Linking home and classroom, Oakland bets on community schools
Sitting behind his desk at Fremont High School in Oakland, principal Daniel Hurst fiddled with a plastic cigar wrapper he had confiscated from a student. “They take the cigar paper and fill it with weed,” he said. Hurst knows Fremont’s problems well: he joined the school 28 years ago as a teacher. Two years ago, he said, a teacher was robbed at gunpoint before the first bell. “The school gets regularly burglarized,” he added. “Teachers’ cars get broken into. Laptops and cell phones get stolen.”
Fremont’s campus in gang-entrenched East Oakland is just three blocks away from International Boulevard, famous for its booming sex trade. The school is known for abysmal test scores and low graduation rates. In the 2011-2012 school year, it had the most suspensions of any school in Oakland, according to school officials. Many local families have had enough. Of roughly 600 possible freshmen living in the neighborhood this year, only about 200 chose to attend Fremont. Even those who do register often leave. “There’s a perception of violence and safety issues and marijuana use,” said Nidya Baez, a Fremont grad who is now an administrator at the school. “We constantly have kids transferring out.”
Fremont’s campus in gang-entrenched East Oakland is just three blocks away from International Boulevard, famous for its booming sex trade. The school is known for abysmal test scores and low graduation rates. In the 2011-2012 school year, it had the most suspensions of any school in Oakland, according to school officials. Many local families have had enough. Of roughly 600 possible freshmen living in the neighborhood this year, only about 200 chose to attend Fremont. Even those who do register often leave. “There’s a perception of violence and safety issues and marijuana use,” said Nidya Baez, a Fremont grad who is now an administrator at the school. “We constantly have kids transferring out.”Daniel Hurst, former principal of Fremont High School, waits for students outside the school’s gate. (Photo by Noah Berger/For The Center for Investigative Reporting)
Fremont’s problems may be extreme but other schools in the Oakland Unified School District are suffering as