Education Partnership Committee - Special Meeting

Good afternoon, and welcome to the special education partnership committee meeting for today, April 13. The time is now 03:36PM, and this meeting has come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker's card for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chambers and you would like to submit a speaker's card, please fill one out and turn into a clerk representative, my left, your right, before the item is read into record. Online speaker requests were due twenty four hours prior to this meeting, making that time yesterday at 03:30PM.

This meeting came to order at 03:36. Speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after meeting has began, making that time 03:46PM. And with that, we will now proceed to take role. I will take role for council members first, OUSD board members, and then youth board members. Starting with our council members.

Councilmember Gayo? Present. Thank you. Councilmember Houston is absent. Councilmember Unger? Here. And chair Brown?

Present.

We do have four members present, one absent, Houston, starting with our RUSD board members. Member Lada? Present. Thank you. Member Barry? Present. Thank you. Member Bachelor?

Here.

Present. Thank you. And I will unmute you just to make it a lot easier. And member Barchard? Burhard here. Excuse me, Burhard. Present. Thank you. And starting with our youth board members, member Smith, absent, and member Simmons.

Present.

Thank you. We do have all members present and one absent sim Smith. And moving to our council member announcement. Council member Brown, do you have any announcements for today?

Yep, absolutely. Thank you so much Madam Clerk. It's my absolute pleasure to welcome everyone to the joint convening of the Education Partnerships Committee with our school board members. First I wanted to welcome a school board member of District 1 Rachel Lotta to the Education Partnerships Committee. It's a pleasure to have you join us.

I also will just, I know I made this announcement in September. We have a new mic system which we hope that you love and it does require just press the middle button and then you become in the queue and then we will unmute you. Then because if you keep pressing it'll it won't unmute you. So just wanted to make that announcement. In addition I also wanted to thank Vice President Batchelor for linking my myself and the team with the Oakland Roots facilitating the wearable tech student projects which are you can which we can find it right out in the hallway.

And so special thanks to John Sasaki, Brenda from the career technical education with OUSD, as

well as Nelda Kerr, director of community engagement at the Oakland Roots. And so basically with this project students from across the district were able to submit their designs and select And a select few were giving materials to create a prototype of jerseys embedded with wearable technology. And so I just

want to shout out a few of the finalists. A finalist from Roosevelt Middle School, Syed and Kong D, as well as a finalist from Fremont High School, Maria, Allison, Theresa, Hector, and Fernando. And then some middle school winners from Monterra, Kyler, Melissa, and Lucia. And then lastly some winners from Fremont High School, Cecia who also transferred to Oakland Tech. So this student showcase will be in the council chambers until Friday at noon.

So please we invite you to check that out. And then lastly you'll also know that the OUSD STEM Fair is Wednesday, May 6. And then I guess a few housekeeping things for members of the public. You can sign up for a specific item to which you would need to speak on that. And then if you have a general item not necessarily on the agenda then you would sign up for open forum.

And then I guess lastly to my board members you will find, to fellow board members you will find located in front of you two printouts. And so we wanted to encourage you to invite students in your districts to apply for an amazing opportunity. It's called African American Leaders of Tomorrow. It does state that the deadline is today but if there's some young people that you know that are interested, please reach out to either my office or the office of Assembly Member Mia Bonta and we will ensure that that student is considered. And then lastly before we start our official agenda, I'm gonna take chair's privilege to invite up our 2026 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate finalist, Isabel Sheehan.

Is she here? Right this way. And so, fellow board members, Il Isabelle Sheen is a storyteller who inspires, who is inspired by language, mythology, and community. Her her poetry is about self expression, helping to make meaning and draw connections into the confusion of this world, and capturing moments of feelings and and beauty. Of note is that the she is the one of the finalists for the 2026 Oakland poet youth poet laureate.

And so I believe on Friday, June 5, that's when we will find out who is the next poet laureate. But I wanted to ensure that we make space for a quick poem from Isabelle.

Thank you. God willing, the five year old would unlock eyes with the polymer snarls of rifles his living room rendered a mini diorama of war. Don't let him see his grandpa paraded out, wincing naked except for his boxes and flip flops. Snow brambled on his head. That is to say, God willing, there will be no kings.

And God willing, I'll call my grandma more. God willing, they won't be waiting in Ranch 99, an American plot hole in between the cellophane wrapped chicken feet and durian, or sidling like a grease stain between Chinatown crates of produce. God willing, this thievish, alloyed tongue that my loved ones have coaxed like a stubborn child won't give us away when we have nothing left to give. Only I can tell you where I'm from. I am from the after image of my grandma's cheek, stippled with the poetry of an old country regret we savor like milk and honey.

I come from people who deracinated their spines for railroads, fossilized under Sierra rock slides who haunt the margins of the tintype. I come from farmers who stakes their fingers on the Cali dirt to give you your wine grapes, your hops and sugar beets, but we got picket fences of barbed wire and barracks with the front row of desert dust. And derived from the beatdowns and the sloshed beer, but also from the cartwheels on Buddhist prayer rugs and senbei crackers sundered in half. Look, I'm incising my mandate of heaven on your walls. I'm in your slipstream, reaching out but not in worship.

I'm under the white out, the promises. Know that when I double over in pain, fists clenched like a heart, I'm not bowing to your white Jesus, your bitter ways, but to my loved ones who fell with their hands latched behind their backs. Thank you.

Wow, thank you so much Isabel for an amazing performance and we wish you the best of luck in all of the finalists. And as mentioned you can listen to all of the finalists on Friday, June 5 at Oakland's Broadway Gallery to find out who will be Oakland's next youth poet laureate. I had the honor of attending last year and I have to say that so many of our young people are extremely talented and they put together amazing works of art with words. Okay. And so now we can transition into our agenda.

Thank you chair Brown and thank you for that wonderful poem Isabelle, it was great. Moving to our first item of the day, which is the approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting on 09/22/2025. And we do have one speaker for this item.

Ex excellent. Thank you thank you so much. I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Thank you. Council member Gayo.

I'll second that. Thank you. Moving to our public speakers. Miss Asada.

I hope you don't think you're accomplishing much when you meet in September and your next meeting is in April. But at the meeting you did have in September, the question is what was the follow-up? I don't think anything happened in terms of follow-up. You had a state of address from the Alameda County education superintendent. What came after that?

Nothing. State of the education in Oakland Unified School District, what came after that? Nothing. School safety in OUSD, what's happened since then, September, that we can reflect on today, nothing. So today you have several items and the question is, are we gonna just have the opportunity to sit here and run your mouth, or are we gonna be productive and come up with some actions that can affect the city and affect school children?

I don't think so, because I've been coming to these meetings for years, they don't go any more than two meetings a year, and if you're not going to do anything, dissolve it. Because you can't pretend with the lives of children, you can't act like you're doing something, you have to effectively do something, and that's not happening with these meetings. So I won't allow you to sit here. I have to come here because the city of Oakland and OUSD has failed to accommodate the needs of African American children and African American people in this city, and that's around the arena of learn teaching and learning, around the arena of housing, around the arena of jobs, economics, 99% unemployment, policing, your sanctuary city, but you can't control your own police, but you wanna control the ICE people for twenty two years with the NSA. So I'll be here to to accommodate anything you bring up today, I'm gonna have a challenge to it because you are failing my people, and you don't have a right to do that.

