Education Partnership Committee - Special Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the special education partnership committee meeting of Monday, 09/22/2025. The time is now 03:31PM and this meeting may come to order. Before getting started I will go over instructions on how to provide speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber and would like to submit a speaker card please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Registering to speak speak via Zoom is now due twenty four hours prior to the start of this meeting time.

This meeting came to order at 03:31PM and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after making that time 03:41PM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Starting with the council members, council member Gallo? Excused. Excused for now? Council member Houston.

Present.

Council member Unger.

Here.

And chair Brown. Present. Thank you. We have three members present, one excused. Now taking role for OUSD board members starting with sorry. Jennifer Bruhard. Here. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Jennifer Brouhard. Valerie Bachelor.

Present.

Thank you.

School board member Patrice Barry. Present. Mike now. Thank you. And sorry, school board member Mike Hutchinson.

Present.

Thank you. Acknowledging the presence of students, school board members Mariana Smith and Maxima Simmons. Thank you. And before we begin, chair, do you have any announcements at this time?

Yes. So first it's my absolute pleasure to welcome everyone to the first education partnerships joint committee meeting with OUSD school board for 2025. The first thing that I would like to do is just go over some logistics. We have new microphones and so the first thing I would like for everyone to do there's a prompt for you to enter the meeting. So if you can please enter the meeting on your microphone panel and then when you press the green button in the middle you will be you will be in queue to speak.

When you are in cue to speak the mic will flash red. Feel free to give it a try. And then when your mic is green that means that it is on. You want to do an example? And then lastly and maybe most importantly when we are doing roll call votes our city clerk will turn your mic on so you don't have to press the button.

And of course please let us know if you have any questions. My team will be on standby to help and assist. In addition to another announcement I did just want to note just for the public thank you so much for being here and you can sign up for public comment to speak on any on the agenda items that are related to the subject matter. However if you have a comment not on the agenda please be sure to sign up for open forum. And so today is a significant milestone because we're bringing together both the city council and the OUSD school board as well as our student leaders.

We're creating an important space for collaboration and to me this committee is not just about meetings, it's about ensuring Oakland's young people and families see a stronger united commitment for their leaders. And so I think that our purpose is simple but vital to build equity, transparency, and alignment across city, school policies, and to provide students with the resources and opportunities they deserve. Whether it's student safety, health, funding priorities, or pathways to college and careers, we're here to listen, learn, and act together because we know that strong schools are the foundation for a thriving city. And so it is my hope that this body will reflect Oakland's values of partnership, accountability, and the belief that every student should should thrive. And so my commitment as chair is to ensure we meet regularly, work transparently, and always center student voices in our decisions.

Lastly I did want to make a note that it is our goal to conclude today's meeting between 05:30 and six to ensure those who will be observing Rosh Hashana can attend those services. And so you know thank you all for being here and for your commitment and I look forward to the work at hand. And so now I would like to invite school board vice president Bachelor as well as student school board representative Maximus Simmons to give some opening remarks.

Okay, I was paying attention, I promise. So thank you for joining us today. It's been a while since we've gathered and I just want to take a special moment to thank Chair Brown for kick starting these meetings once again and excited to see us holding regular meetings so we can have these conversations. The relationship between OUSD and the city is a valuable asset for our school, students, staff, and our families. The issues our city faces are often the same challenges presented in our schools and by working together we can make a strong impact.

As we move forward, I look forward to collaborating on issues such as school safety, affordable housing, and violence prevention, and I'm sure other topics will emerge as well. On the issue of school safety, there are many opportunities for collaboration. First, there are questions around safe passages to schools. Some of our schools are located in high traffic areas where students must cross without crossing guards, signage, or traffic lights. It would be beneficial to have a representative from Oak Dot present to the full body.

Many of our schools are frustrated by the length of time that it takes to implement some safety improvements and having KDOT explain the funding cycle and the processes would be really helpful to figure out how we can make those changes quicker. We also know that many students walk through trash lined streets to get to our schools and I wanna thank mayor Barbara Lee for her work on cleaning areas around our schools. It has made a real difference, especially schools like CCPA in my community for our students and families and I welcome other cleaning opportunities that we can work on together. OUSD currently has 10 vacant sites and it would be beneficial for us to work with the city to explore the possibilities of using measure w funds to build affordable housing on those sites. This is only an exploratory this is only now in the exploratory stages but we want to have this opportunity between the two governing bodies to create real housing for Oakland families.

Another area of collaboration of course violence prevention in both the city and our schools. We must also work together to ensure immigrant families who are often under attack know that our schools are safe places for their children to be. By working together, we can help students and families travel to and from school safely. I hope that by the end of this meeting, we can identify at least three key areas of collaboration and work together to move those forward to support our students and families in Oakland. Thank you.

Good afternoon everybody. My name is Maximus Simmons for those who did not hear. First I want to say thank you to council member Brown or and anyone else who had part in establishing this committee and this current board this current committee. I've been actively preaching about the school board and the city having a direct connection and a space where we can talk to advocate better for our students and having a space where our students can show up and preach for themselves that's other than the board meetings or any other committee. So thank you dearly for that.

Thank you everybody for coming again, especially the students that I see in the audience for taking your valuable homework time to come here. I think this committee is very important for not only the district but for especially our students. It gives our students another space to come and advocate for themselves. We already see some in the audience. So please, if you have anything that you need to say, come up and tell our city leaders, our district leaders, this is the type of spaces that we need to show up in because it's a spot where we can let our voice be heard and we can make a difference just by showing showing our our problems, our wants, and our needs because that's who everybody here is collectively coming for, our students.

I just really wanted to make it short but thank you everybody for coming. Let's have a good productive conversation.

Excellent. Well thank you both and I look forward to the continued partnership and collaboration and I did take note of the action of around three items and I feel confident that we will be able to do that. Thank you so much. And so at this time we were going to have two performances by our twenty twenty five youth poet laureates but it's my understanding that they are running about 20 behind so we'll just put that in queue and and move on with our agenda. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

You. Reading in item number one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting of 09/30/2024.

Okay. I'll entertain a motion on that.

So moved. Thank you.

Excellent, thank you Councilmember Houston. And do we have any public speakers on the minutes? Okay, thank you.

You. We have a motion made by council member Gayle, seconded by council member Houston to approve the committee meeting meeting minutes of 09/30/2024 on roll. Council member Gayle? Aye. Thank you. Council member Houston? Council member Unger?

I was not in attendance at that meeting so I think I should abstain.

Okay. Thank you. And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with three ayes one abstain to approve the committee meetings committee meeting minutes of 09/30/2024. Reading in item number two determination of schedule of outstanding committee items also known as your pending list.

Excellent and so do we have any public speakers on this item?

Yes we have a total of 10 speakers on this item.

Okay I'll take the public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up for item number two. In no particular order you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record and you'll have two minutes to make your comment. Rich Harrison, Jaden Alvarado, Adrian Gomez, Camila Lara Castillo, Heidi, Pablo, Diana Garcia, Phil Sisarski, Michael Badua Junior, Luis Lopez Castillo, Latora Baldridge, and Asada Olubala. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record, and you'll have your two minutes to make your comment.

Can I have one minute so y'all can hear these beautiful one minute? One minute. Thank you. I'm calling for the following items to be scheduled. The vacancy situation, a bunch to be dealt with, a charter school report, a report on the youth committee that we have at the city of Oakland, a report on the Oakland fund for children and youth, how those funds are distributed to OUSD.

I think someone already mentioned department of violence prevention, how it's working in the schools, the crossing guards report, safe passage to school report, how homeless encampments are infecting schools, illegal dumping at schools, policing at schools, the Oakland Police Department policy at schools, the reparation for black students, I can't get it at the OUSD, maybe I can get something happening here, and evacuation procedures particularly at Skyline High School, how the city of Oakland fire department and other departments work with evacuation procedures.

Good afternoon superintendent Sadler, superintendent Castro, OUSD board and city council. My name is Rich Harrison. I'm the CEO for Lighthouse Community Public Schools. I oversee Lodestar in Sobrante Park and Lighthouse on the Hagenburger Corridor. I just wanna thank you for convening this meeting during such a critical time.

We definitely need to align our city's resources, our school resources to ensure success for our students and families. I wanna give a special thank you to council member Ken Houston for his, awesome support, of our community in Sobranny Park as well as the Hegenberger Corridor. The work that he has done to make sure that it is safe for our schools and businesses over the past two months has been incredible. So thank you council member Houston. He also supported our gun violence exhibit that we have some students here talking about.

Special thank you to you council member Brown for hosting our students over the summer and for allowing them to share their research and their findings with you. And just for context, we have some students and staff members here to speak about the gun violence research that they've done as part of their eighth grade culminating unit. And so without further ado, the other public speakers are from Lodestar School in Sobrity Park.

Hello city hall council members. Thank you for having me here. My name is Jaden and I have been attending LOSTAR for three years. I appreciate LOSTAR because the staff here have helped me open many doors of opportunities. For instance, we participate in the Vision Quill project where we learned about social emotional learning and researched the impact of gun violence on our community.

I also learned about how easy it is for people to have access to guns, and I've also learned how to advocate for better gun safety regulations. My school offers dual enrollment, and one of those courses is Scientology. I will be able to take this course and others in my time at Lowstar High and learn more about human behavior. I am a college bound student and proud to attend a school that helps me think about social issues while preparing for my future.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Joseph Il Saraspe. I'm teaching grade eight math at Lodestar. I have been part of this incredible community for over three years now. And in that time, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution, not just in our students, but also in the entire essence of our school.

At Lodestar, we ignite a passion for learning that empowers our students to rise above challenges and aim for more than they ever thought they could be. Our mission goes beyond preparing students for college. It's about creating change makers who will go, who will go on to make positive lasting impact in their communities and the world. As a math teacher, I carry this mission in my belief that every student, especially in East Oakland, regardless of their background, has the potential to master high level math and use it as a powerful tool to shape their futures. I have had the privilege of working with Vision Quilt and the entire school on an integrative curriculum that connects math to real world issues.

Through this approach, our students not only see how math links to other disciplines, but also use it to understand and address complex social issues. For example, during a unit on data and associations, my students worked on an authentic project exploring the relationship between gun violence and other variables using real world data. By analyzing data sets, grading scatter plots, and identifying patterns, they didn't only meet grade eight statistics standards. They also engaged in meaningful critical thinking about how math can help us understand and solve some of the most pressing issues of our time. I'm here today to champion my students, especially those who could not be here, and to let you know that this work is not done, and we are going to continue the momentum.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, council members and OUSD board members. My name is Adrian Gomez, and I have been a LOSAR student since the first grade. I decided to continue to go to LOSAR High School because they offered me the opportunity to individualize support for, excuse me, for college counseling. The teachers are supportive and I love the community. My vision quote was about violence prevention. In our community, we all know that there's a lot of violence, and I envision a world without the need of physical violence. When I grow up, I wanna be a civil engineer. At LOSTAR, I have the opportunity sorry. I have the opportunity to explore my career interest like last year when we had the career fair with Oakland Rotary.

I got to meet lawyers, doctors, business owners, and nonprofit organizations. My vision quote vision quote and Lostar helped me learn that my ideas matter and that my vision can come true. Thank you.

Good afternoon, OUSD council members. My name is Camila, and I am a ninth grader at LOSAR High School. I have been at LOSAR since sixth grade. One thing I appreciate about my school is our community. Last year, we participated in a project called Vision Quilt, which you all saw outside. My Vision Quilt was about two comedy masks, one with a smile and the other with a frown, and the poster said, don't let your emotions get the worst of you. This project supported my growth as an eighth grader because it taught me how to take care of my emotions and feelings. Social emotional learning is something that all students in Oakland need, and it's something that my school does in crew. I love my crew, and we have been together since sixth grade. Thank you for supporting Oakland and Lodestar.

Good afternoon, council members and OUSD board members. My name is Haiti Pablo, and I am a ninth grade low star student. And I've been a student since the sixth grade. I appreciate my school because they gave me a lot of support to include my family and the school environment. My sister, who is in the sixth grade, also loves Lowstar the way she always talks about it as soon as she gets home. She's like, oh, it's Lowstar. It's such a good school. She's also always eager to go to school in the mornings. My vision code was about love over fear. In our city, there is a lot of fear, but why should we fear when we can care for one another and support each other?

