Oasis Middle School Gabriel Ortiz Gabriel Vincent Ortiz Gabriel V Ortiz Ortiz Mercado-Ortiz Rochelle Stokes Stokes Horrible Charter School in Bradenton, Florida Bradenton Florida

Horrible charter school in Bradenton (Manatee County) Florida.  I don't know how this school stays open.  Two main people running the school are Rochelle Stokes and Gabriel Ortiz and only Stokes has a background in education.  Ortiz has a background in drama/theatre and "happened" into education later in life.

The school moved to a new location this year at 6417 3rd Avenue West in Bradenton.  Last year they shared their space with a church group off of 34th and Cortez Road in Bradenton.  The students ate lunch in and had classes in a bug infested gymnasium that the school worked hard to hide from the county or they would have been s**t down real quick.  Ask any student (past or present) that was around for the 2018-209 school year and they can tell you.

Most of the school consists of makeshift classrooms where the teachers set up smaller flat screen tvs on cafeteria style tables and project lessons from their own personal computers.  The students are given tiny little Amazon Fire tablets, most of which have cracked/broken screens, and are barely useable.  If not the tablets, the students get old, barely functioning computers and there are not enough to serve the school population.

The school uses a computer program called Study Island.  The students go through modules at their own pace and the students make jokes about teaching themselves.  There are little or no allowances made for students with learning differences.

Oasis Middle School has an extremely high turnover of staff and teachers, which speaks volumes for the school.  During the 2018-2019 school year, Oasis Middle School lost 5 or 6 teachers, 3 of them by Christmas break alone (Richard Winterbottom/ELARebecca Patterson/Intensive Math, and Eula Bacon/Social Studies) all gone by Christmas Break.  Oasis started out 2018-2019 with no science teacher, then hired a science teacher mid-year (Collette Killany) and she didn't stay long (not fired, left on her own).  The school went into the next 2019-2020 year with no science teacher, hired an older man who didn't stay.  As of the date I am writing this, Spring 2020, Oasis Middle School is without and actively advertising/ seeking a regular, certified English/Language Arts Teacher, Science Teacher, and Math Teacher.  A small school without teachers in three major content areas.

The teachers are paid a pittance and there are no personal days, vacation days, holidays, summer pay, etc... of any kind.  There are also NO BENEFITS of any kind offered at Oasis Middle School.

There are no extracurricular activities, sports, clubs, "specials" like art/music of any kind.  There is a small group that averages 8 to 10 girls that participate in what the school calls a dram program because the openly gay Assistant Principal has a background in theatre and uses it as more of a platform to promote himself than help the kids.  I find a gay man writing a play titled "Don't Tell Me How to Be a Girl" kind of strange and the content inappropriate for a school play and would not let my granddaughter participate.

There are a lot of options and good schools out there.  Oasis Middle School is a port representation of a school and I have no idea how this school stays open.  Do your research.  You can do better for your child.