Importance
Small schools are an ingrained and essential part of Berkeley High School (BHS). Originally established in the 2000s, they were intended to close the achievement gap between white students and students of color, according to the book “Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in our Schools,” by New York University professor Pedro A. Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing, Oakland Unified School District's Manager of Research and Best Practices for the New School Development Group.
In 1990, BHS launched the Computer Academy, the first small school, according to an East Bay Express Op-Ed. This small school focused on enrolling “at-risk” students and placing them in technology-centered classes, the Op-Ed writes.
Later, in 2002, the Communications Arts and Sciences (CAS) small school was created, the small learning community that later served as a model for the creation of future small schools.
Then, in 2003, BHS passed a resolution creating a small school system similar to that which BHS has now, with four smaller schools: the Arts and Humanities Academy (AHA), CAS, and the Community Partnerships Academy, a renamed version of the Computer Academy. The Community Partnerships Academy was later renamed again to the Academy of Medicine and Public Service (AMPS). Another, smaller, school called Green Academy was also established around the same time, but it was phased out starting in 2010, Keldon Clegg, vice principal and AC supervisor, wrote in an email to The Jacket.
The same 2003 resolution also introduced two larger schools, Academic Choice (AC) and Berkeley International High School (BIHS).
Over time, the small schools’ purpose and meaning in the BHS community has evolved, but they remain an integral part of BHS life.
“I think the small school that you’re in has a big impact on your experience as a student, because that’s your community,” Kiernan Rok, BHS vice principal, said, “I think in some ways, it becomes part of your identity as a student … by the end of senior year, students really identify with (their) small school.”
John Tobias, AMPS co-lead and a U. S. History teacher, explained that it's important to give students choices about how they learn. “You have students with different needs and interests, and so I think (that the) small school system helps students pursue those interests and kind of tailor high school and be the way they want it to be,” Tobias said. “And so some small schools operate in a way that they work for some, but not all, and there’s typically a spot for somebody (in a small school) that works (for them).”
Students can be drawn to a particular small school for a variety of reasons. Clegg believes that one of the biggest determinants that goes into a student’s choice to be in a small school is because they want to be “cohorted with the same group of people taking similar courses” as them.
Additionally, students who struggle to find community in a larger, traditional high school may find a “knowable unit” in the smaller schools, explained Devon Brewer, AHA lead and Honors Human Anatomy and Physiology teacher. In smaller learning communities, students tend to have the same classes together, so they get to know each other well, Brewer continued. “It sort of brings down their effective filter, especially for kids who might be super shy or super anxious or the kids that struggle to stay in class,” Brewer said.
Selection process
BHS students are first introduced to small schools in their first year, when freshmen enter the lottery process in the spring. During this time, counselors go to students’ classes and inform them about different small schools. The students then rank their small school preferences. They only rank the smaller schools (AHA, CAS, AMPS) if they want to be in them; otherwise, they just rank AC and BIHS.
There are multiple factors that go into a student’s ultimate placement in a small school: their personal preference, geographical zone, and gender are all taken into consideration by the algorithm used to sort students. The latter two are information found on Infinite Campus. “It's not random … The algorithm accounts for student preference, zone, and gender, and then it creates the best distribution of students of different genders and different zones,” Rok said. “It puts you in the small school of your highest preference, taking into consideration the balancing of zone and gender.”
When a student selects their small schools, they are placed into a lottery with other people in their geographic region, according to Clegg. Within someone's region, Clegg said, "it’s kind of like a certain number of seats are available.”
The current selection process works in this way, in part, to increase diversity within the schools. Rok gave the example of AHA, the small school with an arts-focused curriculum. “More female identifying students choose AHA than male identifying students,” Rok said. “If there were no gender balancing… and everyone just got put in their top choice, (AHA) would have an extreme gender imbalance.”
However, Tobias saw this effort to diversity in a different way. In the past, he said, students were able to have "the majority of their classes as Black and Brown students learning with each other."
But now, Tobias added, with the school focusing on integration and diversity, he thinks there is a sense "where if you look (at) classrooms and people look like they’re from different backgrounds, that’s supposed to make us happier.”
"This goal of diversifying the schools, I don't understand its merit. I've never really understood why that's important," Tobias said. "What's important to me is increasing the outcomes to historically marginalized groups in our community, which is Black and Latino students. They are disproportionate in their numbers in (AMPS), and that’s a great thing. They want to learn together. And that’s what we provide."
Rok explained that the reason why the selection process isn’t randomized is because “the school district and the school board has a commitment to maintaining the same level of diversity that we have in our school overall,” he said. Clegg also stated that, though it’s not state mandated for BHS to do so, its current selection process is “how (BHS) chose to divide up the community.”
Creation of U9
However, the small school selection process has undergone changes over the years. Currently, BHS freshmen enter a lottery process to be placed in small schools during the spring. When small schools were first created, the lottery process would start in eighth grade, so that students would already be in small schools upon their arrival at BHS. Now, eighth graders are placed in the Universal Ninth grade (U9) and one of seven hives, where approximately 120 students share core classes with four teachers.