When I go to school, I don't feel fear. I feel loved and supported. Before going to Losar, I didn't feel that way. And finally, my school is asking for another five year renewal, I hope the board approves that I can graduate and my sister can attend high school. Thank you for your support and consideration. Have a great day.

Good afternoon. My name is Diana Garcia, and I am the program and develop development director for Visioning Beyond Violence, formerly known as Vision Quilt. And I'm a proud product of Oakland Public School System. Grow up in the growing up in East Oakland, our who grew up in East Oakland, our mission is to prevent gun violence through education, community dialogue, and systemic change. Growing up in Oakland, by the time I was 16, I had already lost more than 10 friends to gun violence.

Those losses didn't just impact my heart, they affected my mental health, my grades, and the path of my life. This is why I'm proud to lead this work now in Oakland. Oakland is one of the city's most heavily impacted by guns and community violence, especially neighborhoods like East Oakland where Lighthouse and Lone Star are located. That's why visioning beyond violence matters. Our multidisciplinary curriculum addresses these issues directly while providing social emotional learning and mental health resources integrated into academics.

But program like this can only thrive with real partnerships and investments that create true pathways for our youth to heal, grow, and lead. If program like this had been in place when I was in school, my peers and I might have different futures. Today, like Lighthouse and Lone Star are proving what's possible, but they cannot do it alone. Our young people deserve resources to build a safer future. Thank you. Oh, lastly, I wanna thank council member Brown and the city council for the creation of the Education Partnership Committee because collaboration between schools and community programs and the city is exactly what makes these changes happen.

Good afternoon, OUSD council members. My name is Michael and I'm a founding student of Lodestar. Being at this school has taught me a lot about myself, about life, and of course academics. One of the things Lodestar introduced me to was the Vision Quilt project in eighth grade where we had to make a poster about gun violence prevention, which you might have already seen outside. My poster is about making change in the world and stopping the violence where it says, make a change, stop the violence, with a few guys falling down and one guy trying to make a change by stopping people from getting hurt.

This project had a lot of meeting and taught me about the importance of gun violence and how easy it is to pull a trigger on an innocent human being. This also taught me about my own city and how dangerous Oakland is. While researching, I found out that Oakland has a very high rate of deaths by firearms. My research also indicated that the importance of safe and supportive schools and teachers. I am happy to attend a school that is safe and supportive. I am asking this board to consider how it can be more supportive about schools like LOSAR in providing safe and safe places for children to play and be kids while we work to address the issues that contribute to high crime rates. Thank you for listening.

Good afternoon council members. My name is Luis Lopez and I am a ninth grade student here at LOSTAR. I started LOSTAR in middle school and I am excited about graduating and moving on to college. I'm in the health pathway and I'm already taking the intro to engineering and taking the course, and I know that engineering is in my future because my school has been setting me up with programs and all that stuff. My Vision Quill project was about a growth mindset to pursue our goals.

I will be a first generation college graduate and I'm I am already building my growth mindset. And my Vision Quote Project has helped me learn that with a growth mindset you are able to achieve anything. Thank you for listening, my name is Luis, yeah bye.

Okay, thank you for enduring that shameless plug for charter renewal, okay. Good afternoon council members and board, my name is Doctor. Latora Baldridge, I am the very proud head of school for Lothar TK 12. Thank you for listening to our students and most importantly for hearing their experiences. That is very important to me that students and their voices live out loud.

Students are the heart of what we do, it's the reason why we're here. In fact, the year before these students were able to engage in this Vision Quilt project, our school was healing from the loss of a student to gun violence. One of our students was tragically murdered and we weren't able to engage in the Vision Quilt project the year before because we felt we weren't ready. It was too much for our school community. And when we were ready, these young people in their eighth grade year, they gave us a lot of hope because their vision quotes were about things like mindset, hope, the future, how can we change, how can we be different, how can we make Oakland better.

And that to me gave me a new life because losing a student is the worst day as a principal. It is the worst call that you get. It is something you don't come to school ready to face, you just don't. And you don't for a long time, you feel guilty, you feel like, I wish I could have. There's a lot of things you wish you can make different.

And unfortunately, many of our students, as I heard, have to face like miss Boucher was saying, have to walk to school past trash, have to walk to school past danger every single day.

Thank you for your comments. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Yeah I think I just first wanted to just really thank all of the young people that you know came and spoke today. Myself and council member Houston we had the opportunity to you know hear firsthand from the students the importance of the project that they were able to engage in and just really see its impact. And so you know as you leave out please have a look at some of the artwork that the students created and I think more than anything this is just really, it emphasizes the importance of just the work that we need to do to ensure that as a city collaboratively with our school board members and all the key stakeholders to really keep our communities safe but specifically our young people. And so council member Houston did you have a comment?

I didn't but it was so passionate with I hear heard the voices of the children or our youth, right, the next generation, our leaders, right? And I did visit the school and I made sure that that Hegenberger Loop was cleaned up and you don't have to walk through that. I made sure that. And making sure that all our schools Noel, council member Gayle is on there. He's he's cleaning up the streets for you guys so you guys can have a safe path to travel. So I'm a say this, I'm proud of you. You guys did really, really well. You had a couple of jitters but you rolled through it and I'm proud of you. So, give yourself a round of applause.

Alright. And so if no other comments I wanted now that now that our special guests special special guests of many are here, I wanted the opportunity to introduce for you all two amazing leaders. Give me one second. So it's my honor to welcome two extraordinary poets who embody the power of youth expression in leadership. And so performing first for us and if we can close the front the door too, thank you.

Performing first will be Sahinna, Vice Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. And so at just 16 years old, Sahinna uses poetry as both activism and comfort, breaking out of her shell and embracing her authentic self through words that comfort confront reality while dreaming of a better future. And then if it's alright, I would love to also just introduce Kaelle Duenas Lara who is our 2025 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. He is a proud East Bay, East Oakland ninth grader and Kyle's writing challenges stereotypes, reclaims narratives, and up uplifts the lived experiences of young men of color in our city and his voice is both powerful and necessary as we move towards justice and equity. And so first, Sienna.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone. My name is Sahena. I know we're here to talk about education, so I wanted to take this opportunity to speak about my favorite subject, ethnic studies. Ethnic studies sees me, not just the color of my skin. It sees my bloodline, my country, not the melting pot that burns my people to our cores.

Our melanin melts in the pot and stains the sides. They've tried to scrub our marks on this place clean, but to no avail. They called enslaved people, unpaid interns like they didn't work us till we were pale, called black and brown folks savages like it wasn't them who left bloodstains on every corner of the planet in the name of the lord, in the name of destiny, in the name of every excuse you could think of until you were on top of the world. We are the soldiers when there are none available, the healers to the ones who hurt us and those before us, the true patriots to a country we were forced to be accustomed to. We took on fake customs and played into colonialisms, became the customers of capitalism, told we were not beautiful unless we looked like the status quo, as if people who looked like me from the cradle of mankind did not create everyone of your kind.

My people were kind to those who never deserved it. Let the hungry sick pilgrims eat from our hands for them to turn around and chain ours. I wanna learn like concepts of these in my education, not the lessons forced upon me in my schooling. For once in my life, I choose to free my mind. I choose to learn of the people I claim as mine, to learn of the people sent to the fields and the mines. I choose to free my mind. Ethnic studies will free mine. Ethnic studies ain't never told me I was ugly, never told me I was biologically lesser than because my nose and lips protrude a bit. Ethnic studies taught me to embrace the parts of me I was ashamed of. Never told me I should treat my hair or bleach my skin.

Ethnic studies taught me that there ain't no power like the power of the people because the power of the people don't stop. I'll fight for ethnic studies till my legs give out and drop. We've watched our lineages get lied upon. All of us can see as they feed us all their history and never let us be. They rewrote our histories once. They're trying to do it again, and we've only learned of colonizers and conquesting white men. But the youth will change our futures. The power is in our hands. We'll make the people hear us. They will meet our demands. So until they could prove that Washington would have cared about me, I will fight for ethnic studies because ethnic studies sees me and there ain't no power like the power of the people because the power of the people don't stop.

Give it up one more time for Sahena, please. That was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're talking about education and she just educated all of us. I want to point that out.

What's going on, Oakland?

How are doing? We're doing good? That's right, that's right, yeah. First of all, thank you for allowing me as youth to represent you all. I couldn't be more grateful for everyone. So I'm gonna get into this poem. I'm not gonna tell you all what it's about, but the title of it is A Town Cry. Hear ye, hear ye, is a phrase often used by town criers. Well, funny enough, I came into the town crying. In Oakland, I took my first breath.

In Oakland, I first slept on my parents' chest. In Oakland, I learned death. In Oakland, I look at that tree like my family crest, roots that burst out of concrete like these concrete words I speak because in Oakland, we are not raised weak. Our parks fawn in color. They say that the town is bleak, but they are not at liberty to speak because our voice sings louder than a choir or perhaps like one too because in Oakland, we have a different point of view.

We are known as a sanctuary city, so please don't show pity if you mean it sarcastically because these people need protection drastically, so please protect them. Actually, people say there's no hope for Oakland, but I call blasphemy because the opposite of faith is certainty, and I certainly don't need no more hurting me or in Oakland, where we are not self spoken, where we uplift our people, where the epicenter of resistance occurred. But why is that past tense occurred? I get that the past was tense, but the future has me disturbed. We are the city that nurtures in Oakland where you wake up and hear the birds and bark chirp.

In Oakland where our donuts are not just colonial. No, no, no. Here, they happen on the streets, almost ceremonial. Oakland, listen to me now. I'm gonna repeat the words of a king. Education is the passport to the future. Thank you, Malcolm x. But some of the educators do not have a passport last time that they checked. So will our children have futures? I believe the answer is yes because I've learned the most in Oakland.

I learned how to love, I learned how to handle my spice, I learned my mom's voice saying, be nice. I learned how to sacrifice. 11th Ave, East 29th, last night when the earthquake, Harrington where I celebrated my first birthday, I learned how to keep my head on a swivel. One day, I hope to read my vocabulary of the word criminal and make note that in this poem, there lie no subliminals. No. My poem is simple. We need to be more pivotal because in Oakland, I took my first breath. I said my first words. In Oakland, we are never on do not disturb because the only key we hold is the one that builds community. And right now, more than ever, I say we need to try.

So hear ye, hear ye, for this is my town cry. Thank you very much.

Wow. Let's give it up one more

time. Thank

you so much, Sahena and Kayel for sharing your artistry and truth with us. Your words remind us why this partnership exists to listen, to learn, and to act with our students at the center. And so any I welcome any other comments if any of my colleagues have any. School board member Maximus Simmist.

Amazing job. I just wanna say amazing job. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. That's all I had say. That beautiful. Lots of words.

Okay. We're okay. Good. It was really amazing. And I particularly the ethnic studies, I wish that our state assembly members who did not vote to support, ethnic studies had heard your your poem when they took their vote. So, again, it is the power of the words. Thank you. Excellent.

And, school board, representative Smith?

Yes. I also wanted to say I really, really enjoy all of the student representatives here. It's really amazing to see you guys show up for your community and the poems were really, really amazing. The word choice, I really, really love that and I really wanna connect with all of you. So thank you all for being here and loving our Oakland.

Excellent. And so if I believe correctly we just need a I'll make a motion to move this item along. I just need a second. Second that motion.

Second that

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Brown, seconded by council member Houston to accept the determination of outstanding committee items as is on roll. Council member Gaio? Aye. Thank you. Council member Houston?

Aye.

Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Item number two passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as is. Now reading in item number three. Receive an informational report from Alameda County Superintendent Elise Castro on the state of education in Alameda County and we do have two public speakers that signed up for this item.

Excellent. So at this time I would invite our Alameda County Superintendent Elise Castro up and I do believe that you have slides.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. Nice to see you council members. Nice to see you school board members.

And for those who don't know me, I am Elise Castro. I'm your Alameda County superintendent schools. And some might say that those student poets are a hard act to follow. But I would argue that I am an authentic education policy nerd and I am here as my authentic education policy nerd self to use words to comfort and uplift and to move toward justice and equity in the presence of a different kind of partnership because today we are exploring the partnership between the city and the school district and you all have another partner which is your county office of education. And so we're gonna do a few things very quickly which is really to celebrate a couple of wins in the partnership between OUSD and the County Office of Ed and to reintroduce the County Office of Ed as we transition from twenty three years of receivership into a new relationship and to explore some opportunities that live in that space.