Thank you for your comment, miss Asada. Noting council member Houston present at 03:46PM And o OUSD youth member Ariana present at 03:47PM. Thank you. We do have a motion made by council member Gaio, seconded by council member Unger to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting on 09/22/2025 as is on roll. Council member Gaio?

Aye.

Thank you. Councilmember Houston? Aye. Thank you. Councilmember Unger?

Aye.

And chair Brown? Aye. The motion passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting on 09/22/2025 as is. Moving to item two, determination of scheduled outstanding committee items. And this is also known as your pending list and you do have one speaker for this item.

Excellent, thank you so much. And so we could, to my fellow board members, we could use this opportunity if you had a comment around future scheduling items that you wanted to comment on. But of course I'll defer to the administration if there's anything that you have for item two.

Go past this slide. Then at the next walk, turn right.

Administrator Navarro? No items. Excellent. Thank you. And so I'll make a motion to move this item and just need a second.

Second.

Moving moving to our public speaker, miss Asada.

I'm not surprised you don't have no recommendations. What you should have as a scheduling items, for instance, Head Start and the child, OUSD child development department, a collaboration on if we are working on the same things or anything to see what's happening. Safety evacuation of students, that has to be collaborated with our fire department, our police department, our health we don't have a health department, Alameda County health department. So safety of evaluation of students could be discussed. The truancy procedures that the police department has on their stop data, they are supposed to be stopping truant students, how do you co with OUSD, what happens to those students once they are stopped by OUSD?

Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, that's a collaboration, a discussion, how we're working out, what we're doing, the renaming of Cesar Chavez, parks and schools, youth summer employment, that can be discussed, housing for teachers, that could be discussed, Issues of illegal dumping on school campuses, and homelessness community members that are around the campuses. Now, one thing that there's a law that said food vendors are supposed to be a certain distance from school campuses. Right now you got school school campuses with food vendors on the campus. It's at foot I'm sorry, at Fremont, I've seen it there in other schools. The issue of background checks, school district is not doing a good job with that, you all need to have a collaboration of background checks, how important it is.

The police cadet program, coordination on how you work with those young people who are going into the program. So you got a lot of things. Nobody brought up anything. You have a lot of things that you could put on the agenda.

And council member Houston, you may unmute yourself and begin your comment.

Yeah. I had something. Thank you. And and nice to see everyone. I had something I would like to bring up to the chair.

Councilmember Brown, we spoke about that about I would met with the pre the principal of Castlemount, which is in my district, District 7, is that we they have 600 around 643 students in our school and about a 130 are homeless. I would like to bring that up so we can speak to that at our next meeting because that's critical. I mean I mean, we if I was homeless when I was going to high school, I wouldn't have made it. Right? So I would like to bring that up to the chair, see if we could put that on the agenda just to speak to that and how we can help these students. Thank you.

Thank you so much, council member Houston. And then you also order in the chamber. Thank you. We all you also mentioned about repavement of streets surrounding schools as well. And then council member Gallo. Yes. Yes.

Thank you. I was here when we first mister Raystron also, when we first put this partnership committee together, because I served on the school board. But the goal of it was how do how does Oakland Unified and the city of Oakland work together to make a better neighborhood for the city? And but it and I'll give you an example. One example was the sharing facilities.

And at one time, as a matter of fact, it's real simple to understand, you're looking at KTOP. This is the city this is the school district channel that we worked together to share with Laney College Peralta because the government gave Oakland Unified three channels. And and they allowed for for this k top to be used by the city. And but so I think then the other one has to do with facilities because at one time, we would we would have our facilities department work in unison with the OUSD facilities department to maintain the neighborhood clean and safe for our children and families going to school and going home, from school. So I think that what needs to happen and what are the priorities that the city of Oakland has.

And certainly, we're looking for space to house our homelessness or to house our needy children that need to be housed, that need to attend school. Because those are realities growing up here in Oakland and East Oakland and seeing what would happen at graduation times when clearly no one knowing who's not present. But as I think we need to work together. And I'll give you another example. At one time, you know, you well, you have the Administration Building still closed.

Been closed for twenty thirty years. And it still could be remodeled, redone to use to house people. But at that time, we had offered Oakland Unified, mister Raystron knows Oakland, relocate, because they were looking for a space, to relocate here at 02:50. And that was all scheduled, but the politicals got in the way between the superintendent and, at that time, mayor Jerry Brown, and that fell apart. And where the then school district had to rent or lease a property on Broadway.

Right? So I think there are there are possibilities with the needs that Oakland has in terms of facility space to accommodate those that need housing. And secondly, the Oakland the city of Oakland has resources. As an example, we gave the funding the for the for the crossing guards. At one time, the they were under the police department, but we put them under the Department of Transportation to make sure that every elementary school in Oakland had a crossing guard for the children to make sure that our streets were safe.

So there are many examples where we can work together, but bring those items that we can share. Responsibilities to be able to address the needs of the taxpayer that's supporting our schools and supporting our city services. So I'd you know, I I think we ought to develop those needs that we can both agree upon and and be able to address them financially as well as people support. And I would, you know, really welcome that opportunity to reestablish this partnership with those goals in mind to bring Oakland together. And because right now, considering where Oakland is today, you know, I have never seen Oakland at this level growing up here in Oakland.

And certainly within our school district, You know, I've I've been trying to stay, and we do the cleanups around our schools, from Fremont High School to Thing College Now every day because we don't have the custodians who we used to have that would maintain the cleanliness around our schools. So my employees in my office say every morning, 6AM in the morning, we're out there cleaning around the schools so when children attend the school, they have a clean environment. But those those are just some examples of areas that I would like to pursue. Thank you.

Thank you council member, Gallo and also Houston. I've taken notes, and we will have a item later on in the agenda where we get an update on the status of the crossing guards just as a as a note of some of the feedback that we received prior and wanting to make sure that we're knowing we know exactly what that partnership can look like. Director Batchelor.

Yes, thank you. I'm really excited to hear from my colleagues the energy around affordable housing for OUSD students as well as the rest of our community. We've been moving forward in the facilities committee feasibility study to assess the 10 properties that we have as vacant properties. We will have that study at the June and would love to bring it to this space so that we can have a conversation here as well. There is a seven eleven committee resolution currently in our facilities committee meeting as well this week.

Where we'll be talking about a seven eleven process for some of those spaces. And so again, as we kind of finish out those processes, we can bring them to this space and have a shared conversation as to what we want to do there because there are measure w dollars from this county that we can tap into if we work together collaboratively and would love to have that conversation here so the public can hear but also continue to work on that together. Because I agree it is tragic that we have so many homeless students. It is tragic we have families and elders in our community that are homeless. And so we need to be taking advantage of any properties that we have and utilizing those spaces to make sure that our communities stay housed, stay safe.

