Our Story

Coliseum College Prep Academy, a new school in East Oakland, opened in the fall of 2006. In our first year, we opened with grades 6 and 7 serving 150 students. CCPA will add a new class of 6th graders each year until we reach capacity: 420 students in grades 6-12. Our primary commitment is to serve the students of the surrounding community by providing a high-quality secondary school option in the Coliseum neighborhood.

CCPA is being created to serve the families of East Oakland in the Havenscourt attendance area. Havenscourt Middle School has been the primary middle school for these families for the past fifty years. For years it has not provided the education and experience that families and students of the community deserve. Test scores are some of the lowest in the district. Incidences of violence and other climate issues have been high, and parents report numerous negative experiences. Havenscourt had become the school that families tried to avoid. As the implementation of No Child Left Behind accelerated, OUSD was forced to confront these issues. In the spring of 2005, Havenscourt was identified as a site to be reconfigured into two new, small schools scheduled to open in the fall of 2006.

In the fall of 2005, Aaron Townsend, the founding principal, began to engage the school community in the change process. By the end of October a design team consisting of parents, teachers, students, and other community members had coalesced and started to vision the opportunity to dramatically change the achievement and educational experience of students and families. Over the course of the year, the design team worked tirelessly to build a vision of high achievement for every student, to design a program capable of achieving this vision, and to implement that vision and program. CCPA is one of the schools in the next wave of the nationally recognized small schools movement of the Oakland Unified School District.

Design Team
Many thanks are due to the following members of the Coliseum College Prep Academy Design Team:

Fabiana Ahumada                Joel Baum                             Charlene Johnson                   Sean Johnson
Deanita Lewis                       Renee Marcy                        Marian Meadows                       David Montes de Oca
Maria Robles                         Antonio Rodriguez              Charlene Sevilla                        Wen-neisha Stevenson
Ana Tafoya                             Martha Velasco