So what do I do to make the slides be visible? Got it. Okay. So I'm going to go fast. You can ask questions if you need but at the Alameda County Office of Ed, our mission isn't actually about fiscal oversight. It's about equipping the most vulnerable students and those who serve them with the tools to thrive. That's what we're here to do. We do it by centering our priority student populations. For us, that's our foster youth, our homeless youth, our juvenile justice involved youth, our expelled youth, and our parenting teens. We do our work by differentiating supports for the most struggling students and systems.

We don't try to do the same thing for everyone. We don't try to be the same for all people and Oakland and Oakland Unified is one of our focal districts. We are committed because education can be a giant bureaucracy and a handful of red tape to maximizing resources and minimizing pain points. That is our goal. That's what we're here for and we do it by trying to create a culture of innovation because all the easy problems have been solved.

So most people can go their whole life without knowing what a county office of education is, but it's really very simple. In Alameda County, we have 18 school districts. They are the core. They provide the educational services for all of the young people in our community serving 220,000 young people across the county. But County Office of Ed is like a wraparound.

We come around the districts to expand the circle of who can be and who is well served by public education. We do that through direct service. We operate like schools in juvenile hall. We operate serious intervention programs for our county's most truant students. And we also do it by systemic support, by making school districts better able to serve their most vulnerable populations.

That's what we're here to do. We support our own schools, we support districts, and we support the most vulnerable youth in the county directly. We have a couple of celebrations in the places where ACOE and OUSD work together. So there's a thing called differentiated assistance which is basically additional support that districts receive when they are in some sort of struggling status. Over the course of the last few years OUSD has made enormous growth in these particular areas.

And I wanna just take a minute to show it off that as of 2023, there were nine student groups in OUSD who were requiring additional differentiated assistance in the areas of academics, chronic absenteeism, graduation, and suspension. That went down to eight groups in 2223, and down to simply one remaining in 2425. That is a huge piece of progress and it reflects an incredible commitment on the part of the educators and I particularly want to shout out chief academic officer Sandra Aguilera who has led that work over the last few years and it is it's an unsung, undersung celebration here in Oakland. Another undersung celebration here in Oakland is that after twenty three years following a state loan many many years ago, OUSD on July 1 returned to full local fiscal control. The conditions for that meant that this the district passed a financial systems audit, meaning the systems, the back of the office is clean.

Repayed the state loan, received concurrence by the state superintendent and the state board of education, and ended the trusteeship. Now this is a hard message to deliver in a way that makes sense to people because the easiest thing to learn from that would be okay, so OUSD's fiscal house is clean, right? Not so much. The most of the same problems exist that created the receivership. OUSD is still deficit spending, still spending more every year than it brings in.

But there's a new opportunity which is to really change the narrative and change the power because it is for the first time in twenty two years now totally within the authority of the democratically elected school board to make a plan and enact it. And sometimes when you have too much supervision, people lose sight of whose role it is to do what. And they're not gonna be easy decisions to make, but I actually think it's incredibly invigorating that there is a clarity about who has the responsibility and the authority to use OUSD's considerable resources. And OUSD does have considerable resources. It is one of the highest per pupil funded districts in California and we all know OUSD spreads its resources thin.

Spreads its resources really thin because everybody wants to do all the things and they're all great things. So today I'm just gonna spend a few minutes on the fact that we have some opportunities that because of the end of the receivership, I want to reintroduce the County Office of Ed and what we're actually for which is not just fiscal oversight. It is to differentiate supports for the most struggling students and to maximize your resources. So we exist to support the districts in this county and every time we partner on something, it actually puts money back in OUSD's pocket because if a service is being provided by the County Office of Ed, you don't have to provide it yourself. OUSD is the biggest district in the county though just by a little bit these days Fremont is nipping at your heels.

But OUSD has a lot of places where there's an opportunity to take service from the county that for historical reasons the district hasn't and this seems like a good moment as we refresh our relationship to reintroduce just a few of those services so that folks aren't leaving money on the table. I'm just gonna do one. I'm just gonna do a tiny case study but there are a lot more. So when I started in this role three years ago, OUSD had about a 100 teacher vacancies on the first day of school and at least twice that many instructional assistant vacancies. The problem was at least that big county wide.

This is not just an Oakland problem. So part of what our team did is we dug in and we created a whole path division, whole professional advancement and training hub so that we could reduce vacancies by increasing the number of qualified and diverse candidates entering the career and moving incumbent staff up and using the resources of the county office to do that. Because currently it costs about $25,000 to get a teaching credential at Cal State and programs with us cost the participant a maximum of 2,500. And that makes a huge difference in how we're able to get folks and who we're able to get, community members, educators of color, people who are already connected to our kids and our families into these classrooms. So there's a whole host of programs that I'm not gonna go into but I'll just the bottom line is just for OUSD, just in the last year and a half, We've been able to train and support 16 paraeducators to enter the profession reducing the overuse of contracted services, 13 new career technical education teachers, 22 pre credentials, that's folks usually in classified or entry level roles who are moving into bachelor's or teaching credential programs, and then 54 intern teachers.

So that's folks who are directly in classrooms teaching, filling a classroom vacancy. And then OUSD continues to manage programs for support staff in induction and pathways to advancement. Now this is work that OUSD can also do. But we're doing it for 17 other districts. And I invite you to put that burden down and just let us take care of it for you.

We have a bunch of other opportunities. You know, some of the areas where we are able to provide funded services that could come of the district's plate include truancy intervention, social services alignment. We have a complicated relationship with the county, the county county as we say, the county office of ed to be able to bridge information collaboration so you could actually know which of your kids are receiving social services, behavioral health, all sorts of things like that. There's opportunities to provide some of your data reporting, increase the health care reimbursement. These are the opportunities that are there.

We invite you as you exit receivership to come join us in some of these other opportunities and we invite your questions.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And do we have any public speakers on this item? Two. Let's hear from the public speakers first.

Calling in the names that signed up for item number three. If you're in chamber, you can come up to the podium. If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand, to be easily identified. Sheila Haynes and Asada Olubala.

Madam clerk, When you speak of struggling students, when you speak of vulnerable students, you accommodate quite a few of those students. But African American students are not being accommodated. And that's because of proposition two zero nine. And this is the same thing, the county has nothing that speaks to African American students. It really impacts me when we have students speaking about how they learned about African Americans through ethnic studies.

We had African American studies in this district, and we took it out to put ethnic studies in. We have black children learning their core curriculums because they are forced to with dual language in OUSD. Students and black students should not have to be forced to learn their core academic subjects in another language. We have no diversity. Most of these schools are either one race or one ethnic group. We need to work on diversity in our schools.

Thank you for your comments. Zoom user, phone number ending in 26. You can unmute yourself. Please state your name if you signed up to speak on this item.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes. Did you sign up for this item? I

did. This is Sheila Haynes.

Okay. You can begin your time.

Hi. So I am a mother to a nonspeaking 15 year old who I'm teaching keyboard. I see your presentation about special education. He is a PED student. The former president, Sam Davis, he introduced my resolution in December, which is centered around joyful and safer schools through daily music and arts education as well as reinforcing the discipline policy through positive language.

My son, he's been learning online for more than five years. And with the state of the budget, I continue to worry about the state because of the fact that a million dollars in music and arts education has already been taken through a block grant. And our students in special education, they're not receiving the services that they should have been entitled to. I'm actually having to go through an IEP process just to try to get them into a music program. We we actually opposed the plan for this district to cut a million in music and arts education.

It was done through a block grant, and it moved forward. And as I said, it could have serviced thousands like my son who needs this consistency. He's he's already lost more than 5 years of in person school. And with his focus being more and more off, I started being consistent over the last year and a half to help him stay focused by playing keyboard with him. But I feel sad for people that don't have someone in their household to show them that. And my whole

Sheila? Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yes. It cut out. You can continue your time.

Oh, I I was I was just gonna say that my hope is that with consistency, you know, more people helping him, and all students need this. They need this for development, help with behavior. You know, our best students thrive the most, and they can gain a multitude of skills through arts and music by them having this consistently. And the money is available, but I just you know, I I asked the board to prioritize.

Okay. Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Council members, school board members, any questions or comments? Council member Gayo.

Okay. Oh, there it goes. It turned green. Thank you for the information and certainly appreciate the student body and the parents and the teachers being present. I raised four children in Oakland and my three daughters graduated from Oakland High School.

My son and my brothers and cousins, the rest of us, came out of Fremont High School. Gratitude for the teachers because my three daughters, they attended Stanford University, UC Berkeley, received their master's degrees from UC Davis, Santa Clara University, and so forth. And so I wanna just express my gratitude for Oakland Unified School District. But the question that I have for you, I served on the Oakland Board of Education for twenty years. And certainly, I saw when Oakland went bankrupt.

And Oakland went bankrupt after Alameda County gave us approval that our budget was clean and clear and set to go. So the question that I have for you, where is Oakland Unified School District today financially? Because I've, you know, I've read through the news media different reports. One was saying that, oh, we balanced the budget, then I come back and hear another report. Oh, guess what?

And Oakland the city of Oakland is going through the same thing. The numbers keep changing every day whether we're balanced here today, but tomorrow I gotta, you know, borrow money from somewhere else. But, so where is Oakland today financially based on the leadership that Alameda County has to approve the budget annually?

So OUSD currently has a conditionally approved budget which means it does not meet the basic legal requirements to be approvable right now, burning through reserves at a furious rate. And

but but currently through your the county, the state of state of California is providing the resources to make sure that Oakland continues administratively to stay productive and balanced to serve the children.

So I think it's useful to understand the difference between routine fiscal oversight and a takeover. And so routine fiscal oversight means that the dollars essentially district. I know you know this but I'm going say it for the whole room, are allocated to the district and it's ultimately the decision of the board how they are utilized. That information gets reported to our office and we have to do a once a year June check to make sure that all the legal requirements are met which includes the 2% reserve. This board prefers a 3% reserve and has a board policy for that.

And that condition is not currently being met. And then multiple times a year there are multiple additional check ins, you know our terminology is first interim, second interim. School finance numbers are always changing because they're always projections and then corrections against those projections. What I think is sometimes really hard for folks to understand is that some parts of those projections are very crisp and the the CBO, the financial office, like you gotta use that number because the state approves that number. And other places there's a huge room for variation that really has a lot to do with tolerance for risk and also your data sources.

So at this point OUSD knows you have an amazing and very on it Chief Business Officer Lisa Grant Dawson who has provided very clear information to the board and to the public about where the resources are. And there are some hard decisions that need to be made very quickly.

Thank you. Thank you for that information. And I strongly believe that that the city and Oakland Unified need to be working as one. Thank you. Excellent.

And I believe I saw school board member Hutchinson.

Yes. Thank you. And thank you council member Gayle for for that question. And before anything else, shout out again to our youth poet laureates who did an amazing job here. So I I really wanna thank superintendent Castro and her team for all of the support they have given OUSD, especially over the last year.

And I think the idea of maximizing resources is really important. And as a school district, we have left dollars on the table. And so, for example, during the last school year, the county really stepped in to support us in our three r's restructuring effort, where a lot of the bill for the community engagement specialists and the support was really footed by the county. But unfortunately, we as a school board left a lot of those dollars on the table because very few directors even had town halls to take advantage of it. And this has continued to be a pattern going forward.

And so I would really encourage everyone to read superintendent Castro's letters to the school board and the school district, both dated September 12 and September 15, which clearly laid out how the district has gotten into this situation and set a deadline for us as a school board of October 8 to approve directions to staff for how we're going to manage the situation. I think we are facing a crisis. To me, it's even scarier than what we saw in 2003. And I wanna put it out here publicly that when we get to this deadline of October 8, which the superintendent clearly gave to the board, which comes from Ed Code, and which superintendent Sadler also laid out for the board, we need help as a school district for people to join us and step in if this school board doesn't do what we need to do by October 8. Because we are quickly getting to the position where we're not maximizing resources.

