The Office of School Transformation

With all the commotion about school closures and consolidations, the introduction of "The Office of School Transformation" for the 2011-12012 school year has slipped under my radar.

All public K-8 schools are grouped into three regions. Each region is headed by an executive officer and all the public high schools in Oakland are in a single network with an executive officer as head. The new change for this year is an added Office of School Transformation. The goal of this additional network of schools is to lead the "transformation of the District's most challenged schools into high quality learning centers." The network, headed by Matthew Duffy, consists of five middle schools and six high schools that are mostly dispersed throughout East Oakland. All four schools that were named by the state Board of Education as "persistently low-achieving schools" are also in the network. Duffy, a former assistant principal from Harlem, served as principal of Elmhurst Community Prep, a school created from a small-schools initiative.

While I have not been able to find a publicized plan for how the OUSD intends to transform these eleven schools, I will definitely continue to update about this matter. This is a pivotal time for Oakland's public schools as the district seems to be taking on upper grade schools with the goal of transformation as well as the lower grades with the hope of consolidating resources.