So yeah happy to bring that forward to this committee as well.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so I know we have a motion and a second on the floor so if we can call the vote given the time. Thank you.

Thank you chair Brown. We have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Gallo to accept determination of scheduling outstanding committee items. Also, is your pending list as is on roll? Council member Gallo? Aye. Thank you. Council member Houston? Aye. Thank you. Councilmember Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. The motion passes with four ayes to accept the termination of schedule outstanding committee items as is. Moving to your item three. I will now read the item into record. Receive an informational report on the Oakland Children's Initiative and its partner organizations, Oakland Promise and First Five Alameda County. You do have two speakers for this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so at this time we'll invite Jennifer Caban, Sandra Urs as well as Kristen Spaniels to present. We'll put fifteen minutes on the clock for the presentation. Thank you so much.

Alright. Very good afternoon chair Brown, council, school board members. We also have some oversight commission members here. Deep appreciation for the opportunity to present to you all today. My name is Jennifer Kabang. I have the privilege of being able to serve as the accountability officer for the Oakland Children's Initiative. I'm joined by our contracted implementation partners. That is First five Alameda County and Oakland Promise. You will hear from them a little later today. I just wanna know if you can hold your questions to the end of the presentation. That would be amazing. If we can get the slides up. Awesome. I'm gonna try to do this on our end. Okay.

So purpose. The Oakland Children's Initiative is essentially a thirty year voter approved investment in Oakland's children, youth, and families. We are focused on expanding access to early childhood education, and creating real and affordable pathways to college and beyond, particularly those who are furthest from access. But OCI is more than a funding stream. OCI is designed to change how systems are working together.

The reality is is that we have really strong programs here in this city, but all too often family are navigating systems that are fragmented, and simply just not aligned. OCI exists to address that by investing into into a cradle to career continuum, better aligning city, OUSD, the City of Oakland ECFS program, which is also known as our Head Start program, as well as community partners, and really holding a shared accountability for this work together. So what makes OCI distinct is really in its structure. Our implementation partners manage each fund. They manage subcontractors, and they support the infrastructure building for this work.

I want to take a quick note here that there's a priority alignment with OUSD and ECFS, again, the Head Start program. That is based on a requirement that is explicitly noted in our charter. Oversight commission ensures transparency and accountability for this work, and this is all undergirded with our five year guidelines. And those are the anchors for our strategy and investment related to the initiative. Again, this is not just about funding programs here in the city.

It is about building a system that works better for Oakland's children, youth, and families. So what you see here is essentially the organizational chart, structure, and flow of the initiative. The next few slides, I'll be very clear. I'm going to gloss over. They are there mostly to support stronger context for this group, so I'm going to run through these really quickly. Okay. So here you have the Early Education Fund and College Access Support Funding. These are the sort of parameters that they work under. They are distinct and different. I will note that, so please be sure to read that.

The oversight commission and accountability officer, these are responsibilities as bodies. Here, you'll see the early education fund. Again, these are five year guidelines. So if you're wondering how do you invest your dollars, we have to align to these guidelines explicitly. These ECE, guidelines are in priority order that is different from the next one. So these are just ECE, guidelines. Next up is the college access support five year guidelines. These are not in priority order. That is very distinct, and different. Okay.

So impact to date, we are now in our third full year of implementation and are are already seeing meaningful progress. First and foremost, investments are reaching children, youth, and families here in this city. More children are accessing early learning opportunities. Families are receiving navigation support, and more young people are accessing college supports, persistent services, and scholarships. Secondly, partnerships are strengthening.

They're not perfect, but we're deepening alignment across the city, OUSD, ECFS, and community partners, moving deeper into shared planning and coordination of This work moves at the speed of trust as you all know, and that foundation continues to be intentionally built, over time. Third, we are addressing system barriers. So through implementation, there are clearly some challenges that we ran into. Some relates to enrollment. Some are administrative and and complexities.

Some have gaps in data, etcetera. And so we are actively working to remove those barriers in this work, but because programs alone don't drive outcomes, systems actually do. Finally, accountability has taken root. We are strengthening program planning, evaluation. We do have results based accountability measures, and we're ensuring investments are tied to outcomes and continuous improvement.

So, all right, so what is next? So at the center of this work, as I mentioned earlier, we have five year guidelines. This sets the priorities for the work. It defines who we center, and it really anchors our accountability. So as we look ahead, we are entering a critical phase.

We'll be using evaluation findings, community voice, and partner input to sharpen the strategy. Our focus is moving forward is clear, working to deepen alignment across partners particularly between the city and OUSD. I don't know if you've garnered from my presentation so far, but OUSD is a beneficiary on both ends of the spectrum of this work. We need to strengthen partnerships toward true system integration, so not just funding programs, advance the next phase of five year guidelines that assume forthcoming, and really build the internal capacity that's needed to sustain this work. I have been the only staff at the city for almost four years at this particular point.

Now I will note that this capacity is building, but it is absolutely needed as a one man, one woman band, if you will. This slide right here is just a look at some of the partners that we have funded over time. Some you might notice. I would just note that OCI really represents something rare. It is a long term investment public investment paired with structured design to align systems and service to our children, youth, and families.

We are the second city in the state of California to have local funds for early childhood access, and we added college access on top of that. There's not another municipality in this country that is similar in structure and frame. We are literally building this from the ground up. We are continuing to build momentum, strengthen partnerships, and beginning to see what's possible when alignment becomes real. If there is anything that changes because of OCI, it's not because we funded ECE.

It is not because we funded college access, but it is actually in the way that we partner in this work to be more effective for our communities. So it is with your continued partnership and ability to champion this work that we can break down barriers, strengthen systems, and deliver on the promise that this city has made to its children. So I thank you deeply for your time, and I'll pass it to our committed implementation partners, Oakland Promise, that is Sandra Urst, and First Five Alameda County, that'll be

at least a 40, actually,

to share more on the intimate details of each one of the funds.

Hi, everyone. Sandra Ernst. I wanna thank chair Brown for inviting us, the committee, and as well as the school board for inviting Oakland Parks to present. I'm going to be very brief in my presentation. We have shared with you our data for the fuller data and investment details earlier, I believe, last week.

And all the numbers you are going to be hearing about today is through June 2025. At the very core, OCI exists because children and families should not have to piece together support on their own. Our job is to build the conditions that make that support feel connected and seamless. Oakland Promise is proud to help carry out the city's five year guidelines through both direct service and our work as implementation partner. And none of this works without shared partnership, especially with OUSD as our most important system partner.

Our North Star is simple. We want Oakland children to have real pathway to social and economic mobility. For us, that means three things, stronger financial capability, better access to quality educational and workforce pathways, and deeper support so student and families can move from early childhood through a college and career. And how we deliver on these are through direct service, coordinating and convening, as well as grant making. Our impact to date since we launched ten years ago have seen real results.