We have lost a lot of the alignment that we should have between the county. And we all know what the outcomes of that kind of actions will take. And so hopefully this meeting is a start of that conversation. A year ago I was saying a very different message about where the district was, but unfortunately we need help and support. And a lot of it is from institutional Oakland, institutional OUSD, and experts who know what they're doing.

And we really need to get on board with that because when we fail in these areas, this causes generational harm to our students, to our families, and to our staff. And so I really thank you for bringing that up, council member Gayle, because it is very reminiscent of some of the things that happened before. Lastly, I really wanna thank superintendent Castro for again lifting up that we finally just left receivership in June. And so it which which we should have been celebrating at the time and should still be celebrating. But unfortunately, it's shocking to me that here we are three months later, and we are in a very tough situation.

So again, I wanna really to answer your question, everyone should refer to the letters the school board received from the county on September 12 and September 15. And I really wanna publicly say again, thank you Superintendent Castro and your team for the support that you have been giving us as a district. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And I did have a specific question for Superintendent Castro and it's just around you know what do you see as the greatest opportunity for partnership between both the city and the Alameda County Office of Education?

So I actually think that the greatest opportunity for a partnership for the county office of Ed and the city really exists in the unique space where safety and social services meet education. There's some amazing work happening in Oakland right now with with NICJR and trying to do some direct intervention with our our people, with young people at the moment of arrest. And that is a great example of a place where the County Office of Ed with our unique relationship with probation and our relationship with the courts and that access can really step in and bridge some things, we also can be a little bit of a safety net for the city in that regard because you don't have to go that alone either.

Excellent, thank you so much. Any other additional questions or School Board President Brewhart. Thank you and thank you for your presentation.

I look forward to being able to partner with some of the resources you've mentioned too. I do wanna say though that as a board president we are proposing some direction and we have worked with chief business officer and superintendent Denise Sadler to work through directions that we wanna give for areas that we want to make adjustments in. Think and then what we're going to do is ask the CBO to give us scenarios so we can begin to look at how those will play out thinking ahead to some, looking at unintended outcomes of things that we may propose. I agree we do have hard choices. I do wanna reassure though the community that we are really taking this very seriously and thinking about ways that we can restructure and work on ways to maximize our resources in the ways that are most optimal for students.

Excellent. And if no further questions I would entertain a motion. Okay. School board, member Berry.

Thank you for taking my, comments and questions while I'm on the road picking up my kids. I am first, I wanna thank you, superintendent Castro, for the presentation. One of the things that I am particularly interested in is the truancy intervention. For me, truancy intervention is literacy intervention. It's also an opportunity for us as we think about budget development for, us to think about what the revenue strategy is for us.

And because ADA is such a core part of our, our our income, I'm wondering for you what a truancy intervention partnership looks like. What does it look like today? What could it look like in the future?

So what it would look like today actually would be taking advantage of a specific opportunity, a program called PACT, which I'm not gonna be able to remember the acronym for, that is like a very intensive case management and home and community based intervention for our most truant students which is something that your schools are able to refer to and that we would love to see more Oakland youth take advantage of. I will be very pragmatic that a year and a half ago we launched a county wide data warehouse to facilitate a great deal of removing things like this from having to be referral to being able to be drawn by the actual student data and also to facilitate maximizing revenue for new opportunities for medical billing and reimbursement. And right now OUSD has not signed that data sharing agreement so that would be a very simple board action that could enable us to access, that could enable Oakland to tap into some of those opportunities for kids.

Did you have more comment, school board member Barry?

Sorry I just got to a light. No, thank you so much. That was very helpful.

Excellent. Perfect. Thank you so much. Just a second on the motion. I second that. Excellent. Thank you so much.

Thank you. To the maker of the motion is that to receive and file this item in committee. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Gayos, seconded by council member Houston to approve the recommendation of staff and to receive and file this informational report in committee. On role, council member Gayle? Aye. Council member Houston? Aye. And council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Now on this item taking role from the school board members, president Bruhard. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Aye. Vice president Bachelor. Aye. School board member Hutchinson?

Aye. Excuse me. Aye.

And board member Barry oh, sorry. Aye. Oh, okay. Sorry. Just noting that since you're not present, you're unable to vote on this. So excused? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Item number three passes through the committee with four ayes from the council members and three ayes one absent from the board, to receive and file this item in committee. Now reading in item number four, receive an informational report from Oakland Unified School District superintendent Denise Sadler on the state of education in OUSD and we do have two speakers on this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. I do believe that there is a PowerPoint for this presentation and I'll turn it over to you superintendent Sadler.

Thank you very much council member Brown and I wanna thank you for reconvening this group and also acknowledging the power of student voice. It is so critical. Thank you very much for doing so. It is my pleasure to speak on behalf of the Oakland Unified School District. I wanna acknowledge all of the people in the audience, the people who are online, and share with you the real work that's happening every day.

As we have talked about many of our challenges, I wanna highlight our focus that we have to keep in front of us daily. Let's see, I'm gonna get used to I'm make sure I can use this clicker. There we go. First of all, there

I'm

not sure. Oh, okay there we go. There are four focal points, four initiatives that really ground our daily work. And that is ensuring strong readers by third grade, supporting powerful graduates, and creating joyful schools, and growing a diverse and stable staff. I wanna speak about strong readers specifically and what we've accomplished to date.

We've worked to improve literacy by 2% over the last two years. We've improved six through eight literacy by 3% over the last two years and we began administering administering high school reading I Ready assessments last year which help us helps us focus on our data and direction and investment. We've adopted updated curriculum so teachers have adequate tools, which is very critical, and we've invested in literacy tutors and teachers. We've improved, yet there's still much room for growth. Our numbers are very, very low in the area of literacy, and this is why this is one of our our focus areas.

You heard the question about attendance and how we could reclaim attendance. We have increased our attendance by point 8% from 23 to 24 to 24, 25. We're not yet at the same attendance rate as before the pandemic, But yet, I just got a report today that over 40% of our elementary schools have a 100% reporting of their attendance as of today, which is very critical. We've had over six of our middle schools and over four of our high schools where we've reported a 100% attendance by our teachers. That is really critical that we have a process monitoring system to know exactly what's going on with our individual students.

We are already doing home visits. We are following up in that specific areas. You will note very quickly this chart of where we've been, where we were prior to the pandemic, and where we are now. Now I wanna I wanna focus on our graduation rates, which is a major area of our focus. We have increased our a to g rate by 6.5% over the last two years, improved our course descriptions so that more students are qualified for college and beyond.

We provided additional staffing to accommodate student course needs, and we've increased our credit recovery options so students can access courses when they have difficulty passing, which is very critical. Now, how have we raised and increased graduation rates? The goal is to get above eighty percent, and we've reached seventy nine point five percent. That's an area of work. We have lots to celebrate, but yet there's so much more work to do.

Now looking at partnerships, we have a partnership with Northeastern, and I have to say Mills Northeastern as a Mills alum, and I know council member Brown is a Mills alum. They are providing eight of seven of our students and eight totally full scholarships to attend Mills Northeastern, and we're really pleased. You'll see some of those students pictured here in the photograph. That's very significant. We have to have the opportunity to have fully funded scholarships for four years and students having the opportunity to attend different campuses that Northeastern provides.

Now, I want to speak to critical community partnerships. This is we would not be able to accomplish what we've accomplished without partnerships, including this education partnership committee. We're very pleased to acknowledge many of our partners that have been with us for a while. Salesforce, Kaiser Permanente, the Keith Raynham Foundation, the Golden State Community Foundation, Eat Learn Play Foundation, which was founded by the Currys, Steph and Ayesha. In fact, they have redone over 21 of our playgrounds.

They've supported us with our literacy focus by providing books and materials to our students directly, and even have supported us with having funding for providing safe water for our students to drink. So these partnerships are absolutely critical. I do wanna note that the Education Partnership Committee has been around for a long time and even the establishment, when schools were built in Oakland, they were very intentionally, many of those schools were built right next to school, excuse me, city parks and playgrounds. And so, that's an area that we want to have a better articulation, better communication, better support in terms of those relationships, in terms of use of those resources. I'd like to mention post the presentation that Elise Castro made about from the county around balancing our budget.

We are proud of the fact that we've come out of state receivership and I personally have been with the district during that whole experience. And I take it very seriously in terms of the next steps that we have to take and this is why I've supported a specific deadline to focus on our plan. I can't help but think about every day the impact on our students and families. I know, and people hear me say this all the time, I know what an education can do for families. And so we need the support of our city, we need the support of outside partners to help us take this difficult walk.

I have been in touch. I talk with our mayor on a regular basis. Actually, she we text back and forth. We are equally concerned. So this is a walk we need to take together.

I think education is one of the major ways we can interrupt many of the challenges that we have in our city. So moving forward, I happen to be someone who will think about things in a positive way. I want us to look at how we serve our families by focusing in on multiple multiple ways that we support attendance and suspension, which is something that the the county report discussed. We need to focus on our students who are English learners, newcomers, students who've dropped out. Special education is particularly something that I'm very much interested in and as a special ed teacher, I know that every single child needs to have every opportunity to succeed.

Lastly, I've provided an appendix which gives you more specific, information and details about our numbers and the data related to many of the areas that I discussed. But most importantly, I wanna reinforce this ongoing relationship between the council and the school board as we take this walk together to save our city, to support our city. As a native Oaklander, there's nothing more important than doing this work and I I call upon all of us to continue the dialogue, continue the support, continue the listening to our students who are so powerful. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much Doctor. Sadler. Colleagues any questions or can I go to the public comment first? We'll do public okay. Public comment first.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on this item. If you're in chamber, you can come up to the podium. If you are on Zoom, please raise your hand to easily, to be easily identified. Haley Hester and Asada Olubala.

I repeatedly asked this district, excuse me. Okay. I repeatedly asked this district to concentrate more on expelled students and they have not done that. Illiteracy, give you example, McClymonds, 80 of the students at McClymonds are reading two to three grade levels below their grade. Joyful schools, we have an issue of anti blackness going on.

There's a meeting supposed to be called anti black racism in OUSD schools against black educators and black students. Balancing the budget, we have 20 schools with 300 students or less and the district is not willing to consider merging of schools. I am very much concerned with the fact that you identify our newcomers, they get a lot of attention, they deserve it. We have programs. We have wellness programs. We have 20 administrators working on our newcomers. We have absolutely nothing for African American students. Reparation for black students started and just dissolved. Nothing.

Haley, you can unmute yourself and begin your two minutes.

Good afternoon, Ed Partnership Committee members. My name is Haley Hester. I previously served as chief of staff to former council member, Achiever Reed, who served over District 7 and was the former chair of this committee. It's great to see this committee reconvene at such a critical time, especially when access to education itself is under attack. I really appreciate, superintendent Sadler's report

on

the state of OUSD and measures that they are working to take to ensure that we really shore up all the services that you all are working to provide for our students. As Nelson Mandela said, education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. So it's really important that you continue to elevate the voice of our youth and strengthen those collaborations between the city and the school board. It's gonna be super essential to ensure that our young people have the resources and the support that they need, especially around some of the things that were mentioned, regarding public safety, truancy, housing, and infrastructure. All of these intersect, and this is the perfect, space to address those between the different purviews.

So, all of you really carry, much responsibility in serving our youth and families with very limited resources as we just heard. And I really just want to express my appreciation for you all and for your commitment to our youth and to our community. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And just a couple I had a couple questions just kind of based on of course the the public comment as well. I guess I'm interested I know in your presentation you mentioned just this role of you know schools being kind of near city parks etc. I guess I'm curious if you wanted to make any other additional call outs around just kind of that you know school, OUSD school and city partnership that you think you know, we should be leading out more on as a city?

I think there there are absolutely lots of opportunities for us to work together and just the physical plants that are close to each other, that's a place to start. There are many many things that we can do in terms of working with our elders. We have senior centers where we can have a different kind of relationship with them. There are many resources within our community that we can maximize especially during this time when we need so much. So this is where a place where I believe we can have those conversations to be very intentional about how we can leverage resources we actually have within each other's purview.

Absolutely. School board member Hutchinson.

Thank you and you beat me to the question. First, thank you Superintendent Sadler for the presentation and really how you have hit the ground running as superintendent of our district. Besides the the other parts of the presentation, I was really happy to hear you lift up how many of our sites, our school sites sit right next to some of our signature parks across the district. I know one of the things that's been mentioned in this committee before when we have met is working on an overall MOU or some sort of agreement. There should be you know, for me in my district, I have Montclair Elementary next to Montclair Park.

