Grow With Us: An Oakland Unified Podcast

"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...

"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 witho...

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 y...

"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 dee...

"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...

"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 hel...

"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 TK and Kinder readiness in OUSD Tontra Love in action Diamond Slice Pizza ChooseOUSD.org 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: 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 purchas...

“We have to build a standard where if it’s not good enough for my child, it’s not good for anyone’s child.” In this episode, we dive deep into the realm of Oakland Unified Middle Schools, focusing on the extensive opportunities that are to be found--once again--in the middle grades. Computer science and athletics, the arts and the great outdoors, not to mention angst and apathy and acne: We talk w...

"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...

"When we went from schools organized for opportunity for some, to schools organized for opportunity for all, everyone rose." We dive deep into the district's embrace of an instructional model known as Linked Learning that aims to provide college and career access to all students. OUSD has shifted the high school landscape with career themed learning, universal college prep, internshi...

Oakland Unified School District's on-time enrollment window opened on December 1, 2023. In this episode, we discuss what that means for families, big picture enrollment timelines, and things to consider when researching and selecting schools (HINT: stay away from websites that rhyme with "Straight Fools"). Mentioned in this episode: ChooseOUSD.org -- the enrollment website, where you...

Do you know about the reading wars? In this corner, systematic phonics and nearly the entirety of empirical science... and in this corner, whole language, uh, proponents. In our first-ever episode of the Grow With Us podcast, we look deeply into perhaps the most important work a district an undertake: teaching kids to read. Guest : Romy Trigg-Smith, Director of Early Literacy Instruction Mentioned...

Every week, the Grow With Us podcast will tell stories about the hard work and creative thinking that makes Oakland Unified such a remarkable place of learning.