We have enrolled nearly 3,400 income eligible babies with college savings account, seeded with $2,000,000. We have awarded more than $34,000,000 in scholarship to about 7,000 Oakland students. And since 2016, our kindergarten to college work has reached more than 45,000 kindergartners in Oakland. The data is very clear. Early assets matter.

Children with even small college savings account are much more likely to enroll in postsecondary education. And for those in college, even a $500 emergency can threaten their persistence and completion. Through OCI, we have also invested nearly $10,000,000 in community partnerships across Oakland. Oakland Promise is a credo to career continuum and not a single program. We operate across a credo to career continuum, which is a proven national framework built on the idea that outcomes are shaped at every stage of a child's life.

We work this way because the experience of the child and family should feel connected and not fragmented. For us, that starts in early learning, continues through k to 12, and extends into college and career. And none of that works without deep partnerships with OUSD, Peralta Community Colleges, because our schools are where so many of these supports come together. One way that Credo to Courier strategy becomes real in specific communities is through our place based work in the East Oakland Promise neighborhood. Our first federal application in 2022 was not successful, but our accountability officer through SCI gave us the opportunity to stay with the vision and build a proof of concept in East Oakland.

That helped position us for our current federal federal planning grant. We chose this geography and these schools for several reasons. A needs assessment showed a clear need for stronger alignment around family stability, attendance, safety, and student support in District 6 and seven. Additionally, those students were furthest from achieving academic state standards. Promise neighborhoods are also a proven national model.

What makes ours powerful is that it was built with OUSD, with community based organizations in the neighborhood, and other partners, and that is the definition of collective impact in action. And in today's federal climate, we are grateful to assembly member Mia Bon to push for state support state funding for promised neighborhoods through AB nineteen sixty nine, which speaks to the kind of leverage this work can create. What we have accomplished primarily through OCI is many. As OCI's implementation partner, our role is bigger than direct service. What Oakland Promise brings is the ability to connect the pieces, partnerships, regranting, data, evaluation, and technical assistance to our partners.

And that work is producing real results. Since we started with OCI, college savings account enrollment are up 126%. 12 grade scholarships are up 58%, the number of scholars in postsecondary now being supported to persist is up by 62%. When we talk about partnership investments, we are really talking about stewardship. Through our annual RFP process, we are making intentional investments in the community, not just moving money out the door.

Our subcontractor investment grew from $2,100,000 in OCI's first year to $4,000,000 in last year's RFP cycle. That means 28% of our OCI allocation is now flowing to local, very small and local businesses and systems partners above the city's 25% requirement. Next. Looking ahead, our focus is on scale, alignment and continuity. We are strengthening the data systems and partnership structures that help us see what is working and where we need to adjust.

We take our role seriously because this work can change the trajectory of Oakland students, but only if it stays grounded in data, accountability, and real partnerships across the city, OUSD, and the community, and most definitely, every one of you in this room. When Oakland aligns around children, Oakland children do better. That is the work, and that is our promise. Thank you for your time today. And now I'd like to pass it on to my colleague at First Five, Lisa Forte.

And I also have to apologize that I will have to leave. However, my chief program officer is here as well, my chief program officer, CFO, they are all able to answer your questions later. But I have a board meeting starting in five minutes.

But I

will pass it on to Lisa Forte. Thank you.

Good afternoon, committee members. My name is Lisa Forte. I'm the director of strategic initiatives and planning at First Five Alameda County. I'm here behalf on behalf of our CEO, Kristen Spanos, who had a previously scheduled vacation and sends her regrets. But we're pleased to join you and share more about the work of the early education portion of OCI.

Just make sure I know what I'm doing. Okay. To give you a little bit of context for the Oakland Children's Initiative, there are two local ballot measures in Alameda County that provide funding for early care and education. The Oakland Children's Initiative, also known as Measure AA, generates approximately $30,000,000 annually through a parcel tax. And the Children's Health and Child Care Initiative for Alameda County, also known as Measure C, generates approximately a $150,000,000 annually in addition to other countywide resources through a sales tax.

While today's focus is on OCI, together these investments represent a substantial and coordinated opportunity to strengthen and align the early childhood system in our community. First Five is charged with coordinating these efforts, helping to bring these investments together, strengthen alignment across the initiatives, and build a more connected and coherent early childhood system. In this capacity and specifically for OCI, the Oakland Children's Initiative, First Five is the contracted implementation partner for the OCI Early Education Fund which essentially means we serve as a fiscal intermediary. We work in partnership with Oakland Unified School District and the City of Oakland Early Childhood and Family Services as prioritized in the legislation, as Jen mentioned. Our role is to maximize OCI dollars alongside other local, state, and federal funding streams including measure c to ensure funded programming aligns with the legislation, community input, and the overall vision and strategies for OCI and to build a strong and aligned system to advance OCI efforts and support coordinated implementation across partners.

By leveraging these dedicated early investments and in partnership, we're working toward advancing a bold and shared vision of universal preschool in Oakland and building the coordinated system needed to make that vision a reality. To Jen's comments, we have an opportunity in Oakland to serve as a national model for what is possible. To achieve this vision, we're advancing four key connected goals. Number one, to expand access and enrollment, to close the enrollment gap for the estimated 2,700 unserved eligible three and four year olds Oakland. This includes strategies to make full use of existing capacity, investing in facility expansion, fully staffing funded classrooms, and supporting families with outreach enrollment while reducing barriers to access.

Goal two, enhancing the quality of classroom experiences includes strengthening program quality by improving facilities, increasing resources for developmentally supporting appropriate practices expanding comprehensive family supports, behavioral health, and inclusive learning services for children. Goal three, elevating the workforce. This includes efforts to recruit and retain early educators, expand career pathways including apprenticeship programming, increase wages, and provide coordinated professional development and coaching. Goal four is to strengthen the system. This focus is on building and sustaining a strong early learning system by improving coordination across partners, aligning funding and resources, expanding family and community partnerships, improving data and accountability, and communicating progress and impact for transparency.

We've already seen meaningful progress towards these goals and our vision for a universal preschool in Oakland. As a result of collective OCI efforts and investments, enrollment is projected to increase among three and four year from families with low incomes, excuse me, by 44% from the beginning of OCI in fiscal year twenty two-twenty three to FY twenty six-twenty seven, moving us closer to closing this gap. That means about one in three of the roughly 6,300 children ages three to four and families with low incomes in Oakland are enrolled in a program funded by the Initiative's Early Education Fund, around 1,900 children. OCI is intentionally focused on serving young children and community with the highest need. Enrollment patterns reflect this commitment.

The headline to take away is that the two maps have a similar distribution pattern. The five most common home ZIP codes for OCI enrolled children are the same five ZIP codes with largest population of young children living below 100% of state median income, which is about $122,000 for a family of four. Notably 68% of children enrolled in OCI partner sites and 20 four-twenty five lived in one of these top five zip codes. I wanna note that for the map on the left, we'll be adding the expanded OUSD TK hubs for this coming year. Excuse me.