I have Redwood Heights Elementary next to a park, and I have Allendale Elementary right next to a park. And if we could have a better way to have joint access across the board to provide more wraparound services, extend the hours of operation of these signature sites, I think we could do a lot of really good work. I really wanna say here also, in the past I have heard complaints from district staff that it has been frustrating for them sometimes in trying to work with city staff. And there's always been requests to get involved. And so I think if there is a a smoother way for OUSD staff to directly partner with city staff to help facilitate some of these things, it could really help jump start it.

Besides just sharing our parks, I would love to see the city join us as we are really still trying to come up with a remediation plan for the issues of lead that we have in many of our communities and at many of our schools. I think also as a joint committee, we need to work on not having cross lawsuits going back and forth between the school district and the city. And so hopefully, in this time, as we're also figuring out how this committee is going to even function with the joint authority and reporting back, to really look at some of these overarching universal agreements, to maybe then we could have some more progress really flow from there in our neighborhoods. Because I know all of our goal is is to have our public spaces fully open and activated to provide the most resources for our community. So thank you for that.

And and next time we have one of these partnership committee meetings after you've had more time as superintendent, I will ask you some more specific questions about kind of how that relationship is going. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. I took notes on that as well. And so I would start first with the school student representative Simmons and then council member Gayo and then council member Houston.

Hi superintendent superintendent Sadler. It's good seeing you. Great report. I just have a comment and a question. I think for next time, maybe next report, I'm reporting back on a more in more in-depth data, more specific data, specific groups of children.

I think specifically for this in this room, it would be really good to have specific districts because there's a lot of intertwined districts in this room. So seeing what are the specific data in those districts, the specific literacy maybe attendance rates in those districts, seeing what students need so then that council member and that district leader can work with each other to maybe provide programs for those students and it doesn't always have to come. Money, we don't always need money for programs. You know, just setting up something after school where kids can come to, I really like the idea, I forget who I heard it from, but of having of partnering with different businesses within that within that district and being able to have students come and get volunteer hours, come and do something that they can put on their resume to be able to go into the field that they want to work into. Let's say to a student wants to go into public health, they're able to go and work at a senior citizens home.

That's great for their resume. I also want to know want to know African American literacy. Is there any is there a plan right now on how to improve specifically African American literacy within the district? Reading scores, test scores, literacy overall. And if there's not, I think this is a really good time to be able to go to specific schools, go to individual schools to and work with them.

Know we don't need to set up an entire program. We can go to we can go to individual schools, talk to the school, see what African American students need in those specific schools and set up groups within those schools to help these students. That's my question. Do you have any plan for African American student literacy?

Thank you, director Simmons. I always love your questions. Absolutely. We have been collecting and working specifically with our staff in all areas looking specifically with black African American students. And so we are working with our staff, we have specific programming, and we're looking at the specific outcomes.

Now as you know, we've only been in school for less than a month, twenty five school days, but there absolutely is a focus on making sure that all of our students are achieving. And this is a specific area of concern because we are noticing some patterns with our our students. And this is why there has been investment in tutors. There has been an investment in specific areas to support all of our students. But I would be glad to come back to this committee with some specifics around where we are with all of our students so that and I love your idea about disaggregating it based on districts so that our council and board can focus in that specific way.

So thank you for that suggestion.

Yeah, I really I also wanted to add to that comment because one of the other questions that I had was around just some of the specific factors that have contributed to the rising graduation rates. And so if we kind of have that recipe or we kind of know how we wanna move that ball forward and improve, would love to see that as well. Excellent. Council member Gallo.

Yes. Thank you. And, thank you superintendent. Certainly, I've enjoyed working with you for many, many years. So the question that I have for you based this is an opportunity for the city and the and the and the school district to work together. And, you know, you brought up the parks as an example. Alright? You know, these are public facilities. Schools are public facilities. I grew up in East Oakland, but it used to be that I could go recreate at at the school every Friday evening, every Saturday.

And but there was cooperation between Parks and Recreation City and also Oakland Unified. Because I still remember Oakland Unified where they had access to Lake Merritt. Not only your conference room, your teaching rooms, the rowing situation, but that's kinda put aside now. We don't share facilities and activities. Another example, we own swimming pools.

Fremont High School across the street has a swimming pool that belongs to the city. But the school doesn't use it because, well, that's city property, but yet we lease it out to other private groups to go and learn how to swim. Where it used to be that Fremont High School students had an opportunity as part of their recreation to go and swim.

Mhmm.

And so I think that what I would like to you know, one is how do we rebuild that friendship or that bond where your schools because right now, your school's closed. As soon as the students leave, they could lock them down, close them down. We can't go in there and play basketball, you know, run around the the field or have a music class like we used to. So I think that we need to get back how do we work with our facilities. And the other, recommendation that I have for you as an example, the city of Oakland is responsible for your crossing guards.

Yes.

Right? And we they used to be under the police supervision, but we took them out and put them under the Department of Transportation. And even the schools that I have, elementary schools, you know, it it becomes a challenge to make sure that Department of Transportation provides the tool and the training for my parents or employees to be the crossing guards. So I'm what I'm looking for out of this committee is what are some of the needs that you have, and we can certainly share some of the needs that we would like to work with you to serve our student body and our children. Right?

And, so it's not a we and they, we and they. We're all public servants. And, and the only other one that I wanna ask you that that I couldn't graduate from high school unless I had a driver education class. So that taught you how to drive. What are the rules? What are the laws? And how you can get your driver's license? Yeah. And we're we're right now we're kinda traffic safety and all that we were out of control. Right?

And so, you know, you may wanna think that down the line. Our high school graduates, if you're gonna graduate, you gotta have a driver education class. And for me, that was a big made a big difference. I understood, you know, if it's a yellow light, that means we better get ready to stop and not run through it so it turns red. And, but anyways, thank you and I look forward to getting a list of recommendations from you where the city can get engaged.

Because certainly, Oakland Unified has been very supportive of of the city. I mean, I am interested in that 2nd Avenue Administration Building that's been empty for years now, right across from Laney College, that perhaps, working with the city, we can utilize that property to serve our students or serve our we're looking for homeless shelters and all that other activity. That's another example that sharing facilities that we can work together on. And, but I look forward to working with the list. Those the channels and the and the activity belonged to Oakland Unified.

Yes. Peralta Colleges, our channel, TV station. As a matter of fact, all the employees that I have here, I trained when I ran KDOL TV for the Oakland Unified, and they're running K Top. But, you know, there's many ways that we have shared resources that we ought to continue to do that. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you.

Thank you, councilman Legaio.

Okay. Excellent. I believe council member Houston and then we'll go, president, Brewhart and then vice president, Bachelor.

So I'm gonna ask Kay Topp to put that picture up. I'm about to date myself. So I wanna just, share. When I went I went to Stonehurst, Madison, and Castlemont. And that's what Castlemont looked like when I went to school. And and what I'm saying is is and I say the same thing all the time. My father's Latino and my mother's black. And when I grew up, when it was the homicide rate was in the eighties and nineties and in the hundreds, guess who was dying? That picture will show you. Right?

So I want to see in this space because I'm I'm traumatized, from the things that I've seen growing up. I mean, I could point out people that was dropped off in the skyline heels wrapped up in a sheet, shot

in the

back of their head, executed in that picture. Right? I could show you that. What I'm saying is that I like to see more of my black young men in this room because they deserve it. So that that that was just a statement I like to say.

Sorry. These are more modern speakers. Thank you superintendent Sadler for that report. I think there are a couple things in there. I appreciate your honesty and transparency around our reading issues, our literacy rate.

I think, you know, again I see our chair of teaching and learning in the audience and I would really invite people to come to the teaching and learning committee. We have been discussing a lot of our literacy strategies, looking at things that have been successful, things that have not been successful. But I think it's really where we wanna have community input on our literacy work in the district. I also want to mention too there has been a lot of work done on our A to G profiling and I think what is really interesting to me is that we are really beginning to look not just at twelfth grade but at where our students are at TK, where they are at third grade, where they are at fifth and eighth grades. And I think having those benchmarks will really help us keep kids on track to graduate.

And then the final thing, actually I have two final things. One is I think in terms of collaboration with the city, I agree with you on the driver's education. I was also one of those old people who took one of those classes. But I would like to see some collaboration between the public libraries and our school libraries. I feel that both are underfunded and I think if there are ways that we can collaborate particularly with schools that are within walking distance to our public libraries that would be I think beneficial to both the city and the district.

And then the final thing, I'm gonna go back to the parks because I do feel that pretty strongly too. In my district I don't have parks like Montclair but we have fields that are adjacent to Franklin, Lincoln and well Lincoln has a park, I'm sorry, and Garfield. And one thing I think would be important to explore is I know that the city of Berkeley and Berkeley Unified also have agreements with their use of parks. And I know at Malcolm X they opened the park during the weekend and that both the city and the school are responsible for taking care of that. So I think exploring some multiple uses for our open spaces and developed parks as well would be a good area to collaborate on. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. I will reiterate some things that were said but also say a few things that are different. So I just wanna thank you so much for your leadership so far. It's been just like a breath of fresh air to be able to work with you and be able to collaborate with you and think through things with you and be able to have some really tough conversations already over the past few months.

Also, I wanna shout out something that you've been doing that is not included in the slides, which is really dear and dear to my heart because it's the supporting of our immigrant students and families. Right now we're living in a political moment that is very difficult for those families and we are really living up to our sanctuary values as not only a sanctuary school district but within a sanctuary city, within a sanctuary State. And I really want to thank your leadership on that. Not only have you been working with me to collaborate with staff to figure out what are the needs that we have as a district but then where could we fund those sources and not only city but to Elise Castro's point earlier, the county has some resources and funding so what can we do there as well as philanthropy. Thinking about what are some of the ways in which we could create safe passages to and from schools, right, like we could do everything possible for our students to come to school, but if they are truly fearful, if their families are truly fearful, that is not going to happen.

So creating that hour before school start, an hour after school where folks can support our families and making sure that drop off is happening as it should be. If there's any sort of ICE activity, folks are notified and the school site is notified and we can notify other folks is gonna be truly, truly important. And another piece to that is many of our students ride the bus and so figuring out what are some of those pivotal bus routes that we can work with AC Transit to get some either bus monitors or bus support staff that can support that bus driver or that can support students as they're navigating a tricky situation. Also just want to call out that one of the biggest funding needs that we have right now for immigrant families is funding for legal services. It is becoming extremely expensive to do things in the right way and so that is a huge area of support that we're gonna continuously try to get funding for, but we are in the search to get that funding.

And lastly, would be remiss, my my members of my community as well as my members of ACE would be remiss if I did not talk about rental assistance for our families and that not only includes rental assistance for our undocumented families, but it also includes rental assistance for every single family that struggles to pay rent. We are living in a very difficult city to live in at the moment, so it's really important and behooves us to stabilize our community by making sure everyone in our community can stay housed. And I will double down on the discussion around our parks. CCPA would not allow me to be in this room again if I did not talk about Greenman Field and the access to that being pivotal for that school site. We are making such an investment at that school site so to have a high school not even have a field where they can do anything in is really gonna be problematic.

So making sure that we can have access to that field is really important. And you know I'm a neighbor of council member Houston so Castlemont High School is one of the that road in front of that high school is one thing that I want to get changed as soon as possible because my car cannot handle it anymore and I don't think any much of you yours cars can as well. But I think those are very small ways that we can partner together to really make the best impact on our students and to to support our families especially in this moment and beyond. Thank you, doctor Sadler.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Can you restate the park the the field? Thank you.

Yes.

So Greenman Field is directly next to CCPA, and so we're trying to get access to that space for after school programs.

Order in the chamber or we will ask you to leave.

Ask all questions. Okay. All

right, thank you so much. School board representative Smith, I think you had a comment.

Yes, thank you, thank you superintendent, for your board report. It's always very, very informational, so thank you. Backing up director Simmons' argument about specific data, I just wanted to start the conversation of I Ready scores and how we can implement them in high schools more. I've noticed the data and some of it's missing and the data that we do have for high schools are very, very low. And I'm a high school student myself, so I experienced this firsthand when we're in the classrooms.

