New Borrower Oakland School for the Arts Succeeds Against the Odds
March 1, 2010
By Scott Hackenberg
OSA students starring in "The Wiz" at the Fox Theater
Times are tough and the outlook is bleak for California’s public school system, with over $8 billion in annual cuts expected for educational spending. For California’s 750 public charter schools, per-student state aid has been dramatically reduced and payments have been delayed, causing budget shortfalls and forcing teachers and administrators to make cuts to programs and resources which will undoubtedly reduce the quality of our children’s educational experience.
Against this austere backdrop are the many schools and districts that have already been struggling to meet the basic needs of students and their families in our communities. For the Unified School District in the city of Oakland (OUSD), the budget cuts could not come at a worse time. Performance in Oakland’s public schools has been notoriously poor. In the English portion of the 2008 California Standard Tests, only 21% of the district’s 11th grade students scored at least “proficient,” while over 50% of students taking the test performed “below basic.” OUSD’s high school dropout rate is close to 40%, exceeding the state’s dropout rate of 24%.
In stark contrast lies the Oakland School for the Arts (OSA), a tuition-free public charter school in the OUSD that opened its doors in 2002 with a mission to train pre-professional arts students in a college preparatory setting. RSF is proud to have recently made a loan to OSA, which maintains a graduation rate of nearly 100% and a college admissions rate exceeding 95%. The school’s talented students have gained admission to top notch schools including Stanford, Columbia, Amherst, UC Berkeley, Oberlin Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, and UCLA’s renowned School of Film, Theater, and Television. In 2009, OSA was the only Oakland school to win the Distinguished Schools Award from the California Department of Education, and the school’s most recent Academic Performance Index (API) score ranked number one in the district.
Yet the outlook and performance at OSA didn’t start out this way. The Oakland School for the Arts first opened its doors in September 2002 with 100 students in a ninth grade class, adding another high school grade each year. In 2005, a middle school was added, and OSA now educates students in grades 6-12 with a total enrollment of 524 students. For six years, though, the school operated out of mobile classrooms and tents in a heavy construction zone. During this time, OSA suffered a period plagued with high teacher and administrator turnover, as well as a 30% drop in enrollment for the 2006-2007 school year.
The tide turned during the 2008-2009 school year when Donn Harris, former principal of the San Francisco School of the Arts, was brought in to head OSA. Donn’s experience, energy, and leadership helped to turn OSA around, and over the last two school years, OSA has seen 97% faculty retention and significant growth in enrollment. The school has also found a permanent home with 59,000 square feet in which to be creative: Oakland’s historic Fox Theater. In January 2009, OSA moved to the restored and expanded building that wraps around the 3,800 seat theater. The Fox reopened in February 2009 after a $100 million makeover, and now operates as a commercial venue for live performances. The combination of an historic theatrical venue and a public arts school is one-of-a-kind, and has been an exciting opportunity for the students of OSA. For two nights this past winter, OSA students performed “The Wiz” at the Fox Theater and tickets were sold out for both nights, proving the success of the partnership.
RSF is thrilled to be providing OSA with a loan to fund their operations, as the school is a shining example of the kind of projects we look to support in our focus area of Education & the Arts. For more information on the Oakland School for the Arts, visit: www.oakarts.org. If you are interested in helping RSF make more loans like the one to OSA, learn how to open an account with our Social Investment Fund by clicking here.
Scott Hackenberg is Lending Manager at RSF Social Finance.
- Published by Kyle Foley
- Categories: Blog, Education & Arts, Lending
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