Bad time to get a frog in my throat. In addition to prioritizing children from families with low incomes, OCI also maintains a strong equity focus on who is being served. In alignment with the OCI vision and five year guidelines, programs are reaching a diverse group of children and families. For example, fifty one percent of enrolled children are dual language learners, 50% come from single parent households and almost a quarter have an IEP or individual education plan. OCI also prioritizes reaching children from Oakland's diverse communities across race and ethnicity with a focus on those who have historically faced barriers to accessing high quality early learning.

This intentional approach helps ensure the initiative is advancing equity and reaching the children and families it was designed to serve. Looking ahead, we are an important moment. Through OCI, we have the dedicated resources that allow us to build the capacity and infrastructure that are needed for success to make strategic investments to move us closer to universal preschool for all of Oakland's three and four year olds. Moving forward, FIRST V will continue advancing OCI's vision and goals through coordinated planning, deep community engagement and strengthen fiscal leveraging, data and evaluation, and align with measure c to inform the upcoming 2627 program year and beyond. Thank you for your attention and I think all of us are collectively happy to take questions.

Excellent. Thank you, all so much. And did you say we had any public speakers? We'll hear the public speakers first. Thank you.

Thank you, chair Brown. Calling in our public speakers. When you hear your name, please approach the podium. State your name for the record. You do have two minutes. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified. As practice, we will take in person speakers before Zoom speakers. Sam Davis and miss Asada.

Good afternoon, board and council. It's great to see you all. I'm Sam Davis. I'm on the Oakland Children's Initiative Oversight Commission. And I'm a big fan of their work, but I did not come to the commission as I came to the commission as a skeptic, to be totally honest.

I don't know those of you who are connected with Mayor Libby Schaff when she was in office may remember that there was some conflict with Faith and Action East Bay where I was on the board back when Measure AA was on the ballot. There was a lot of skepticism that we had about Measure AA first because we had, you know, experience with illegal dumping and the lack of progress from the city on that front. And so we felt like why another tax measure? And so just on that note, hope to see you all at Axeville Gospel next Monday to get yet another update on illegal dumping. But coming back to OCI, the other issue was also just to the degree to which the college access piece felt not necessarily perfectly aligned with OUSD's theory of action, which is around measure and measure h, and seeing both a balanced approach to college and career for all.

So, I did come as a skeptic, but Ms. Caban and Ms. Ernst have totally convinced me. I'm a big fan of of their work. I've seen how miss Caban really approaches it with an equity point of view and has asked hard questions of OUSD before approving the grants to Sankofa and to Garfield.

And I think the other piece of that is is and when you go to the voters with the tax initiative, you really wanna show them that that money is being used for something over and above just the base of what the city and and district are expected to do. And I think in the in the increased access for early childhood that you're gonna see at Garfield and Sankofa, and hopefully in the future at Lockwood after the CCPA building is completed, you know, I think that is really the kind of change that the voters wanna see from their tax dollars. And I've also heard great things about how miss Ernst is collaborating with OUSD.

Thank you for your comment.

I am going to make a request that any time you have youth on the agenda to put them up front so these young kids don't have to sit here and wait. My concern is the process that went about for funding for Garfield using measure AA and supposedly measure C funding. When this was brought to committee of the facilities and other committees with OUSD, it was under the umbrella that the first five Alameda recommended this be done. First five Alameda only job is to implement whatever funds made available, but it was presented as if they were doing the recommendation for the funding. I asked the question, when was the $19,000,000 approved and by who?

Because I went to the meetings of February and March, and I went back to meetings, I never saw put on the agenda for approval $19,000,000. $19,000,000 over twenty five, twenty six, twenty six, twenty seven, and 2728 has been approved. You haven't even got to 2728, but it's been approved that money will be available $88,300,000.0 for 2728 fiscal year. So who approves it? This lady told me she approved it.

So I came to you to ask, and I read documentation that says the city council is supposed to approve it with recommendation from the committee. So my problem is the process. I want Garfield to get whatever they need, they deserve it, and everybody to get whatever they need, including black children, which is not happening at McClyman's, But you didn't go through a process that was legit for this 7 for this $19,000,000. That's why I keep bringing this to you in other meeting.

Thank you for your comment, miss Lozada. And that concludes your public speakers Friday on '3.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Board members, any questions or comments on the report? I know that I was very delighted. Well first off thank you all for reporting.

I know that while I've been out in community I've received a lot of questions around just the current status of the children's initiative and so I think that so much of what was reported the information in the slides just really helped to paint a very clear picture. And I was also really delighted to see the numbers that were showcased from Oakland Promise around how many of our young people. It said over 34,000,000 in scholarships were awarded to 7,000 students which I just think that that's absolutely phenomenal and just showing how we're really investing in the future of our young people. And so I'm really looking forward to you know the next you know I guess three to four years under the Children's Initiative and just the amazing work to follow. Any questions or comments?

School Board Director Barry.

Hi, yes. Thank you so much for the presentation. I'm really proud of the work that you all are doing. One of the questions I have is about what's left like the barriers or the threats to the work that you've envisioned and what more we still need to build in order to make sure it's effective. The other question I have relates to where we can go to hear or see what students and parents are saying directly about the programs that OCI is funding.

And then on the data research part, I was excited to see how robust the data infrastructure looks like it is and I'm wondering if part of the data strategy is in the spirit of coordination, which I heard is a part of the vision, there's data sharing agreements or ways that we can see who is being served by what program, are they being served by multiple programs and to what extent so that we could really understand how the work we're doing that OCI is funding is shaping the ecosystem.

I'm writing down just to try to answer all your questions. So threats, I think what has been interesting, it's just difficult to get this work off the ground. Like I said, we don't have another model that's framed in the same way and a very unique sort of structure in the partnerships and contracts that we have. That has been difficult because there was no planning time, so it's like hit the ground and running and go. And then now we're hit with sort of like the federal debacle that is occurring.

We have city, county, school district all deficit. And so whenever there's public funding available, there's always a clamoring of like filling the gaps. So there is a balance and intentional conversation about how do we approach that and really an eye towards sustainability. I have conversations regularly with our implementation partners. We are not plugging ships in a hole.

This initiative is around for thirty years and how do we sustainably invest in what the community needs are now, but in the longer term sort of vision. So not throwing our dollars all in, you know, one particular bucket, but, like, how are we maximizing? We have lots of conversation about leveraging funding state, federal, and local resources to make sure that we're maximizing the Garfield Sankofa that we had deep conversations about, about like like, we don't fully fund this. Like how do we sustain this? We can do this a one time with carryover dollars, funds that were unspent from previous years to make that possible.

So those are the things that we're sort of balancing and we're about to iterate the next five year guidelines, right? So we don't wanna up end anything, we wanna make sure that there's stability that's embedded into that particular piece. So that's one approach in terms of threats that we're being very cognizant of and conversation is really important with our council members, our school board members, and with our partners and communities. So I'll be clear about that. And so where can you hear about programs?

