"Apply with non-panicked urgency..."

Executive Director of Enrollment Kilian Betlach and Enrollment Marketing Team leader Bobby Jordan convene to review the basics of submitting an application for the on-time enrollment and highlight changes for the 2026-2027 enrollment season. Most importantly, perhaps, is the change that allows families to submit After-School Progam applications* when they apply for their core school program. This replaces the Balkanized, site- and agency-specific model with disparate models, timelines and procedures. This is a big deal!

*Before-School too, where applicable.

Meantioned in this episode:

• ⁠Apply to OUSD schools
• Our TK episode: Talking TK
• Burbank Early Childhood Education center
• Interactive map feature on a local major air carrier
• Connect with an enrollment counselor

Get GROW WITH US Gear: At a time when there is literally nothing more hardcore than being an OUSD parent, get some hoodies and rock them in public.. ⁠⁠⁠Right here!

"Dual Enrollment is a post-secondary accelerant..."

For a long time, if you were doing college-level work in high school, this meant taking Advanced Placement (AP) classes and then cramming for their multiple-choice centric exams at the end of the year, hoping you'd get a 4 or a 5 to earn credit. Today in Oakland Unified, college-level access means taking actual college classes without leaving campus. it's called Dual Enrollment, and it's an ever-growing program wherein more and more high schoolers are earning college credit and high school credit and college exposure and 6-point As and deepening their Linked Learning Pathway experiences.

That's a lot.

Like almost too good to be true. But it's not. It's real.

Meantioned in this episode:

• Dual Enrollment in OUSD
• High School Isn't What You Remember: our episode on Linked Learning
• Measure N/ Measure H: the local parcel taxes that helped support Linked Learning
• Check out McClymonds and Skyline High Schools

Get GROW WITH US Gear: Impress the public school afficionados with your hoodies and T-shirts demonstrating your level of local education knowledge. ⁠⁠Right here!

A re-release of last year's episode with Executive Director of Enrollment Kilian Betlach reviews the on-time enrollment offer system and process, discusses waitlists, and waxes nostalgic for 1980s baseball cards.

Discussed in this episode:

• ⁠Enrollwise⁠, the district's enrollment tool
• The bountiful and jaunty ⁠Enrollment FAQ⁠
• 1987 Topps ⁠Marc McGwire rookie card⁠

Support the pod and show your love of Oakland's Public Schools by⁠ purchasing some swag from our store.⁠

"You never when kids are fully--with their whole heart--listening. Turns out it's all the time."

Fruitvale's LIFE Academy is a 6-12 school boasting one of Oakland Unified's oldest--and most successful--pathway programs. Students at LIFE embed their learning in the health field, gaining exposure to unique instructional experiences and inernship opportunities. By committing deeply to the linked learning pedagogy and building authentic relationships with students, LIFE graduates students A-G* ready at twice the district average, and student enroll in 4-year institutions at significantly higher rates. We went to see how they're doing it.

*Don't know A-G? That's the⁠ course sequence⁠ the UC and CSU systems require students complete in order to even apply to a state college. Get this: It's different than the ⁠state diploma requirements⁠. Not just a little different, like a lot different. True story. You can earn a high school diploma in California, a real diploma, and somehow be ineligible to apply to a 4-year state college. If you read that and thought: "Dang, that makes no sense." Why would we create a gap, a literal crack for students with less access to highly educated parents, private tutors, and lot's of college counseling to fall into? That's why some folks are out here saying the system isn't broken, it's doing just what it was designed to do.

Mentioned in this episode:

• LIFE Academy
• Previous Episode: ⁠High School Isn't What You Remember
• Reclassification rates in OUSD
• A-G completion rates in OUSD
• You love this podcast and you want swag

"We have to be really clear-eyed that if we're saying no to mergers, no to closures, no to consolidations, then we're saying yes to cuts in the other areas."

Being a School Board Director in Oakland is... interesting if nothing else. As he prepares to exit the Board, we speak with School Board President Sam Davis about some wins, his biggest regrets, the current budget deficit, and why he believes the next School Board will need to once again take up the matter of operating fewer schools.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get GROW WITH US Gear: Impress the public school afficionados with your hoodies and T-shirts demonstrating your level of local education knowledge. ⁠Right here!

"When we say 'thriving' we mean all the way... We want students to be the best humans they can be. THAT is this work."

The state of California recently dropped billions of dollars into the Community Schools initiative. But Oakland has been engaged in this work for some time, whether you track that back to the Freedom Schools of the Black Panthers, the grass roots reforms that helped drived the original small work, or some of the most recent deliberate, focused community schools work of the last decade plus. In this episode, we're in conversation with two veteran Community School Managers, discussing what it really means to do school this way, and why it matters for Oakland.

Mentioned in this episode:

Get GROW WITH US Gear: Impress the Playground Mafia with your hoodies and T-shirts demonstrating your level of local education knowledge. Right here!

"This is the building block for how we build really confident, happy, successful kids who can pick themselves up and take risks."

Mentioned in this episode

Support public schools and look good doing it.

Executive Director of Enrollment Kilian Betlach reviews the on-time enrollment offer system and process, discusses waitlists, and waxes nostalgic for 1980s baseball cards.

Discussed in this episode:

Support the pod and show your love of Oakland's Public Schools by purchasing some swag from our store.

“We have to build a standard where if it’s not good enough for my child, it’s not good for anyone’s child.”

Mentioned in this episode:

Swag? Oh, we've got swag.

"Kids are amazing! And what they're capable of is so much beyond what most of us think."

In this episode, we talk to Nicole Knight, Executive Director of the English Language Learner & Multilingual Achievement Office about dual language programs and the power of kids brains to build bilingual skills. OUSD operates eight different dual language programs--Bridges Academy, Esperanza Elementary, Global Family, Greenleaf TK-8, International Community School, Lockwood STEAM Academy, Manzanita SEED, Melrose Leadership Academy-- where students learn to read, write, speak, and think in both English and Spanish, working toward the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy. These programs have become some of the district's fastest growing and most popular schools, and represent an exciting component of OUSD's overall instructional program.

In this episode: