Albany schools/highschools for AA families
Hello, I hope to be residing in the University villages of UCB next year and am looking for the best schools for my two children. It's important that my children are surrounded by peers that look like them, and are provided a challenging curriculum. My daughter currently attends an "Aspire" school, which I absolutely love, but I'm unsure of the distance to any Aspire elementary schools from Albany. To my understanding Albany does not have a large black population, where are AA families sending their children? Does Albany bus children out of their district? What are some recommendations that you have? Thank you in advance
Sep 17, 2017
Parent Replies
Albany is ethnically diverse, but the AA population, especially those who identify as AA and not as "mixed race" on census forms, is small. The AA percentage of the school population is somewhat larger than the AA percentage of the city population due, I assume, to out-of-district transfers into Albany from neighboring communities. It is still not large. I believe most AA families who live in Albany do send their kids to AUSD schools. The number of families of all ethnicities who choose to both 1) pay the housing premium here and 2) pay for private school is fairly modest. Most UC Village families use the public schools. A few families manage to arrange out-of-district transfers to charters or other public schools (e.g., Oakland's Chinese immersion charter, Oakland School of the Arts, Berkeley High) but the few I've known to do this have provided their own transportation. As far as I know, Albany does not bus children out of Albany (or within Albany, for that matter).
Hello; as an AUSD school board member I passed your question along to Alexia Ritchie, the new principal at Albany High, and here is her reply:
Hello,
As the new principal of Albany High School and parent of two AUSD alumni, I wanted to respond to this parent's concerns and highly recommend Albany schools for all families. I helped to start, and continue to serve, on the AUSD Black Parent Engagement Committee both as a parent and district liaison. We have been working for the past two years to address issues regarding parent and student engagement both socially and academically in our schools. I am pleased to report that AUSD has worked collectively to increase math scores for AA students two years in row while at the same time, decreasing suspension rates for our AA students as reported in the latest California school dashboard. https://www.caschooldashboard.org/#/Home. I invite you to contact me and to attend our next Black Parent Engagement Committee town hall meeting on October 3 5:30-7:00 at Oceanview Elementary school to learn more about our schools and our strengths as a community.
Best regards,
Alexia Ritchie, Principal
Albany High School
(And welcome to Albany! - Ross)
I asked my 10th grade child how many African American students are in a class. The answer-at most 4. AHS has a challenging curriculum for those who seek it out and a diverse population, but, unfortunately, few AA students. You may be able to apply for a district transfer to a charter school, but you would have to provide transportation. I wish you the best of luck in finding a fit for your family, and welcome to Albany.
Your children are very welcome in Albany! I second Ms. Ritchie's recommendation to look at the California School Dashboard Equity Report, https://www.caschooldashboard.org/#/Details/01611270000000/1/EquityRepo…
All public (and charter schools, such as Aspire) have Dashboard Reports, this is the tool that the state has created to be a factual, impartial school analysis tool. There are Aspire schools in Richmond, which Google lists as a 16-minute drive, but is highly variable due to traffic. It takes 40 minutes to get there in rush hour. There is limited data on Richmond Aspire in Dashboard, because most measures are done as comparisons to the previous year and the Aspire schools are pretty new. Also, to avoid violating privacy, when there is a small number of students, Dashboard will not report out.
You may also want to look at the Albany High website, http://ahs.ausdk12.org/
There is an Aspire school just south of the Oakland-Berkeley border on San Pablo (near Alcatraz). http://aspirepublicschools.org/schools/regions/california-schools/aspir…