So at the end of this month, the the fourth Thursday of the month, April 23, we have contracted American Institutes for Research a while back. We are required to do a two year evaluation. And so they have had interviews with family members, with youth, with administrators, with educators, with folks who are on the front line related to the initiative. And so you'll get to hear more about sort of their personal experiences and uplifting some of recommendation based on what we've initially done with the initiative. And then we'll have to do that again in the fall, get an RFP going, so that'll come to you in the very near future.

Data and research. So the thing about the MOUs, First Five has been really great. They do have an MOU agreement that they actively work towards with the city, with OUSD to get data sharing for individual students. That has been really challenging. It's not you know, our system partners are difficult to work with and data is sensitive. So that is a challenge, but also one that we've worked towards. Oakland Promise has done the same. They worked intentionally with OUSD to get some agreements. There's more work to be done there. The infrastructure is not fully built.

They're doing the same with charters, and that's a piecemeal sort of individual charter conversation, but that is work that we're working towards in the infrastructure. So we did a whole line of presentation to our commission about like what were the gaps, what do we have now, what are we building towards. So each year with our results based accountability measures, we've been able to provide more and more information about who, what, when, where, and why.

Yeah, absolutely. Excellent, those were really good questions, thank you. And so if no other questions or comments on this item I believe we would just need a motion to I guess receive and file on this.

So moved.

Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by chair Brown to receive and file this in Education Partnership Committee on roll. Council member Gayo?

Aye.

Thank you. Council member Houston?

Aye.

Thank you. Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes. To receive and file this in the Education Partnership Committee. And

then before you move to the next item, did the office of the city attorney have an announcement to make?

Yes. Just a little housekeeping. Noting for the record that council member Houston is participating remotely in this meeting pursuant to government code five four nine five three point eight point three C 4, travel while on official business, and checking with council member Houston to disclose whether anyone 18 years or older is in the room with you, and if so, the general nature of the relationship.

Oh, my my my daughter. My daughter. She's how old are

you? 16. 16.

She doesn't count, but thank you, council member.

Alright. Okay.

Order in the chamber. Thank you so much. We can move on.

Thank you moving to item four.

Open if you have any questions.

Thank you so much.

Item four, receive an oral report from the director of public works, Liam Garland regarding illegal dumping mitigation near school campuses. And you do have one speaker for this item.

All right, thank you so much. So before we hear from Director Garland I just wanted to make a quick announcement. So board members before we receive this update from Director of Public works we did have some transitions within the city of Oakland and so I did want to provide a status update on crossing guards, the hiring of crossing guards for our schools. As many of you know this is an important service that is funded by Measure BB facilitated through Oakland's Department of Transportation. And so to date there are 34 crossing guards that have been hired with eight additional scheduled to join on April 27 bringing the total number to 42 positions filled.

And then at this time there are still 31 positions that remain vacant. We also provided a printout of the job description and so we can also send you a digital copy as well to share with your networks. So just wanted to provide that update and then now we'll just hear an oral report, from our, public works director Liam Garland. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon council members and board members. My name is Liam Garland. I'm the Oakland Public Works director And I have a short, verbal presentation covering the illegal dumping program, and then I'll follow it up with some specifics to schools. In Oakland, we follow what's called the three e's, and that is eradication, and that is the idea of picking up that illegally dumped material as quick quickly as we can, enforcement, and then education.

And I'm gonna walk through those three because there's a lot that's happened in those three areas and a lot that is literally happening as we speak. And I'll share updates along the way. So first, there's about 10,000 tons per year that is picked up from the city's streets and sidewalks. And these tons are picked up by our Keep Oakland Clean and Beautiful division. That's something you probably heard of before, KOCB.

And KOCB is responding to over 25,000 service requests per year. So if you pick up the phone and call 311 or go through the online submission process related to legal dumping, that's a service request. And then those requests turn into about 30,000 work orders that our staff are are closing out. Not everybody knows that the same staff that are picking up that illegally dumped garbage in our streets and sidewalks, they're also reporting to our encampments, and they're providing garbage service to those encampments. And so that's another big part of the work that there isn't a lot of awareness about.

The In the last several months, the mayor and council have helped us find additional funding to do some work that because of budget constraints we had had trouble doing. And that is really, instead of just waiting for those three one one requests and going out and abating the dumping, we want to do more proactive abatement. That's where we're sending crews out to the places where we know, dumping is recurring, and we've been able to stand more of that work up in the last couple months. So that's our proactive abatement work. We're also working with the mayor and city council to find additional resources for some of KOCB's equipment needs.

Some of you may have seen our lightning loaders. Those are essentially the big dump trucks that have a claw attached to them. And I think a lot of us have seen some of the larger piles in some of our streets where literally it would take crews of, you know, 10 over a couple days to abate all the dumping. You can have a lightning loader out there and have a pile abated in less than a day. We're working with council to find resources to rent a light lightning loader and then to get more of those lightning loaders to help, leverage the hard work of our staff.

Council has also given initial approval, and we'll have a chance for final approval tomorrow on something where we're gonna be potentially the first in the nation to move forward. And that is around using aerial imagery to identify dumping piles and then be connected to our kind of back office work order system so that the aerial imagery would identify the pile and it would actually turn into a work order so that our forces could proactively abate it. We wouldn't have to wait for a 311 call. It would all be happening seamlessly. Not only that, it's able to identify the contents of the pile.

And so it's able to identify that there's a mattress, for example, in the pile, which you might think, well, that's not that big of a deal. It's all part of the pile. But we actually have a separate truck for the mattress because the mattress gets recycled. And so that's the kind of operational improvement that we think is gonna be a real game changer for abating illegal dumping. So that tomorrow, we should have approval for a six month pilot of that aerial imagery, and potentially, if that six months goes well, expanding that across the city.

So what I just covered are some things we do in eradication and then some things that are happening that are gonna improve our ability to pick up that dump material in the in the right of way. There's another area that deserves a lot of attention, and that is around enforcement. And what we want to do is we sufficient enforcement so that the number of tons reduces. We're not looking to get to zero because we think our forces, if we can reduce the tonnage by ten, fifteen, 20%, we then think we're staffed to be able to pick up that illegal dumping quickly enough that residents will notice a significant improvement in their quality of life because the the piles will be out there for less time. And so what we've got currently are seven authorized positions called environmental enforcement officers, and these are like trash detectives.

They go through dump piles, and they look for, material in that pile that they can connect to a person, and they issue citations based on that connection. Those EEOs, or environmental enforcement officers, they also have the benefit of illegal dumping cameras. There's about 36 cameras citywide. We've put them in locations where dumping is frequently, and that footage is reviewed and we can cite based on what what we see through that footage. So that combination of literally digging in the trash to identify violators, but also using those illegal dumping cameras.

Those are both things that our EEOs do. We also see a real need to increase the essentially, the collections around this so that there's a real deterrent effect. Our collections rate is low, and there's a few things we're doing to try to increase that. One is if you look at how parking citations are issued, our parking citations come through a handheld device. Pretty straightforward.

