Troubles at Jerry Brown's arts charter

Several years ago I heard Jerry Brown (the former governor and Oakland mayor) speak at an event promoting charter schools. He was surprisingly belligerent, portraying charter schools as a innovation that would crush traditional public schools (he was far more combative than the more polished charter spokespeople). At the time he was boasting about his two upcoming charter projects, the Oakland Military Institute and the Oakland School for the Arts.

We don't hear much publicly about either school. But I was chatting the other day with a very nice mom whose son just started at the Oakland School for the Arts. I can't post our private conversation publicly; I'll just say the parent was getting pretty wary and gave me some eyebrow-raising details.

Of cousre I Googled the school. There's surprisingly little posted about it, and its website, www.oakarts.org , is either down every time I try it or defunct.

I did find some interesting commentary from parents and former parents at the school on the Berkeley Parents Network website.

I'm not going to blog all those personal comments, but they're publicly available online. The first sentence of the top post, from September 2005, sets the tone:

Are there any other OSA parents out there who are as worried/dismayed/disgusted with the way things are going as I am?