The Oaklandside is launching a reporting fellowship for high schoolers

Greater than 34,000 college students attend elementary colleges within the Oakland Unified College District. For youngsters and their households, these colleges play a vital function in on a regular basis life: they supply secure areas for kids, dependable meals, alternatives for wholesome bodily exercise, and entry to trusted adults. It’s the place the place younger folks develop friendships, be taught vital considering expertise and perceive their place in society.

As the one newsroom with a full-time reporter overlaying Oakland colleges, we lined the district’s challenges in addition to its progress: From rolling out a common TK program, to fixing the faculties’ management disaster, to combating enrollment decline, we tried to offer balanced protection of OUSD that celebrates victories.

But it surely stays true that Oakland’s public colleges face actual hardships that make it troublesome for them to achieve their full potential. OUSD regained management of its funds final spring after 22 years beneath state receivership, however its shrinking price range — even after a sequence of painful college closures and consolidations in recent times — continues to pressure its workforce. The issues lengthen to teachers: In 2024, solely a 3rd of OUSD college students met or exceeded state requirements for English proficiency, and solely 1 / 4 did so in math, each properly beneath the California common. The achievement gaps are much more pronounced in Oakland colleges that primarily serve lower-income college students of coloration.

Now, The Oaklandside is enlisting the assistance of native college students to deepen our reporting by defining what they see as the important thing challenges going through their colleges – and figuring out alternatives for change. Over the following month, we’re inviting public highschool college students in Oakland to use for an Oaklandside Reporting Fellowship, which is able to give twelve college students the chance to be taught from and work straight with our journalists. Collectively, we are going to establish, examine and report tales that interrogate the challenges going through Oakland public colleges and spotlight potential options. Fellows will share their experiences and insights as material specialists and change into a part of the editorial strategy of tales from pitch to publication.

Fellows who full this system will obtain a $1,500 stipend and achieve real-world work expertise to assist their larger schooling and profession objectives.

The physique of labor we create with the coed fellows will even be shared at a neighborhood occasion, the place we are going to collect native schooling stakeholders – district officers, college leaders, academics, college students and households – for a energetic dialogue about our solutions-oriented college reporting, fueled by and grounded within the experiences of OUSD highschool college students.

Extra details about the fellowship necessities, timeline and eligibility is out there within the digital utility kind beneath. Functions should be submitted by November 30 to be thought of. If you’re a member of the family or scholar and have questions not answered within the kind, please e mail Cityside Group Journalism Director Jacob Simas at jacob@citysidejournalism.org.