Oakland Schools Struggle, but Emeryville May Point a Way Up
Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
College-student aides and high school students administer a cyanide test to water samples at a science program in Emeryville.
By GERRY SHIH
Published: July 22, 2010
In his five-year plan to turn around the lowest-performing schools in the Oakland Unified School District, Superintendent Tony Smith does not mention teachers, textbooks or test scores.
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Instead, Mr. Smith said his students most urgently needed social and health services, engaged parents and activities outside the classroom.
Whether Mr. Smith can overhaul the schools in Oakland is a subject of intense interest among Bay Area educators. Oakland Unified has lost $122 million in financing in the latest cuts to California’s embattled public schools. The city’s endemic problems, particularly poverty and crime, have had a dramatic effect in the classroom.
But Mr. Smith has a record of reform: As a young superintendent in Emeryville in the early 2000s, he enlisted social workers from California State University and nurses from