A group of educators says if the Oakland school district permits them to open a charter school in East Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood this fall, they will blend the unorthodox pedagogy of a traditionally private Waldorf School with methods used in public schools for low-income children and English learners.
It’s unlikely to happen, at least this year. Oakland Unified’s charter schools office is recommending against the opening of the Community School for Creative Education (for the second time). The reasons behind the denial are outlined in a 50-page report posted on a committee agenda for tomorrow night.
The Community School for Creative Education wouldn’t be the first public school built upon the Waldorf model, an approach to learning developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1919 that places much emphasis on the child’s imagination and overall development (and which doesn’t require children to read until the end of third grade, the same year OUSD officials say they expect all kids to be able to read).
Still, the model doesn’t have much of a history in low-income communities with large numbers of English-language learners – a fact that seemed to worry Oakland’s charter schools coordinator, David Montes de Oca and others on the panel who reviewed the charter proposal.