Education
At the corner of 22nd Street and Carlson Boulevard in Richmond sits a homeless encampment where the unofficial mayor, Oretha “Porkchop” Stevens, is calming down her next-door neighbor Tone. His phone is missing and Porkchop works to reassure him. “You’re not crazy, you know where you put your stuff! Don’t play with your own mind,” she says with authority, perched on the bed inside her tent from where she presides all day over her dozen neighbors’ lives. She and her…
The West Contra Costa Unified School District introduced bilingual education in 2014, to help Spanish speaking students transition into English medium schools. Transitional Bilingual Education at Grant Elementary School aims to equip K-3 students with English literacy and math skills to help them throughout their school career.
The board directed its staff to reach an agreement with the Amethod Public Schools, which operates the John Henry school, on how to move forward.
The school board initiated a charter revocation process for John Henry High School last week. Board President Valerie Cuevas advocated for the revocation after the alleged mandatory reporting violations were brought to the attention of the board during public comment.
Reading is a struggle for many of Richmond’s youth. Almost half of students in West Contra Costa County Unified School District are unable to read at grade level. To boost reading in Richmond, the owners of R&R Coffee hosted a party on Monday for local families at the Bridge Storage and Artspace, where food and books were given away. It was “like an adventure” for her children, said Richmond mom Sherab Osugi. She said the party made her children,…
The moderator asked questions about charter schools, nutritious lunches, school safety and educational inclusion at a forum Tuesday.
Meditation and breathing exercises are daily rituals at Grant Elementary School in Richmond. Principal Farnaz Heydari introduced these practices in an effort to reduce bad behavior, which had led to high numbers of student suspensions.
Though the school board made no official motion to finalize a trustee-area map, a long and occasionally heated conversation ended with a direction to Superintendent Matthew Duffy to come up with a plan and insert it on the upcoming Sept. 26 meeting agenda.
Three volunteers slosh through John F. Kennedy Park in Richmond as they do each school day. The sounds of hail hitting the thin tin roof of the pavilion almost drown out the soft, squeaking sound of the trash pickers pinching packages of blunt wraps and flattened cans of beer. The brief, but heavy, downpour adds a dramatic flair to the garbage collection session. “We make sure over the wild weekend, there are no needles left here,” says Bendrick Foster as…