of the Arts principal Donn Harris replaced Drevitch in December 2007. Drevitch resigned because of "differences" between him and Jerry Brown and the School Board. As of the 2008-9 school year, Donn Harris holds the role of Executive Director on a full-time basis.

The first graduating senior class, the class of 2006, graduated with 100 percent of the class accepted to four year colleges. Graduates of '06 were accepted to a variety of institutions, both academic and artistic, including:Le Cordon Bleu California Culinary Academy Columbia University, University of Michigan, Stanford University, Middlebury College, Carnegie Mellon University, Wesleyan University, Mount Holyoke College, The Theatre School at Depaul University, Barnard College, Spelman College, Howard University, Berklee College of Music, Pratt Institute, California College of the Arts, Boston Conservatory, Fordham University, Texas A&M, Fresno State University, San Francisco State University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, California State University East Bay, Texas Southern University, and many others.

Overview

Currently, there are nine emphases at Oakland School for the Arts:

1. Dance
2. Digital Media
3. Instrumental Music
4. Literary Arts
5. Theatre
6. Vocal Music
7. Visual Arts
8. Circus Arts
9. Production Design

For the first three years of OSA's existence, there were eight emphases: Acting, Arts Management, Dance, Literary Arts, Instrumental Music, Theatre Design and Production, Visual Arts and Vocal Music. During the 2005-06 school year, Theatre Design and Production was merged into Visual Arts. OSA was faced with budget cuts during summer 2006 and chose to merge Acting, Arts Management, Literary Arts and Visual Arts and Design into one emphasis called Theatre. This arrangement, for Visual Arts, only lasted a year and administration separated Literary Arts into its own emphasis.

Controversies

OSA was historically plagued by notoriously high faculty and student turnover and other management problems. Upon the hiring of Donn Harris, OSA enjoyed 97% faculty/staff retention in the 2008-9 school year and 2009-10 year.

Some fallout hit the school after Jerry Brown made a novel arrangement to provide it with extra funding. Brown had a large, lighted electronic billboard with rotating ads installed at the busy toll plaza on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge, with the proceeds benefiting OSA.^[1] The billboard became controversial in 2007 because it was so bright that motorists complained it impeded their vision at night, and some residents around the bay objected to its high visibility even from San Francisco and Marin.

In another minor controversy, Brown sent out letters to Oakland families recruiting them to apply to OSA in 2007—after he had become California state Attorney General, and using his title and the state seal.^[2] Some questioned the legality of the letters, but the designated official to rule on their legality would be the California state Attorney General. Brown deemed the letters legal.

Middle School

Oakland School for the Arts first opened with a ninth grade class and added another high school grade each year. For the 2005-06 school year, though, a middle school was added. Administration went through great lengths to keep the "middle school" and "high school" separate, giving the middle schoolers a different entrance/exit and shorter school hours.

Laptop use

Oakland School for the Arts has currently implemented thin client technology for academic and emphasis use. The students and faculty are encouraged to utilize the technology throughout the curriculum. The thin client program is intended to be expanded as funding becomes available.

For much of the school's history, all high school students were issued their own laptop for each school year. This privilege was restricted to juniors and seniors in 2008. Similarly, only juniors and seniors were allowed to go off-campus for lunch until 2009, when sophomores and first-year students were allowed to leave as well because of a lack of space in the new facility.

Ranking

OSA continues to excel on standardized tests. In the 2002-2003 school year, OSA received a score of 8 (out of 10) on the STAR test (the highest in OUSD) and in the 2003-2004 year, it received a 9, again the highest score in the district. While there was a significant drop in test scores during the 2005-06 school year, the school rebounded with improved scores for the 2006-2007 school year.

References

1. ^ BAY BRIDGE / Billboard at toll plaza too bright, drivers complain
2. ^ Jerry Brown writes families, plugs charter school - The Education Report - Katy Murphy covers what’s going on in the Oakland schools

External links

• Oakland School for the Arts website