That device enables two things. It first enables more citations to be issued more efficiently. The other thing is it helps on the collection side to make sure you've got easy to collect on citation. And we'd like to move to that model in illegal dumping where our EEOs have citation devices and that these citation devices can help us put together the package that's required so that we can collect on citations when necessary. It's also important to know that for folks who can't afford to pay citations, we do have a a program for folks to work off a citation without necessarily having to pay the citation.

They can essentially do volunteer hours to not pay the citation. There's also some cool things going on statewide. The mayor has worked with state senator Aragine and then with counsel to to treat, again, illegal dumping citations like parking citations, where if you don't pay your parking citation, you can't get your vehicle registration when it needs to be renewed. And this is a way that we think will increase collections because people don't want their vehicle registration delayed, and so it'll we'll be able to increase the compliance on the payment of those citations. And, again, there's a lot going on as we speak.

Tomorrow, counsel is going to make a final decision on essentially doubling citation amounts from their current from their current levels. So there's a a lot going on on the enforcement side of this equation. Couple more things. We're working closely with, open police to provide footage from our illegal dumping cameras that they can analyze and look for, whether there's sufficient evidence, say it's a commercial dumper or maybe it's a repeat dumper, that they're looking to build a potential criminal case that, the Alameda County District Attorney may prosecute. All of this is to say that this enforcement, we wanna be really careful not to over enforce, but instead get to that minimum level of enforcement that then will bend the curve on the amount of dumping that's occurring in our streets and sidewalks so that our forces can get that material off the street as quickly, as can be.

There's a last e. So we covered, eradication and enforcement, and that is education. And I'll just, I'll just discuss one critical near term issue, which is every Oakland renter or homeowner is entitled to a no cost bulky pickup at their residence. That that bulky pickup can pick up mattresses, couches, all sorts of garbage and debris, and it's severely underutilized. Between nine to 25% of the capacity in our city, to do these no cost pickups, I said that wrong, we only use about nine to 25% of that capacity.

So we have a lot more capacity to to do a lot more bulky pickups. We wanna get that message out because we think the more bulky pickups that happen that way, we're then gonna prevent some of that material that otherwise would end up on our streets and sidewalks. So that's, that's a near term thing that we're focusing on in education. And council, in May will have the opportunity to, dedicate some more resources to help us in that, education effort. Let me turn and slow down a little bit and talk a bit about the nexus with schools, which is everything I just described, the better we get at that, the fewer tons that are occurring in our streets and sidewalks and our neighborhoods, the better that is going to be for schools.

None of us want kids who have to jump over, around, or even avoid a block because of dumping that's occurring there. So if we get those things right, that should benefit our children and families in terms of fewer spots illegal dumping spots around schools. However, we will continue proactively abating dumping in the immediate vicinity of schools in the couple weeks, before school starts. So that's something we we do traditionally, which we will do again this, early August, where we essentially take all the school sites, we make sure our forces that I described, abating illegal dumping, get them around to make sure that the perimeters of those school sites, the sidewalks, the streets, that we get them as clear, from dumping as possible. There's a couple other things that we're focused on.

In the the short term, I wanna make sure that every school site has a dedicated representative who can escalate, situations where a dumping pile has been around that school for too long. And so that person could be a principal. It depends on the school. It could be a principal. It could be an office manager.

Office managers do a lot in schools and this could fit within their work. Or it could be a facilities manager or a custodian. And public works will work with the district to figure out how to get the information both about three one one and then importantly how to escalate requests that are not being abated in time, ultimately to the point where we'll have contact information for one of our staff, in case those escalation procedures don't work so that we can get, get to that pile. So that's a short term, collaboration, I'd like to get moving with the district. And then longer term, we're starting to build a back office system that will take service requests that come into us, figure out whether that service request is near a school, and then prioritize the request if it is.

So that's something that's gonna take us a little bit longer. We've made some progress to date, but we haven't quite gotten across the finish line, with it. I would guesstimate that in the next three to six months that I could share back a favorable report that that we have started to prioritize those requests that are within the vicinity of school in OUSD. Those were the reports I was hoping to share and happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Excellent. Thank you so much Director Garland. I know that a lot of the feedback that I received in conversation from both our president of the board and vice president was around illegal dumping in and around schools and so I guess specifically you are talking about O311 and ensuring that illegal dumping around schools is something that we're able to track a little bit more easier and that's the goal within the next three to six months. Excellent.

Yes.

Thank you for that update. I believe that I saw student school board member Smith raise her hand.

Yes I did. Thank you for your report. Really appreciate it. I just had a few clarifying questions I was hoping you could answer. First I was just wondering how often do these cleanups take place when you aren't relying on people to call? So how proactive is your team? How do you decide what locations to prioritize when these aren't school sites? When people are issued citations or like a ticket, where is this money being allocated to and how does it improve your program? And do you guys collaborate with any OUSD students at all allowing them to volunteer or intern?

Woah. Those are great questions. Okay. Great. Let me go reverse order and I'll do the best I can in terms of answering them.

Several of us see a huge opportunity in the next several years to run I don't know the right words exactly for it, but a public education campaign around a dumping and having the school district and students be partners in that campaign. That kind of public education effort, we're thinking, could really drive a change in norms around dumping and that equivalent to recycling that students could really be the advocates and vehicles for explaining to more general families, the proper ways to dispose of things. So I see a lot of opportunity there. The citation revenue, as far as I'm aware, I'm not a 100% sure of this, I'm pretty sure it goes into the general fund. And I will say that our collection rates are so low that the, there's not a ton of revenue, so there's not an incentive to enforce for revenue.

Because cities have gotten caught up, when they're depending on revenue, and it leads to over enforcement. That is we're nowhere near that in terms of Oakland's illegal dumping enforcement. And let me jump the harder question so I can have a little bit more time to think about it. You asked about, at least the way I heard it was how much we were doing proactively versus reactively. And we're probably around five to 10% proactive.

And let me explain a little bit about why that's the case. Because about ten years ago, I wasn't here so I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing we did more like 30 to 40% proactive. What's happened in the meantime is the sanitation service we provide for encampments, that's taking up a lot of the illegal dumping unit's time. And I don't mean that in a negative way. What I mean is our city has stated a value to provide that sanitation service for our encampments.

And so our illegal dumping forces are doing a lot of that work, picking up trash, providing sanitation in encampments. And it's been hard to then continue the proactive work. That between that and then the three one one request, that's taking up a lot of our time. So again, I'd guess five to 10% would be, our proactive work. In terms of prioritization, it's a mix of things.

We do the way service requests come in and the date that we receive them, we do wanna try to tackle those requests in chronological order. But then what'll happen is our forces will get the list of of three one one requests in the morning. They've gotta figure out a route to try to close as many of those requests as they can. And that's more art than science. And what I mean by that is some piles can be picked up by one person in one mini packer truck in three minutes.

Other piles, it's gonna take a couple days to pick up all of that material. It requires heavy machinery that's gotta that's gotta get to the site. So there you're talking about supervisors who are looking at all of this and they're making judgment calls about, okay, how many staff do I have today? How equipment how do I have? Who do I send where? And so that's where it's much more art than science in terms of the prioritization. Am I missing one of your questions? Or did I get, did I get? Okay.

