By Clayton Trosclair/WEST OAKLAND

The students in Ms. Scott’s fourth grade class at Prescott Elementary have yet to see her this year.

Every morning for two months now, they’ve shown up to their West Oakland campus and wondered which substitute teacher will take her place that day. A rotating cast of temporary teachers has been standing in for Ms. Scott while she’s away on extended medical leave, and since school began on Aug. 25, at least four substitutes have been assigned to her class.

Last year, the Oakland Unified School district rotated a roster of teachers through two classes at Prescott Elementary – a third-grade class and a fifth-grade class – for the entire year.

“They had subs all year long,” said Enomwoyi Booker, the school’s principal, while pointing out that some of those third-grade students are without a permanent teacher again this year in fourth grade. “So we’re talking about going on two years now, which is not good.”

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By Ayako Mie/Berkeley

The 2008 election galvanized students across the U.S. in historical proportions. At Berkeley High School on Tuesday, some seniors voted for the first time while others have to wait until the next election, but everybody had something to say.

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By Ayako Mie/BERKELEY

Like more than one-third of Americans who have cast an early vote, over 35,000 American middle and high students participated in nationwide mock elections before Election Day. On October 30^th, Berkeley High School students, either eligible to vote or not, showed enormous interest in this election.    Read the full story

by Tasneem Paghdiwala/BERKELEY

On Monday, librarians from the Central Library invited passersby to read paragraphs from books that have been removed or challenged from libraries around the country.

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by Japhet Weeks/BERKELEY

The Vallejo School District’s adoption of a tough new regulation on student cell phone use in schools has the Berkeley Unified School District patting itself on the back, again. That’s because the district, which prides itself on its innovative programs and schools, adopted a similar policy in June of 2003.

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By Japhet Weeks/WEST BERKELEY

The Berkeley School Board meeting on September 24 started with a decent crowd but ended with a roomful of empty chairs.

The board, which convened for two and a half hours, recognized the hard work of Berkeley’s early childhood educators, then listened to presentations that highlighted what’s working in Berkeley schools. The remainder of the meeting was a mixture of mind-numbing agenda items — that drove one staffer to browse the Internet for shoes — punctuated by important moments when the board heard comments on the lack of textbooks in one district school, homelessness among students and the problem of incomplete teacher evaluations.

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By Dara Kerr/OAKLAND

“Students shouldn’t suffer because adults can’t budget,” read one of the hand-written signs a child was holding at Oakland’s Unified School District board meeting last night. The meeting’s top agenda item was to look at the district’s five-year fiscal plan, which included the possibility of closing or merging small schools.

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By Japhet Weeks/WEST BERKELEY

On a Friday afternoon in the Plum Garden classroom, Julian’s first grade teacher asked him to perform a simple task: bring a cardboard box full of paper scraps to the table. Instead, Julian grabbed a scrap of paper from the box. The teacher told him again that she wanted the box, but Julian still didn’t understand. So she took the box herself as she repeated the request, enunciating each word.

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by Ali Winston/WEST OAKLAND

For some people, hip-hop embodies everything that’s wrong with America’s youth. In West Oakland, one organization sees it as a lifeline for students who are on the verge of dropping out.

The Bay Unity Music Project, run by the Bay Area Video Coalition, teaches beat-making, songwriting, and audio/video editing programs in 11 schools across Oakland. Begun in 2004 at McClymond High School in West Oakland, BUMP was intended to address the widening “digital divide” between wired, affluent areas of the Bay and inner city neighborhoods. The program is funded in part through Measure Y, Oakland’s crime-prevention program designed to steer at-risk youth away from street violence through job programs, mentoring programs, and community involvement. Read the full story

By Angela J. Bass/OAKLAND

On Monday evening, East Oakland’s Tassafaronga Recreation Center was crammed with local residents who complained about headaches that they said were caused by the noxious fumes from nearby factories.

Residents had come to hear the results of a new report, “Cumulative Impacts in East Oakland: Findings from a Community-Based Mapping Study,” led by Communities for a Better Environment, a grassroots organization that trains local residents to monitor pollution levels in their neighborhoods.

The yearlong study examined the impact of unchecked pollution sources on communities of color within the Hegenberger Corridor, a toxic hot spot bordered by San Leandro St., International Blvd., 98th Ave, and the Hegenberger Expressway.

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