There's a lot of pushback for the I Ready testing, so we can't get those results. I wanted to emphasize library visits. Like president Brohard stated before, when I was in elementary school, used to go on a lot of library visits. I went to MLK, so we went to the library that was down the street and that was very helpful. We did a did a lot of things and the students really appreciated that. So not just focusing on elementary and middle school but also implementing that in high schools and making sure that our literacy our literacy rates are high.

Thank you. You.

All

right, if there's no other additional comments, I know I took really good notes. Thank you all so much for the feedback and I look forward to the collaboration.

Council member Round, I just want to end on a note just to show that we have evidence of much evidence of working together, district and council. I was a part of pulling together the Oakland Fine Arts Summer School and that has been around for a long time where we have investment from the city in terms of providing their arts specialists with the arts teachers in the Oakland Unified School District and it is a sought after positive program that has been in place for over twenty years that is a partnership between the city and the Oakland Unified School District. So we have lots of history to build on and I'm looking forward to coming back with information that you've requested as well as reinforcing sharing some other opportunities where we can partner. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

Excellent, thank you so much. And so we just need a motion and I'll second it.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Gayos, seconded by chair Brown to approve the recommendation of staff and to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll, council member Gayos. Aye. Council member Houston? Aye. Council member Unger?

Aye.

And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Taking role from OUSC board, president Brohard? Oh. You. Vice President Bachelor? Thank you. And board member Hutchinson?

Aye.

Thank you. Noting that board member Barry is excused. Item number four passes with four ayes from the city council and three ayes one excused from OUSD to receive and file this item in committee. Now reading in item number five.

And then just a quick question. I got a note that for item for the last item are we able to move that one up or is it too late to rearrange? Okay so can we do the last item now? Yep six.

Now reading in item number six. Receive an informational report from Oakland Unified School District Executive Director of School Safety Nelson Allegria on school safety in Oakland Unified School District and we do have one speaker that signed up for this item.

Okay and so we will hear from the presenter.

And we do have slides here for this as well. Good afternoon board, thank you. My name is Nelson Leggrey, I'm the executive director of safety. I wanna thank the city council and the board for the opportunity to provide this informational report today. Today I'll walk through how safety work has really been shaped in the district, how we track a lot of that and measure some of those initiatives, and our partnerships that we have with the city already such as the Department of Violence Prevention and where we can really need stronger partnerships with the city.

Most importantly, you'll hear from our All City Council Safety Committee students whose voices really guide that work for us. I'm joined today by Misha Karagasha, our director of student support and safety, on my left. Two of our students, Sophie Mawule, our health and wellness director, and Iman Ebrahim, our culture and climate director as well. This work is not possible without the support of all the staff that do safety every day at our sites. In addition to Misha, we have Emily Zanoli, our program manager of violence prevention.

Rebecca Littlejohns, our risk management officer. Vilma Bermudez is our emergency preparedness manager. Jules Millestead is our coordinator of culture keepers and ambassadors, as well as a support of our two student boards that are on here today, which is director Maxim Simmons and Mariana Smith. Our safety work in OUC always begins with our foundational guiding principle that is student voice. I will pass it over to our All City Council Safety Committee as they will start defining what safety looks like and feels like on campuses. Here are our two students to speak on their perspectives and influences.

Hello everyone, my name is Iman Ibrahim. I am a senior at Met West High School and I'm also the culture and climate director of All City Council. So the guiding principles of OASD safety work is based safety. Since students are the ones who spend the most time within their respective campuses, they understand best what safety looks like at the moment and what we can do to improve it in the near future. Their experiences help guide and establish some of the decisions made on these programs, partnerships, and policies.

And the 11 all city council members including me, Sophie, director Simmons, and director Smith also help guide and advise this work as all of us come from different OUSD schools.

Thank

you. Some of our other guiding principles, as mentioned earlier by doctor Sadler was creating joyful schools, the George Floyd resolution, and as well as our focus on the pillars of safety. Part of our OUSD strategic plan is that schools be a safe and welcoming environment for all students and that we support not only their academic success, but also their social emotional success. In addition to this plan, our board adopted the Georgia Floyd resolution. Our internal police were responding to thousands of calls each year, and the community made it clear that this was not the model that they wanted, so they eliminated the Oakland School Police Department.

That resolution redirected our investments into prevention and student supports, such as things like social workers, restorative justice programs, and wellness programs. It also helped us create their village response teams which are trained to respond to crises on school campuses without needing police involvement. The George Floyd resolution was really more than just a policy change. It was a culture shift towards how we have student centered safety. Finally, our pillars of safety align all of our safety goals by addressing issues within our facilities, our school climate and culture, our emergency planning, and how we support sites centrally.

It's also important to emphasize that safety in OUC is just not the responsibility of one office or one role. It is a layered approach. At the district level, our behavioral health department, our office of equity, and our student support and safety provide guidances, resources, tools, and protocols for our school sites. At the school level, our administrators, culture keepers, and village response teams are on the ground shaping the climate and responding to the daily incidents. At the most direct level, students are supported by violence interrupters, our wellness centers, school counselors, community school managers, and our social workers.

Together, all of these layers have created an ecosystem for supporting safe and and creating welcoming schools. And I will now pass it over to Misha.

Good evening. Thank you very much, Nelson. My name is Misha Katigasha. I'm the director of student support and safety in OUSD. One of my primary roles was helping to create the policies and guidelines for our George Floyd resolution, and then also helping our school sites being able to implement it.

Prior to the George Floyd resolution, in which we had our own internal police department, we had about an average of 2,000 calls per year for law enforcement support. This policy up here at the on the chart, the green, yellow, and red was probably our first and primary guidance that gave clear expectations on when we should and should not be using law enforcement. Something when I was a principal many years ago, we didn't have and I leaned and depended and it was easy to use our law enforcement for everything. And so this guideline here, the things in green, are types of incidences that with the arrangement of our school site and central personnel, we should be able to handle. Things in yellow, we are required by law to report to law enforcement.

Things in red, we're required to call 911. Things in blue are things that we are to use that our city or county agencies that we can use, and the things in the white pink border are agencies, city and county agencies that we can use instead of law enforcement for things like mental health mental health assessments, also like the macro program that the city has has been incredible for supporting our homeless or mentally unstable people outside of our school buildings. But again, this gave clear and concise information on what we should and should not be doing. This document here, and then moving on to the to the next one. As I said, we were at about 2,000 calls to law enforcement prior to the George Floyd resolution.

Now we're having about 200 to 250 calls or needs for support from law enforcement currently. This graph is a call to our OUSD intake line. This is a number that site administrators can call if they need extra support or help or guidance in any of the areas. We have about there's about three areas that this line can support and that we can support centrally. They are around and the calls that the biggest calls for support around escalated I mean, it supports escalated situations, mental health support, and ice notifications or guidance.

And that's what this line can support or give guidance to. As you noticed, the number one calls are for mental health guidance or support or escalated adults coming on our campuses. Those are the two primary calls that we get that sites are needing extra support in. About the 600 calls that come a year, a third are handled by our behavioral health managers and giving support, a third are are supported by central culture and climate ambassadors, and the other third are unfortunately having to be supported by law enforcement. So about two thirds of the calls we are able to support internally with the things that we have been provided and increased services centrally at our district and also at our school sites.

And the last one, we talked about partnerships from doctor Sadler. Nelson has talked about we could not do this work without city and county partnerships. Again, safety is a holistic approach to safety incorporates everyone. The Department of Violence Prevention has been our primary one that we've had for over four years with the implementation support of the village response I'm sorry, with the violence intervention teams that were dedicated for seven of our sites. These are full time staff folks trained as a team, including a violence interrupter, a life coach, and a gender based violence specialist.

Those teams have been incredible to the work that we have been doing. We have increased by two more, so now we serve nine high schools. Couple data points, for last year in just six months, there were 47 students who had direct life coaching support. There were a 121 students at gender based violence services, and 355 students that participated in violence intervention and prevention mediations. And that was again just for half of the year for last year. This is the end of our year four with this partnership and we are looking to transition how OUSD is gonna be holding this work as we move forward. But again, thank you to City of Oakland and DVP for supporting us and getting it started in this partnership and this is what the work is about.

Lastly, we use data and again perception on how we track what we're doing with safety. But there is that need for greater partnerships because a lot of the issues really extend outside of the classroom. Immigration enforcement continues to create fear within our community. We continue to uphold our sanctuary school commitment with with response protocols, staff training, and our family support systems. Street safety, especially near high traffic campuses, remain a daily concern for students and families with near misses, not enough crossing guards, and traffic issues during pickup and drop off times.

Illegal dumping is another issue. Right now, we are very grateful for the efforts of the public works department team and their leadership. We've begun to partner with them, and an area that we ask our city leaders is that the streets around schools be prioritized for cleanups. We know it's impossible to keep every block in Oakland clean all the time, but prioritizing school means students, families, and staff are less likely to walk through illegal dumping on their way to and from school. The ask here tonight from us is that the schools be treated as a priority in all the areas of all for these issues. And looking ahead, just like we began, I do wanna end up for students on what that vision for safety is. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Sophie Moelet. I am a senior at Oakland Tech High School and I have been serving on All City Council's board for two years and now serving for my third year. And this is a quote as you can see that is directly pulled from students. It says the feeling of safety a feeling of sense of belonging and comfort ness with my peers and staff members knowing that there are people who care about me and are there to support me to become a greater version of myself because safety is not only about prevention, it's about a like a feeling of self belonging and feeling like you're a part of a community. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Do we have any public speakers?

Calling in the name that signed up for item number six, miss Isata Olabala.

I'm not going anywhere. Safety for the issue of anti blackness that's going on in this school district. Safety because we have gangs and we're not addressing that. Safety for emergency planning, particularly for Skyline, which I brought to your attention, for there is no plan to evacuate 1,600 students in case of an earthquake or a fire. Safety for substance.

There's a there's a substantial amount of drugs that are going on in the school district, and it's not being addressed. Safety for bullying. These children are being bullied at high rates, particularly in the high schools and elementary schools. We say that we use the George Floyd policy with no need for police. You have to have policing in the schools. It's required by law, identified it. So that's kind of mixed up how you make this statement we don't want to be involved with the police.

Excellent. Well I just want to first you know thank you so much for you know the presentation and reporting back and the specific slide around some of the feedback and the support that you you know you need from the city. And so I know that we've kind of already began dialogue around some of those things related to illegal dumping and just keeping our streets clean in and around schools and so definitely wanted to move on that. And then I was able to get some information around the crossing guards and so currently within the city's budget we're budgeted for 70 part time guards and two full time program staff. And at this time only 41 positions are currently filled.

And so I believe my team is gonna hand out a flyer where we're you know helping to support the recruitment effort on that. But really look forward to continued partnership on some of the areas of opportunity that you mentioned. And any questions or comments from the school board or my colleagues on this? Council member Gaio?

Oh, I just wanna publicly thank our the schools in my district. I I have about 10 to 15 schools and every every school from Man zanita, Bridge Academy, Fremont High School, they all once a month, they'll come out and volunteer to clear to clean the neighborhood. And it's really important for the neighbors to see even kindergartners come out with me on a Wednesday or afternoon. Because Wednesdays, have minimum day. Right?

They'll come out for an hour, hour and a half. I provide all the tools, the gloves, and and the city trucks to do the pickup, but they walk around the school picking up the trash. And then they go inside the school and they clean the school. But at least it teaches and the neighbors say, oh, wow. Look at school there's children that clean our neighborhood.

And so I just wanna publicly thank our our our schools for helping us with the beautification. And, and I agree with, when it comes to the crossing guards, I think we need to work with the principal. And the only thing that I would recommend is it used to be that we would come to the school, whether you're an elementary, middle we don't provide crossing guards at the high school level, right, or even at the middle school, but we would provide training for your parents that would wanna volunteer to be crossing guards in the morning or afternoon. The city has people that will come and train them, provide them the stop signs and all that other stuff. So that's available for the schools here in Oakland.

But thank you for your service. Thank you.

Excellent. And those flyers are there on the desk and I believe the specific shift is like two two hour shifts. Right? So definitely depends on availability. School board representative Simmons.

