California: Oakland high school is just for immigrants

[Francis Hult]

Via lgpolicy...

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Oakland high school is just for immigrants

  Trevor Hunnicutt, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2008

The students at Oakland International High School form a real-life
melting pot. There's Esteban Rojas, 17, who arrived from Mexico three
years ago and still speaks mostly Spanish. French-speaking Valerie
Ndong, 16, who goes by Grace, emigrated from her West African home in
Gabon to be with her mother in Oakland. And there's Qi Ruan, an
18-year-old native of China who arrived here less than a year ago,
speaks Cantonese and struggles with English. In the school's
auditorium, student drawings of their homelands colored the walls
recently. In one, a row of shanties sits along a snaking river.

"Hi. My name is Antonio," an accompanying placard read. "I am 17 years
old. I am from Thailand and made a mural about it. I was born in a
refugee camp because my people are Karen, and we don't belong to
Thailand. My mom is from Burma but we aren't allowed to be there, so
we have to be in camps in Thailand. My mural has pictures of the camp
I lived in."

The school opened its doors a year ago at a former middle school on
Webster Street in the Temescal neighborhood to serve a diverse group
of high school students with some things in common: They are all
relatively new to the country, they are trying to become fluent in
English, and nearly all qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch, an
indicator of low socioeconomic status.


Full story:
http://texasedequity.blogspot.com/


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