The first thing many students notice about Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy is its small size—its students fit into just half a dozen classrooms in a two-story nondescript building on 29th Street in Oakland’s Pill Hill neighborhood.
But for most students, the school’s small size is one of its biggest strengths. They receive individual attention, sitting in circles and talking with their teachers and mentors. They can focus on the issues they care about, and they don’t fall through the cracks like they might at a large high school.
It’s a model that’s been working for 50 years. In 1973, the Emiliano Zapata Street Academy began as an experiment in alternative education: The Bay Area Urban League received funding from the federal government’s experimental schools program to create a school that would serve students who were on the verge of dropping out. The initial funding was for five years. Last week, Street Academy celebrated its golden anniversary.
A party at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church just down the street from the campus brought together students, alumni, staff, elected officials, and board members past and present to praise the school that shaped so many of their lives.
“Emiliano Zapata Street Academy was a safe haven for children,” said Pamela Ward Pious, who attended the school in the 1970s, during the 50th anniversary celebration. “When I first got there, it was just the Oakland Street Academy but it became Emiliano Zapata Street Academy while I was there, and I was very proud of that because he was a revolutionary.”
They named the school for Zapata, who fought in the Mexican Revolution, because the founders wanted to honor his refusal to compromise his principles and they refused to compromise on giving students the education they deserved, said Betsy Schulz, who helped plan Street Academy with the Urban League as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. Initially, the urban league partnered with the school district to oversee the school, and today it’s operated in partnership between the Street Academy Foundation and Oakland Unified School District. Schulz also taught biology and physiology and served in other roles until she retired in 2015.
The founding staff members didn’t expect the school would last five decades.
“The whole idea was, we wanted a school that was rooted in social justice and very much focused on the culture and backgrounds of our students that we’d have,” Schulz told The Oaklandside.
On the heels of the civil rights movement, the Chicano movement, anti-war efforts, and amidst the rise of the Black Panther Party, they wanted to create a school that emphasized ethnic studies, Black history, and Chicano history. The school would be for students who had been pushed out of traditional high schools because they weren’t being served well there. To recruit students in the early years, staff called students who’d stopped showing up at their other schools, they talked to young people at community centers and those standing on corners, asking “Would you like to try a different kind of school?”
They were often young people who felt invisible at campuses of more than 1,000 students. Over the years, hundreds have graduated from Street Academy instead of dropping out altogether.
Students like Christian Joy Lewis, who graduated in 2011. As a freshman and sophomore at Oakland High School, she rarely went to class. When Lewis did show up, her teachers didn’t know her—which only reinforced to her 16-year-old mind that it didn’t matter if Lewis attended school. On a friend’s recommendation, Lewis enrolled at Street Academy beginning in her junior year.
One of the first things she noticed was how differently the staff treated her.
“What kept me going at Street Academy was having those teachers that cared about their students. They wanted us to improve ourselves as students of color,” Lewis told The Oaklandside. “That was the main thing that kept me going.”
Each student at Street Academy is partnered with an adult who serves as their teacher, counselor, and mentor. That person helps them with everything from academics to personal issues, family relationships, and college applications. Street Academy’s late former principal Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams-Myrick, who led the school for 40 years, played that role for Lewis.
“There were times when I didn’t have any money and she was like, ‘OK Christian, here’s $10 or $20. She was so caring,” Lewis said.
It was Lewis’s English teacher during her senior year who inspired her college studies. When she finished her senior project on youth sex exploitation in Oakland, her teacher suggested she go to college to study sociology. Lewis had never heard of it. Today, Lewis has a bachelor’s degree in sociology, a master’s degree in sociology, and a PhD in sociology.
When Street Academy opened in 1973, it had a year-round calendar and two campuses: One in Fruitvale serving largely Latino students, and one in deep East Oakland that mostly enrolled Black students. From the beginning, students called teachers by their first names, fostering a sense of community and relatability.
That sense of community, and being able to bring together young people from across neighborhoods, was one of the most valuable aspects of Street Academy for Camilo Ochoa.
“There were people from all over—West Oakland, deep East Oakland, North Oakland, Berkeley—and we were all able to be in school with one another,” he told The Oaklandside. “The teachers knew every student and they had rapport with every student.”
In elementary school at La Escuelita, Ochoa was a standout and won the spelling bee. During middle school at Edna Brewer, he fell in with the wrong crowd, and in high school at Oakland High, began hanging out in the streets instead of going to class. Soon he was behind on credits and in danger of not graduating. After a meeting with his parents, a vice principal, an anger management counselor, and a school counselor, they decided his best option would be to enroll at Street Academy for 10th grade, catch up on credits, and then return to Oakland High to graduate.
He never returned to Oakland High, instead graduating from Street Academy in 2008.
“Street Academy really taught me a lot about how nurturing adults can be, and that having great teachers is so important,” Ochoa told The Oaklandside. “Students have issues and sometimes those issues take away from school. That’s why we need a school like Street Academy.”
Today Street Academy enrolls about 80 students and can enroll as many as 130. Enrollment fluctuates throughout the year as students transfer in from other schools. Street Academy has been so impactful that students and staff often stay connected with the school long after they leave. Schulz, one of the founding staff members, is co-president of the board, and Lewis, the 2011 graduate, also recently joined the board.
Yajaira Lainez works as Street Academy’s recruitment coordinator, and she also graduated from the school in 2020. Like Lewis, her experiences at school influenced her decision to continue her education. She graduates from Cal State East Bay next week with a degree in criminal justice and psychology. While Lainez is leaning towards being a probation officer in the near term, she wants to eventually earn a master’s degree in education and a teaching credential.
“I would love to become a teacher at some point, and I would say that passion really started at Street Academy.”