One of the multiple reasons why the U9 was created was to shift the results of the small school lottery, Clegg explained. This was because of a study by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), an accrediting association that evaluates improvement in schools.
WASC is an accrediting association, meaning “when you apply to (college, it shows that) you went to a real high school,” Clegg said., “You weren’t in Mr. Clegg’s backyard learning algebra.” It also evaluates improvement in schools, through a self-evaluation and peer review process with a focus on equity and inclusion, according to their website.
When WASC visited BHS in the 2011 to 2012 school year to conduct a study, before U9 was established, one of their main concerns was diversity within the small schools. Its official report from the visit states: “The demographics of the entire student population need to be mirrored in each SLC in an equitable manner.” Additionally, it suggested that the district review the lottery system to change this.
This corroborates BHS's official 2014 to 2015 self-study report as well, as it found a disparity between races in different small schools. The biggest demographic differences could be found between AMPS and BIHS. Demographics in AMPS showed it was 40 percent African American, 35 percent Hispanic, and 13 percent white, whereas BIHS was 14 percent African American, 19 percent Hispanic, and 45 percent white.
The U9 was built partially with the intention of eliminating the racial differences in the lottery back then, according to Clegg. “Let's take the lottery out of eighth grade. Let's let students first get to (BHS) to see what's available here,” Clegg said of the decision. This way, students would be able to make more informed decisions about what small school they’d want to be in. The U9 was established in 2018.
Data from the 2024-25 school year, shared with The Jacket from BHS administration, showed that the small school demographics have changed since the WASC 2014 to 2015 report; for instance, AMPS is now 18.8 percent African American, 35.8 percent Hispanic, and 20.5 percent white, as compared to 40 percent, 35 percent, and 13 percent, respectively, from the 2014 to 2015 report. The newer demographics more closely mirror the overall population of BHS, which is 11.5 percent African American, 22.1 percent Hispanic, and 42.9 percent white, as of the 2022-23 school year. On the other hand, BIHS is now 5 percent African American, 14.8 percent Hispanic, and 52.7 percent white, making it the small school with the highest percentage of white students and lowest percentages of Black and Hispanic students.
(See charts for the complete small school demographics from the 2024-25 school year, and the whole school demographics from the 2022-23 school year.)
Tobias believes that student outcomes for marginalized groups within BHS overall haven’t been optimal. This perception is also reflected in data from BHS, with one report given to the School Site Council of BHS showing that during the 2022-23 school year 48 percent of Black freshmen had a D or an F in their math class, compared to less than one percent of white students. The same report showed that Black and Latino students received 65 percent of the F grades given to students, despite representing 34 percent of the total student body.
“Nobody wants to honestly address (the gaps in student outcomes), so the lottery and the small schools were an attempt to do that … I think the small schools are really great, but I know a lot of people have these problems,” Tobias said.
There’s also the issue of student satisfaction with their final small school placement. Despite the fact that the majority of students, around 90 percent, get their first or second choice, there’s a small percentage of students who don’t, Rok explained. “And that’s really frustrating, so that’s an issue. Sometimes students or families feel the process isn’t fair,” Rok said. Although students can re-enter the lottery every year, the assignment that they get is final for that upcoming school year. “That can be really frustrating, because sometimes students feel like they’re stuck in a school they don’t want to be in,” Rok said.
This is originally what happened to Isaac Lacey, a junior in BIHS. When he was a freshman ranking his small schools, he recalled wanting BIHS the least and AC the most. Lacey ranked BIHS third in the lottery form.
When Lacey was placed in BIHS, he remembers feeling “very upset.” He initially intended to try to switch out of BIHS as quickly as he could. But as his sophomore year went on, Lacey began to feel like his initial unhappiness with having been placed in BIHS may have been overblown. “Now I've been for IB for two years. It just kind of feels like normal school, honestly,” he said.
“It was kind of ignorance on my part. I thought there was much less choice than there actually was,” said Lacey, “If I were to re-rank them, I (would) probably put it even first or maybe even second. I was very upset at the time.”
Lacey now finds the whole situation “ironically funny,” but he still thinks that his placement in BIHS was not fair. When he was first placed in BIHS, he suspected it was to “increase diversity,” a belief he still mildly holds today. “When they were advertising the small schools, they talked about, there’s a lot of white people in IB… and they’re trying to work to increase diversity,” said Lacey, “And it made me think … was there that element where I just kind of got put there to increase diversity?”
Although the small school lottery doesn't directly balance for race in the selection process, the algorithm does account for the geographic area of students, which can be implicitly connected to race.
Conclusion
As of right now, Tobias said, he believes that the small school system is “the best that (BHS) can do.” When promoted correctly so students understand the ranking process and can make well-informed choices about schools they truly want to enter, it’s effective, Tobias explained. He continued, “There’s many students that don’t want to be in one of the three academies, and there are students who don’t want to be in AC or BIHS. It seems like if students are fully informed, they can, at the very least, get that to work for them.”
Clegg explained that there’s always room for improvement in the system. “I just hope folks know (that) we’re constantly tinkering (with it),” Clegg said.
CORRECTION:
According to BHS administration, no student has received lower than their third choice small school in the past two years. The article has been edited to reflect that fact.