A new Oakland Unified School District program encourages teachers to take their students on at least one overnight camping trip per year. (Photo by Pexels/pixabay)

Every middle school student in the Oakland Unified School District will soon have the chance to get out into the woods as part of a three-year program unveiled last week that aims to teach kids about the natural environment.

The Oakland Goes Outdoors initiative is a $1 million, district-wide plan to get all of the city’s roughly 7,000 middle schoolers out of their classrooms and into the wild, according to district officials and their partners at Bay Area Wilderness Training.

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Kiley Russell writes primarily for Local News Matters on issues related to equity and the environment. A Bay Area native, he has lived most of his life in Oakland. He studied journalism at San Francisco State University, worked for the Associated Press and the former Contra Costa Times, among other outlets. He has covered everything from state legislatures, local governments, federal and state courts, crime, growth and development, political campaigns of various stripes, wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.