Oakland School for the Arts
Encyclopedia
Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) is a performing arts charter school in Oakland, California
.
OSA is located on the Fox Oakland Theatre
at 530 18th Street across from Telegraph.
On April 1, 2009 OSA was selected to be a California Distinguished School
.
and high school
. It was founded in 2000 via charter from the Oakland Unified School District
. It received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in October 2001. In September 2002 OSA opened its doors to its first freshman class, the class of 2006. The school was the dreamchild of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown
and its first director was Loni Berry.
The school started at the Alice Arts Center building in downtown Oakland. It was moved to portables near the Fox Oakland Theatre
during the 2004-05 school year, and moved to the Fox Oakland Theater building in January 2009. Mr. Loni Berry was director of the school for the first four years but was asked to leave by the school's board of directors the summer before the 2006-07 school year. Mr. Saul Drevitch replaced him in fall 2006. San Francisco School of the Arts principal Donn Harris replaced Drevitch in December 2007. Drevitch resigned because of "differences" between him and Jerry Brown
and the School Board. As of the 2008-9 school year, Donn Harris holds the role of Executive Director on a full-time basis.
The first graduating senior class, the class of 2006, graduated with 100 percent of the class accepted to four year colleges. Graduates of '06 were accepted to a variety of institutions, both academic and artistic, including:Le Cordon Bleu California Culinary Academy Columbia University
, University of Michigan
, Stanford University
, Middlebury College
, Carnegie Mellon University
, Wesleyan University
, Mount Holyoke College
, The Theatre School at Depaul University, Barnard College
, Spelman College
, Howard University
, Berklee College of Music
, Pratt Institute
, California College of the Arts
, Boston Conservatory
, Fordham University
, Texas A&M
, Fresno State University, San Francisco State University
, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, California State University East Bay, Texas Southern University
, and many others.
For the first three years of OSA's existence, there were eight emphases: Acting, Arts Management, Dance, Literary Arts, Instrumental Music, Theatre Design and Production, Visual Arts and Vocal Music. During the 2005-06 school year, Theatre Design and Production was merged into Visual Arts. OSA was faced with budget cuts during summer 2006 and chose to merge Acting, Arts Management, Literary Arts and Visual Arts and Design into one emphasis called Theatre. This arrangement, for Visual Arts, only lasted a year and administration separated Literary Arts into its own emphasis.
Some fallout hit the school after Jerry Brown made a novel arrangement to provide it with extra funding. Brown had a large, lighted electronic billboard
with rotating ads installed at the busy toll plaza on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge, with the proceeds benefiting OSA. The billboard became controversial in 2007 because it was so bright that motorists complained it impeded their vision at night, and some residents around the bay objected to its high visibility even from San Francisco and Marin.
In another minor controversy, Brown sent out letters to Oakland families recruiting them to apply to OSA in 2007—after he had become California state Attorney General
, and using his title and the state seal. Some questioned the legality of the letters, but the designated official to rule on their legality would be the California state Attorney General. Brown deemed the letters legal.
For much of the school's history, all high school students were issued their own laptop for each school year. This privilege was restricted to juniors and seniors in 2008. Similarly, only juniors and seniors were allowed to go off-campus for lunch until 2009, when sophomores and first-year students were allowed to leave as well because of a lack of space in the new facility.
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
.
OSA is located on the Fox Oakland Theatre
Fox Oakland Theatre
The Fox Oakland Theatre is a 2,800-seat movie theater, located at 1807 Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland, California. The theater was designed by Weeks and Day, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and reopened on February 5, 2009....
at 530 18th Street across from Telegraph.
On April 1, 2009 OSA was selected to be a California Distinguished School
California Distinguished School
A California Distinguished School is an award given by the California State Board of Education to public schools within the state that best represent exemplary and quality educational programs. Approximately five percent of California schools are awarded this honor each year following a selection...
.
Founding and history
Oakland School for the Arts is a college preparatory, arts middleMiddle school
Middle School and Junior High School are levels of schooling between elementary and high schools. Most school systems use one term or the other, not both. The terms are not interchangeable...
and high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
. It was founded in 2000 via charter from the Oakland Unified School District
Oakland Unified School District
Oakland Unified School District is a public education school district which operates elementary schools , middle schools , and high schools in Oakland, California.-History:...