First, really strong presentation. That was a really great presentation. You guys give a lot of really good information. I really want to highlight something that one of our students said when something Sophie said that beautiful that the a big a big portion of safety in schools are students feeling like they belong. Students wanting to go to school and students having a reason to come to school that is a immense portion of what our safety entails in OUSD.

I'll give an example with myself, I see a lot of Oakland High School has done this thing where they're starting to scribble on the sidewalks in front of the school and a lot of students will stop and look at it, a lot of students will say it's nice. A lot of students will even go and help the I don't know his name, but the the guy that's outside who does the who does the nice drawings. Even myself I see it and it gives me a good smile before I walk into school and really prepares me to have a good time at school. I think things like that, just simple beautification efforts and simple things to get students ready and joyful to walk into school will really prepare students to to not only come into school, but it will also give students a a good reason to come into school. You know what I mean?

I think that's one thing that the city council members can collaborate with the district with the district members on. I'm really trying to find ways that we can beautify and amplify our schools without having to spend money. So I think a good thing city council members and district leaders can come together and beautify around their school. I know you were talking about that city council member Gayo, but you know cleaning up around the school, making our schools beautiful, making them pretty, making our students you know you look good you feel good. So making our students come into school ready to learn.

Absolutely. I agree. School board member Hutchinson.

Great. Thank you. I really want to explicitly say that we now have a new team in OUSD. And so we are still putting this together. I'm really excited with the new staff that we've added to really bring some expertise and direction to multiple departments that were working on things before.

And so I am very hopeful about how future reports will sound, and how we can kind of progress through this work. I just wanted to cite a couple of things explicitly. I'm very worried about the sunsetting of our partnership with the departments of violence prevention. I really see the violence interruption work that we have been doing in our schools as really an extension of a cease fire policy. And it's really troubling that now we've established that work that it's gonna be hard for us to maintain it without that ongoing support from the city.

I also wanna really cite that we also need help in the district with just the security of our sites, especially outside of school hours. And along with that, I heard about too many troubling stories last year of when our schools would reach out to OPD or even call 911, and never received a response. And so I know that the council has their own relationship with the police department, that sometimes is difficult, but it's really hard for our school sites, especially since we don't have that kind of personnel internally in the district anymore, to guarantee the safety of our schools and just the security of our sites off hours. And lastly, I just wanna take an opportunity to pick up what council member Gaia was speaking about before and how our campuses used to be open. You know, we've had all of these things happen around our campuses and how we set them up that there's never been a full community conversation about.

So most of our campuses now are closed campuses, where they have a gate that is locked off hours. The district just put in a lot of resources last year for entry systems. So now at all of our schools, you have to buzz to get into the school. And unfortunately, that's moved us away from being able to wander down to the neighborhood school to play basketball after hours or on the weekends. And so I I really hope going forward, I just wanna throw it out into the ether, that we can as a community really work on what do we want our public spaces to look like, what makes the most sense in the balance between safety and openness, and all of our the spaces that we all represent should be the anchors of all of our neighborhoods across Oakland.

And I think we've we've moved away from that a little bit for a lot of reasons. So hopefully, again, we can come up with some more overarching plans and policies to really guarantee that everyone of course feels safe and welcome, but also a real opening up and activation of these public spaces. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And I know that myself and my colleagues, we had the opportunity to hear a presentation from Doctor. Joshi who runs our Department of Violence Prevention and she talked at length around the transition. I did invite them here today. I'm not sure if there's a representative on Zoom with their hand raised from the DVP if they wanted to maybe for about two minutes speak to it or next time we can invite them back. Oh excellent, there we go.

Good evening, Jenny Lynch, Deputy Chief of Grants Programs and Evaluation with the Department of Violence Prevention. It has been a privilege and an honor to help stand up this incredible program in the nine schools that it currently operates in in OUSD. We are in our fourth year. It was always the intention to start the program up, grow it, and then transition it over to OUSD eventually and so we will be doing that at the end of the school year but we are working in close partnership with this team and with OUSD's chief partnerships officer to identify additional funding sources both locally and state and federal grants that can hopefully continue the program at the nine sites where it currently operates. I'm happy to take any questions but thank you.

Excellent and then you know I'm happy to have us maybe report back at a future education partnership meeting just to see how we can ensure that this programming stays strong in our schools especially given the success.

We'd be happy to do that.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And I think just for the sake of time I know we're almost at 06:00 and we have one more presentation but any additional comments?

Thank you council member Brown for really laying the groundwork of the continued partnership.

Absolutely. So I'll make a motion to move this item. Just need a second. Thank

you. That was a motion made by chair Brown, seconded by council member Gayle to approve the recommendation of staff and to receive and file this report in committee. On roll, council member Gayle? Aye. Thank you. Council member Houston?

Excused.

Excused. Thank you. Council member Unger?

Aye.

And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Item number four or sorry. Item number six passes with three ayes, one excused to receive and file this, report in committee. Reading in item number five. Receive an informational report from Oakland Unified School District computer science coordinator Sam Burke and Northeastern University Bridge to AI director Ali Chagistar on path sorry, path tech pathways in OUSD and we do have four speakers that sign up for this item.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. And I believe we will hear first from Sam Berg. Oh, Ali. Excellent. Hi, Ali.

Okay. Thank you so much council member Brown and to all of the OUSD and school board members and council members. It's really a privilege to be here and thank you everyone for bearing with this on Rosh Hashanah, our our new year. Good evening. My my name is, she said, Ali Chogi Star and I am the program director of Bridge to AI and interim director of Upward Bound at Northeastern University Oakland, previously Mills College.

And I'm also an alum of Mills College, that is my alma mater. I'm also the mother of a 14 year old gender non binary, black and Jewish boy child, boy born assigned male at birth at least but is going by theythem now and so I represent all the children that don't fit in boxes. They also have an IEP and are at Oakland Tech right now. Bridge to AI is, you know oh, we have some slides, I think, Meadow. Yeah, there we go.

Yeah, we can actually go to the next one, I think. Bridge to AI is more than just a program. It's a pathway for East Bay youth to thrive in an era where AI is shaping every sector. We're preparing students not only to succeed in tech but also to lead with ethics, creativity, and confidence. And we can go to the next if that's okay.

So Rooted in Oakland, and I'm standing here with two of the graduates who are gonna speak so I'm gonna cede some of my time to the youth because that's actually more important than hearing from me. But just to give an overview, we're rooted in Oakland. We launched Bridge to AI in the 2025 part of our paid of an existing paid internship program that started three years ago serving 30 East Bay juniors and seniors, predominantly OUSD. Every participant graduated with a certificate in responsible AI strengthening both college and career readiness. Our mission is aligned with Oakland's commitment to equity in education and workforce pathways.

We can go to the next slide. Thank you. This work is not only possible through strong partnerships with local youth organizations, northeastern faculty, local educators, and industry professionals. Our trainers include AI researchers, software developers, and nonprofit community leaders bridging technical skills with lived community experience. And I will say both of our AI curricular curriculum developers are Oakland based women of color.

Slide four is the next one. Our core program components include ethical frameworks, foundational skills, interactive learning, and college and career pathways support. That includes bringing panels of Oakland based professionals to speak about how AI is used in their own careers and how they do it ethically and responsibly. Students leave not only with technical exposure but with confidence and the ability to question AI and with new connections and networks. One of the things that's really important to me as the coordinator of this is that every student walk out with a certificate that they can post on their LinkedIn, on their resumes and they get recommendations for our full scholarship at Northeastern.

So anyone who goes through the program has the opportunity to apply for a full ride, which is worth almost $400,000 because it includes books, it includes food, it includes every cost of housing, etcetera. And as you saw earlier, we have 10 scholars on campus right now from Oakland. So this year we're gonna, our next steps and our next slide, thank you so much, I should be clicking. Thank you, you're doing everything for me, Meadow. This year we'll train 75 Oakland youth. We're gonna expand to Oakland Tech High School. We're doing this with support from the K PORE Foundation. We've been in touch with council member Brown. We are interested in working in partnership, not as a silo. We are based here in Oakland.

It is important for Northeastern to be a contribution to our city. And we have our community and government relations lead here, Nikki Lauwy, so we're in good company and unfortunately head of partnerships, Carrie Maltzby, just had to leave a moment ago. But we are part of a network of women on our campus who believe in gender and racial equity and so we're we're building these programs together. We are also launching an AI educators working group because we know we don't have all the answers. We need to develop best practices together in community across educators.

That is launching on the thirtieth and we'll be sharing some of the findings that are coming out of this group. Beyond high school, we're piloting AI learning with small businesses, college students, again, civic partners, and we're working with the city's AI working group. Northeastern is continuing its scholarships next year to recognize underrepresented students. And just to close out, I have a quote on the next slide from doctor Rasika Bolero who is an AI ethics teacher at Northeastern. And, you know, Bridge to AI is not about chasing the latest technology.

It's about preparing youth to use AI for good ethically and in the ways that strengthen communities. We welcome the city's partnership in scaling this work so more Oakland youth can access the tools, confidence, and opportunities they deserve and make Oakland the model city we know it can be for our nation. We really thank thank the council members and the school board members for your time. And I was told the youth should use this mic or is it okay for them to just join? Okay. You can just come through. So I'd like to I'm so excited that Tariq Smith can be here and Amina Tonkin from Oakland High and Oakland Tech. Just have a few comments.

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Tariq Smith. I'm in eleventh grade and I go to Oakland High School. One thing I learned in Bridge to AI was how much of a powerful tool it is. AI can be a strong resource for me academically and we should be able to we should be able to be taught how to use it responsibly. I am very grateful for the opportunity I was given this summer at as an intern at Northeastern Oakland. I'll use the things that I learned in the future. Thank you.

Hi everyone. My name is Amina Thongwoon and this summer I got the chance to be a part of the c two c program. And going into this program, I was really wary of it because of the AI aspect, because of the reoccurring theme that we've been talking about during this meeting of literacy levels within our students, and I've been seeing that like every day at my own school site, Oakland Tech. And going into this program, was really wary of it, but as I was going through the program, I was introduced to different ways that AI could, like, help, like, influence the future because AI is inevitably gonna be, like, a big part of this future as we can look at our day to day lives and how it's been taking over with media literacy and just literacy in general. So looking at how AI can help us in the future and how it's already helping us, it's really opened my eyes to a new way that AI can be used in our day to day lives and I really appreciate being able to have the opportunity to be a part of this program and go through all these different workshops.

Thank you.

Excellent, thank you so much and hopefully you all can stay. I know we're short on time, but I'll hand it over to Sam.

Can I get my slides, please? Okay. So I'll talk a little bit about what the partnerships are or like what it looks like in the classroom. So I'm Sam Berg. I'm the computer science computer science coordinator for Oakland Unified School District. Thanks for having me here today. So I'm gonna talk about our in school tech pathways. I want to start with a little bit about the history of computer science in Oakland. OUSB has been at the forefront of computer science education from the beginning. From having some of the first computer science classes in the state of California with the academies at Oakland Tech and Skyline in the nineties to being one of the first districts to offer district wide computer science to middle schoolers in the February.

And throughout this work there's always been a focus on equity. We want these classes not to be open and welcoming not just to some students but to all students. We've also more recently been becoming a pioneer in curriculum, developing data science classes and an AI class which I'll talk about more in just a second. In middle school happens in computer science is where the goal is to have one year of computer science for all students at some point during middle school. That gives a little more flexibility with schools and their schedules to make sure that they can fit it in.

The standards focused on there are the key to set students up for success in high school. Data science, AI, and programming, both physical programming through LEGO robotics and games and animations that they make using code.org. Currently about 34% of students are enrolled in computer science each year in our schools. When you get to high school there are a couple options for computer science. If you're at a high school with a computer science pathway, it's something students opt into at the end of ninth grade.

Then they take computer science tenth, eleventh and twelfth grade With getting a chance to really go deep with their computer science learning. We also have some open electives for all students that can take. So if not in a CS pathway, if you're a school that doesn't have a CS pathway to have the option to take computer science in high school. We know that computer science is a thing that happens just in all aspects of life now. So even if you're in a health pathway, having the opportunity to take a computer science elective is a nice thing to have at your high school.

