Arise High School

ARISE High School is a public non-profit Charter School nestled in the Fruitvale district of East Oakland. It serves 260 students in grades 9-12 and prepares students from low-income families to be the first in their families to attend college. 96% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch. 60% are English Learners. 90% are first-generation college-bound, and 98% are gang impacted.

Our instructional model is designed with our community’s students in mind. We believe learning best occurs when students are fully engaged participants.  They are immersed in a challenging college-prep curriculum that emphasizes knowledge of self, critical consciousness, and performance assessment. The curriculum is enacted in the context of a highly personalized and supportive environment, which provides wrap-around services through our families, teachers, socio-emotional counselors, college advisors, and community members.  

We are incredibly proud of our students’ successes.  Over the last four years that we have had a senior class, 90% of our graduating seniors have been accepted to a four-year university. Our students have gone to UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis UCSC, Willamette, SFSU, and many more.  

ARISE first opened its doors in 2007. The school was founded as the result of a unique partnership with the Mills College School of Education, the Mills College TRIO Programs, Upward Bound, Oakland Community Organizations, and the Coalition of Essential Schools. ARISE was founded to empower students to contribute to positive community transformation, and for students to develop the skills, knowledge, and agency to be successful in college and the world beyond.

The MISSION of ARISE High School is to empower our students, teachers, school leaders, and families with the skills, knowledge, and agency to become highly educated, humanizing, critically conscious, intellectual, and reflective leaders in our community. At ARISE, we nurture, train, and discipline our school community to engage in a continuous practice of developing mind, heart, and body toward a VISION where we actively rise up. Agency and self-determination drive our school community’s struggle to improve our material and social conditions toward a more healthy, equitable, and just society. To this end, our school community is driven by our core VALUES of: Respect, Persevere, Build, Lead.