Sobrante Park Elementary School

I'm a teacher at Sobrante Park Elementary, and love it at this school. It's small, with students who are predominately Latino, a slightly smaller number are African American, and an even smaller number are Pacific Islander, and their's one Chinese student. We are a poor school in the lowlands of East Oakland, but we have done very well in our test scores over the last several years. One year we were actually on TV because of our successes. All our staff get along and work well together . Do to budget cuts, especially because of the rising costs of health care, we have even less than we had last year: we don't have a computer lab teacher, so there is no computer lab. In the classrooms, we are technology deficient: most schools have working computers and TVs that play DVDs in their classrooms, but we don't. Our playground is lacking in equipment for the kids to play on. Their are no swings or a large enough play structure for the older kids. Nevertheless, the staff works hard and well, the kids are wonderful, and we need to be taken care of the way other schools who have wealthier parents who can chip in and buy these things for their kids' schools. Did I mention that many of our rooms are not air conditioned so the temperatures can reach 85 degrees in the warmer months, and the heating system doesn't work well at all, so we freeze in the colder months. We stay on because the other factors that measure school climate make our school one of the best. Did I mention that we have a wonderful after-school program as well (this is not funded by the school's budget)? I am going to stay at Sobrante Park School until I retire!
--Submitted by a teacher