818 61st Street

The teachers are very encouraging and love to make games out of what would otherwise be boring.

Both my sons attended Tech, and have enjoyed it. My oldest son is now getting ready to transfer to UC next fall and my younger son is currently a junior and enrolled in AP classes that are as challenging as any college class I’ve seen. I feel the curriculum has prepared both boys well for college. They’ve experienced no bullying, and have made great friends here and they’ve generally liked their teachers. Overall we’ve been happy with our kids attending Oakland Tech!

I'm writing this as an update to a prior review where I did recommend Sankofa. Unfortunately, with the new principal Arnold I no longer recommend Sankofa. The issues are notably due to the leadership and administrative, but unfortunately that affects many aspects of the school. As others have noted, despite the very hopeful parent community, it's almost impossible to volunteer at the school. School safety has been an issue with principal Arnold paying lip service to restorative justice and stories of her not informing parents when incidents occur. There has been a major exodus of families to other schools as students get older, resulting in the combination of and cutting of many classes. The school also has awful communication, but again that could be improved with better leadership. Sankofa really needs an experienced principal to lead them forward and unfortunately got stuck with one who is both inexperienced and seems to take what has been called a micromanagement approach without the management (for exabmple, requiring meetings to do anything, but never holding the meeting, or sending volunteers home after they show up at the school). I hope for the best for Sankofa and love the community of other local families we met, but until the leadership changes, I do not recommend it.