. It received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in October 2001. In September 2002 OSA opened its doors to its first freshman class, the class of 2006. The school was the dreamchild of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
and its first director was Loni Berry.
The school started at the Alice Arts Center building in downtown Oakland. It was moved to portables near the Fox Oakland Theatre
Fox Oakland Theatre
The Fox Oakland Theatre is a 2,800-seat movie theater, located at 1807 Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland, California. The theater was designed by Weeks and Day, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and reopened on February 5, 2009....
during the 2004-05 school year, and moved to the Fox Oakland Theater building in January 2009. Mr. Loni Berry was director of the school for the first four years but was asked to leave by the school's board of directors the summer before the 2006-07 school year. Mr. Saul Drevitch replaced him in fall 2006. San Francisco School of the Arts principal Donn Harris replaced Drevitch in December 2007. Drevitch resigned because of "differences" between him and Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
and the School Board. As of the 2008-9 school year, Donn Harris holds the role of Executive Director on a full-time basis.
The first graduating senior class, the class of 2006, graduated with 100 percent of the class accepted to four year colleges. Graduates of '06 were accepted to a variety of institutions, both academic and artistic, including:Le Cordon Bleu California Culinary Academy Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Middlebury College
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...
, Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
, Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...
, The Theatre School at Depaul University, Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
, Spelman College
Spelman College
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...
, Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
, Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...
, Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
, California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts , founded in 1907, is known for its broad, interdisciplinary programs in art, design, architecture, and writing. It has two campuses, one in Oakland and one in San Francisco, California, USA...
, Boston Conservatory
Boston Conservatory
The Boston Conservatory is a performing arts conservatory located in the Fenway-Kenmore region of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in music, dance and musical theater...
, Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...
, Texas A&M
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
, Fresno State University, San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, California State University East Bay, Texas Southern University
Texas Southern University
Texas Southern University is a historically black university located in Houston, Texas, United States....
, and many others.
Overview
Currently, there are nine emphases at Oakland School for the Arts:- Dance
- Digital Media
- Instrumental Music
- Literary Arts
- Theatre
- Vocal Music
- Visual Arts
- Circus Arts
- Production Design
For the first three years of OSA's existence, there were eight emphases: Acting, Arts Management, Dance, Literary Arts, Instrumental Music, Theatre Design and Production, Visual Arts and Vocal Music. During the 2005-06 school year, Theatre Design and Production was merged into Visual Arts. OSA was faced with budget cuts during summer 2006 and chose to merge Acting, Arts Management, Literary Arts and Visual Arts and Design into one emphasis called Theatre. This arrangement, for Visual Arts, only lasted a year and administration separated Literary Arts into its own emphasis.
Controversies
OSA was historically plagued by notoriously high faculty and student turnover and other management problems. Upon the hiring of Donn Harris, OSA enjoyed 97% faculty/staff retention in the 2008-9 school year and 2009-10 year.Some fallout hit the school after Jerry Brown made a novel arrangement to provide it with extra funding. Brown had a large, lighted electronic billboard
Billboard
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
with rotating ads installed at the busy toll plaza on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge, with the proceeds benefiting OSA. The billboard became controversial in 2007 because it was so bright that motorists complained it impeded their vision at night, and some residents around the bay objected to its high visibility even from San Francisco and Marin.
In another minor controversy, Brown sent out letters to Oakland families recruiting them to apply to OSA in 2007—after he had become California state Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
, and using his title and the state seal. Some questioned the legality of the letters, but the designated official to rule on their legality would be the California state Attorney General. Brown deemed the letters legal.
Middle School
Oakland School for the Arts first opened with a ninth grade class and added another high school grade each year. For the 2005-06 school year, though, a middle school was added. Administration went through great lengths to keep the "middle school" and "high school" separate, giving the middle schoolers a different entrance/exit and shorter school hours.Laptop use
Oakland School for the Arts has currently implemented thin client technology for academic and emphasis use. The students and faculty are encouraged to utilize the technology throughout the curriculum. The thin client program is intended to be expanded as funding becomes available.For much of the school's history, all high school students were issued their own laptop for each school year. This privilege was restricted to juniors and seniors in 2008. Similarly, only juniors and seniors were allowed to go off-campus for lunch until 2009, when sophomores and first-year students were allowed to leave as well because of a lack of space in the new facility.