We also have some things where areas outside the classroom where students get to learn and show off what they know. We have robotics teams at elementary, middle, and high school. They have a couple different events for these teams. We have the Oakland Robotics Invitational where the elementary, middle and high school students all come together. They get to compete against each other but also see the future that they have. Like, I'm in elementary school. Let me see what's gonna happen when I get to middle school. Let me see what's gonna happen when I get to high school. We also have students that compete in the FIRST Robotics competitions against other teams from Bay Area. Another space where students get to showcase their computer science and STEM work is the STEM Fair.

This is the place where students from TK to 12 bring their projects, computer science projects, science projects. It's been at Oakland High the past three years. We've had over 2,000 people in attendance the last year. There's food for students and families, STEM partners presenting activities. The robotics teams come and show off all that they're doing.

It's also a place where you get a chance to see like, oh as an elementary school student that's the kind of stuff I'm going to get to do in middle school. Or as a middle school student that's where I'm headed in high school to grow that pathway. The final outside of school program I'll talk about today is the tech repair internship. This is where during the school year, we gather up all the broken computers and bring them to a group of student interns in the summer. These students have been trained to repair these computers.

If there's a broken screen or a cracked keyboard, they will replace it. They earn industry certification through this program. It's also a paid internship. And we've repaired over 12,000 devices to date. These are devices that didn't work and now that's 12,000 computers that the schools get to use again.

Really with the goal to make sure everybody has what they need starting the school year. All of this is possible because we've had some amazing partnerships. From the National Science Foundation helping us with some curriculum development, Salesforce with our middle school program, Oakland Undivided, who really helped Tech Repair get off the ground. Kapor Center and Kapor Foundation, WestEd, Intel, Measure N and Measure H. Like these partnerships have really helped grow and sustain this program.

We'd love to keep doing all we're doing and think about what are some more options for high school students. Where could we expand to have some more open electives? Also, don't really have an elementary part right now. So what would it look like to start doing some of this work in elementary school? As well as thinking about what's it look like to do CS and tech across the curriculum.

So that data science work that students are learning in middle school, what does that look like in your science class or your social science class where you're you're analyzing large data sets? How can you take that and and find other opportunities for that? One thing I want to highlight is a program called CS for Oakland which just started with the Kapor Center and Kapor Foundation. And it's really to build on the legacy of what's happened with computer science in Oakland, allowing us to continue to innovate and provide high quality access for students in Oakland. So what this is gonna do is they're funding the work to develop artificial intelligence unit in middle school when that's focused on not just using AI tools but like how AI works, what happens under the hood so that they can have a well informed critique about where they should use it and where they shouldn't.

Paying for schools to offer the ACPCS principles test which was starting to become cost prohibitive for some sites. Supporting our robotics teams in STEM fairs. Paying partial salaries for schools that want to add APCS in high school. And then providing professional development teachers and supporting additional CS staff to do all this work. Oh, I'm sorry. The final thing I'll say is opportunities for partnerships. A couple things we'll be really excited for. The STEM fair is too big for Oakland High School. So if anyone knows a large space where we could have like 3,000 families with students, please let us know. Because we're trying to figure out like do we move to the Oakland Arena?

Like where do we go from here? So that's great. There are opportunities for student internships, our students have a lot of skills. Like what are the spaces where, similar to tech repair, they could be doing some of that work in a work environment. We're always interested in long term partnerships with other outside organizations. So if anyone is interested in that to continue the funding for this space. So with that, I'll wrap it up. I know we're almost at time and open it up for questions.

Excellent. Thank you so much. We can hear from the public comment commenters.

Calling in the names that signed up for item number five, Carrie Maltzky, sorry if I am pronouncing your names wrong, Asado Olavala, Ulysses Zadarayn, and Samia Zuber.

I gotta leave, go to the meeting of the regional center of the East Bay because they are denying black vendors the opportunity to serve individuals with disabilities. That's all I do is deal with black people being discriminated against in this city. The one thing I want to say is the lady who presented says they are teaching the students to question AI. No matter what's going on with artificial intelligence, we need to help our students to develop critical and analytical thinking. That is so important, critical and analytical thinking. Use AI, but think on your own. Don't let machines take over thinking process. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Samia Zubair, executive director at Hack the Hood. Thank you for opportunity to be here and speak today. At Hack the Hood, we provide tech skill building and career exploration programming rooted in racial equity and social justice. As an organization committed to serving youth in Oakland, we've deepened our partnerships with OUSD and Laney Community College by providing dedicated paid summer programming for OUSD students, dual enrollment opportunities in partnership with the Peralta system, along with a pathway program into data science in partnership with Laney College. We've also served as an ECHO internship partner and continue to stay connected with the Linked Learning office, computer science department, and programs like the African American Male Achievement Program.

And we look forward to continuing to work closely with OUSD, the city, and other educational institutions and community based organizations to best serve our youth. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments. If your name was called and you're in chamber you can come up to the podium or if you're on Zoom please raise your hand to be easily identified. Chair at this time all names have been called.

Excellent. Well if I may I just want to start by you know thanking both of you for such a detailed just presentation and you know as was mentioned you know I'm a proud Mills alum and you know one of the, my feedback that I often had around just you know the engagement of Mills which is right there located in District 6 in East Oakland was you know it's almost like this hidden gem. And I think that one of the things that I've been really delighted to know is just the intentionality of you know your leadership, Ali as well as Nikki who's also here in chambers of really outreaching to our Oakland students to get them involved, to get them on campus. I was there at Mills at Northeastern about I don't know maybe a year and a half ago and I just saw you know easily like 60 or 70 OUSD students and they were there for I think a conference on a totally different subject. And then to continue to learn more about the Bridge to AI program and just so much of the amazing after school programming that Mills at Northeastern is offering.

It's just really a delight to hear in addition to the scholarships that you've mentioned as well. And so I really look forward to increased partnership because we know that our Oakland students you know they need that support and I think it would just be so great because for myself attending I went to Laney College and then I went to Mills College and attending both of these institutions for higher learning right here in Oakland, right here in the town was just so valuable to me. And so just really wanted to thank you and also thank you Sam for presenting just the rich history of computer science in OUSD schools but also just highlighting the ways that we can continue to build on that foundation because it's needed. Because the other key part is that we really want to make sure that our students have all the opportunities possible for the future. And we know that there's a lot of dialogue going on right now around AI and just making sure that those those pathways are there so that our students aren't aren't left behind.

So thank you so much council members, school board members. I'll start with student representative Simmons and then school board member Bachelor.

Thank you. I well, I first wanna say I think that maybe Mills would be a good place to hold the STEM fair. I know that me and me and All City Council, which is the team me and director Smith represent along with all the students, we hold our annual middle school ethnic studies conference at Mills. It's a very large space, a lot of different a lot of different spaces where you can rearrange and put it and make it to your standard for how you would want things. I know Mills is really involved with our community and they Northeastern.

And they and they they really they really just love to engage. I think that would be a good space to hold to hold it. Very local, very easily access accessible. I also want I had a question. I I was working with Coinbase a while back to bring, a program about, teaching children about cryptocurrency because I know it's gonna be by the time we're around, let's say 20 from now, cryptocurrency is probably gonna be a big part of our lives along with AI.

So do you guys are you guys teaching children about how to navigate cryptocurrency along with any of the I know that can may may may may be a subject, you know, a touchy subject for some. But I think cryptocurrency just to know the ins and outs and how to navigate and what you're doing just to understand kind of like financial literacy. Do you are you guys teaching that? Do you guys have any plans to teach that?

Yeah.

Not at the present time but I will say we are teaming with Ms. Alicia Davis at Oakland Tech who started the money class. And if anyone's not aware of Ms. Alicia Davis' leadership at Oakland Tech, she is a force of nature. She is a PE teacher, she was college basketball star, and she decided financial literacy was key.

She has so many people who wanted to take her class that she had to open it up two classes. She has more than 65 students and she's allowing us to come in and to do our ethical AI foundations course as part of her class. And so we'll be going straight to Oakland Tech. So we don't have to stay out at Mills Northeastern, as you call it, Northeastern Oakland. But we'll also, you know, be happy to come to other schools and I know Oakland High is interested. And part of our summer youth employment program goes across all of OUSD and some Richmond schools as well. So we're welcoming I think we had something like six or seven OUSD schools represented this last summer. But that's definitely something we could keep talking about.

Excellent. School board member, bachelor.

Thank you and I really appreciate both presentations. I do want to give another plug to another partnership that I recently found out about which was a partnership with Roots and Circle CI. And so they did an amazing project wearable tech and had students try to figure out different pieces of how they can put tech together on jerseys to like create like heart monitors, to create sweat monitors and those were it was really brilliant to me because I am not a tech person but I am a soccer person. And so that's what drew me to that exercise and there were so many students there that were like, I'm a soccer player that's why I got involved in this. And I think that the way in which we can make those connections for folks so that they can see the many different paths of many different ways to do tech.

So that exhibit is still up at Chabot Space and Science Center for the next four months so folks can check it out. It was again brilliant to have the conversations but folks were also super excited about this next round cause we're doing that partnership again and they were like, well can I just take my jersey and just make it better? And we're like, yeah, of course you can, right? And thinking about that and having teams do that work together I think is really critical again for the team building aspect of it but also that like the idea of you can always fine tune an idea, right? Like you can always keep going, can always keep dreaming, you can always keep thinking about how to make something better was really helpful.

So again I really appreciate the partnership that you all have, Would love to see how we can work together to bring that to Skyline because I do know that they have a computer science pathway at Skyline. So seeing how we can do that and then also would love to be invited to any of the events that are happening at Northeastern at Mills. As the school board director that represents that district, I wanna figure out how we can partner more together and I also would like to echo director Simmons' request of Mills being the place where we have our STEM fair because again that is another way to grab students and bring them into the campus early, as early as possible so they can see that as a future for themselves. Thank you.

Excellent. School Board President Buhard. Thank you. I know not to touch at this time. Thank you

for your presentation but first off I wanna say thank you for mentioning the connection between tech and social sciences and social studies. I think the more we can make those connections for students who may not they're just real world connections and I think I appreciated that. I also appreciated the ethical piece that you're looking at. I think so many times you hear adults talk about AI as if it's this like horrible thing and I think there are many uses for it. I think, you know, as a former English teacher, I think that certainly, you know, even something like chat GPT can help our students who struggle with writing organizations.

So I think there's many uses for it and I appreciate the ethical part of it. I have gone to the Oakland High Fair for the last two years. Would hate to see it leave the school that's in my district. So I was gonna suggest the Henry Kaiser Center too. So anyway, there's lots of places you can have it at but I appreciate your work and appreciate the work you're doing with students.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Any other additional questions or comments?

Alright.

I just wanted to shout out a couple more partners, HighWave and Gameheads. And we also work closely with Youth Uprising and East Oakland Youth Development Center. So and I've been on the Rise East Learn and Grow team for the last year. So we are definitely in the community and making sure that we're working in Simpatico you know with the organizations that have been on the ground for a long time. Excellent. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the partnership and just the amazing work and we'll be in touch for the location. Excellent. And so I'll entertain a motion on this item.

Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Gayle, seconded by council member Unger to receive and file this informational report in committee. On role, council member Gayle? Aye. Council member Houston's excused. Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Item number five passes with three ayes, one excused Houston to receive and file this item in committee. Moving on to open forum, we had one speaker that signed up, missus Sato Olapala, but she's no longer in chamber.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you so much. I did want to before we conclude our meeting today, I did want to invite our school board president, Brewhard, to say a few words.

I will make them short since I know we have about two minutes left. I really appreciate this meeting today. I think the collaboration, the possibilities for collaboration are certainly varied. I think some of the presentations I think spoke to that collaboration. So again I really welcome working with the city and look forward to really solving some of these issues that we were talking about today. So thank you.

Excellent, thank you so much. Know thank you all for joining this first education partnerships committee meeting. I think that today really showed just the strength of collaboration between the city, OUSD, student leaders and community. And it is our goal that these meetings take place routinely. So our next meeting will more than likely be in mid February and then again in late spring.

So please be on the lookout for those dates. And then lastly just two announcements. Wanted to highlight that on October 4 the Oakland Children's Initiative will host its second annual college day for higher education. And then on October 18 the Ed Fund will be presenting Oakland grown student art and music festival and so I'm happy to share more information. And so thank you so much everyone for joining and this meeting is adjourned.