Excellent. Thank you so much. President Brewhart.

Yeah I just want to follow-up on those questions. I did have concerns about the reliance on site personnel to report this that I know people do report like you said. I mean you kind of explained that in your prioritization. But I'm wondering if the, when you use the aerial, surveillance, if that's possible then to prioritize trash around schools.

It could be. Part of that will be proving, or determining whether the pilot is successful and then whether it can be scaled. And I think the key question there will then be, how do schools fit within all of the corridors that need need the aerial imagery. Does that make sense or no?

It does. I'm just again concerned like adding more onto our office staff of of reporting. I'm I'm thinking of some schools I've gone to where there's a lot of trash around, the kids are really from multiple streets coming into the schools. And you know again taking that time from the office staff or from the principal's work to make multiple calls to the 311. And again, I appreciate your prioritization. But is it possible again if we used something like an aerial that you could target routes to schools maybe or something like that?

Absolutely, that is possible. And another benefit of that is when you make a three in one request, you know, not all of us are describing that pile in the same way and it doesn't always give our operations folks enough to plan accordingly for who needs to go out and that aerial imagery solves that problem. So absolutely.

Okay.

Thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much. Vice President Batchelor.

Thank you. You mentioned that once a year tenants and or homeowners can get their trash picked up in a bulk trash. Can you explain just a little bit about the tenant piece? Is it each year per tenant in a specific building? Because folks you know sometimes transition and leave to different

It's each unit.

Okay.

And if the unit changes hands, that next unit occupant would be entitled to a no cost bulky pickup.

Okay. And that would just be through waste management?

That's right. And

then you also mentioned illegal dumping cameras. Now there are so many cameras now in Oakland. Are those connected to the flock cameras or is it a different system?

They're different systems. And it's only about 36 cameras that we've got to date.

Okay. And where are those cameras concentrated in?

Oh, what we've done is we looked at all those service requests and work orders and we looked at the neighborhoods that had the highest concentration of those and we move cameras around there. That's the other part about cameras that there's not general awareness of is we wanna find locations where there's repeated dumping. Often, you know, you've got you got a camera up there, the dumpers can figure it out. It means we need to move that camera to the next location. Mhmm. And so the cameras do move around. It tends to be labor intensive but they do move around.

And my last question is, I remember very far back in the day there was a zone, there was a zones. Right? So you had your specific zone, you clean that zone and now we moved into a ticketing system. I'm wondering if there is a possibility or what it would take to move back into a zone type system because I do see, you know, folks Jack London Square here downtown cleaning up every day and those areas tend to be cleaner than other parts of Oakland. So just wondering if that's something that you guys are also thinking about or if the council is debating.

It is. When I described council, the mayor, and staff finding some additional resources to do more proactive abatement work, it is through that zone system.

And let

me just describe that a little bit more is I wasn't here when those zones were created, but essentially it was creating zones across the city and within those zones saying these are the top corridors for dumping. And so now what we do is we've double checked that those are still the zones where dumping's recurring and we're looking at those corridors and where we've got the opportunity to send out our crews proactively, they work through the corridors in those zones. And so that is something that work has ticked up and we'd like it to tick up even more. It's also dependent on resources.

Okay. And just my last statement, I appreciate the work that our that your department does to support our unhoused community. So I think again like we wanna make sure we are keeping folks safe and healthy and one unhealthy person in the community creates issues, right? And so thank you so much for your work on that. We'd love to continue this conversation as well. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much for those questions. Director Garland, I know that Can I ask you One second? I just wanted to piggyback off of some questions that Vice President Batchelor made and just make sure that we don't miss this. So in the passing of the budget last year there was significant investments that the council made. Can you touch on technology piece? Because I know that we will probably be moving forward with some of those more advancements as well. And then I know there was also a question around like and you mentioned it around a public education campaign And we also made some investments in that program as well.

That's exactly right, council member. So in last year's budget, there was a significant investment on the technology side of illegal dumping. As we sit here today, that's gonna help fund that aerial imagery that was just described earlier. And so that pilot is getting off the ground because of that. The other, part that that, that funding will get to us is additional cameras, including, cameras that are solar powered.

And that might not seem that important, but, by be by being solar powered, what that does is it frees us up from PG and E and a power source, and it means we can more easily move those cameras to the locations of most needs. So we're pretty excited about that. And then council member, to your point, coming in May, there'll be a series of expenditure authorizations related to that that are going to allow us to, for example, the proactive abatement I've described to help increase that proactive abatement. There's a pretty significant contribution there. And then I believe the bulky family pickup there is specific advertising broadcasting public education around that piece that will be funded through that as well.

Excellent. And is that through the Oaktown Proud program?

It could be, it could be, yes.

Excellent. Okay, thank you so much. School board member Simmons.

Thank you. I also I appreciate your report. I appreciate you for coming out. But I also I would like a call to action you know where we're sitting at a table with a bunch of community leaders, a bunch of district leaders, and a bunch of people who represent these districts. Know we have a lot of community outreach, we have a lot of community pool. So what

can

we do with our channels to get outside and help that's you know not just a report to a a bunch of city leaders. What can we do? How can we use our channels to get outside and you know help pick up the trash outside you know. Council member Gayle he goes outside and he like you say wakes up at six in the morning he goes and he cleans around the school districts. He cleans around the schools so what can I know some of us also hold our community cleanups, but I want to know more ways we can get on the ground and help that's not just legislation or cameras or any of that?

Board director, I love the question. Oakland has a very strong volunteering ethic. It's represented on our council and through our council members. We also have data inside public works because we support a lot of those volunteer efforts. And last year, we supported over 10,000 volunteers, in, the city of Oakland on, cleaning and greening efforts.

So to your point, there's a lot of that kind of work happening for folks who are not yet participating but would like to. If you jump on the city website, there's an adopt a spot web page that'll walk you through how to participate. I do wanna just acknowledge that for some residents, it's frustrating to hear that because the scope that they might have volunteered for years and years and years, and they still see a a challenge that has not been solved. And it's really I I think I think the obvious point is true. It's not gonna be solved by one thing, but all of the things working together well, the volunteering plus we've gotta get better on eradication, enforcement, and education.

So I think that Adopt A Spot program, that's a place to start. I'll say, one more, which is our environmental enforcement officers, they can receive footage of illegal dumping, and they can investigate that footage. Now I'm not recommending that anybody proactively go out and try to get a a footage of somebody, in the process of illegal dumping, but people have cameras and they do catch footage of illegal dumpers in action. That can get emailed to our staff at EEO, that's environmental enforcement officer, EEO info, I n f o oaklandca dot gov. So those are the two calls to action that I can think of.

Hey, I also have a follow-up question. Sure. If let's say you know you just walk in and you see an illegal dumping, what do you recommend somebody does?

First do whatever feels safe. I mean that's the number one thing. But if there's a place to safely observe what's happening and call 311, they will take a report on the spot where somebody can call into 311 and describe what they're seeing, describe the vehicle, etcetera. Again, if the observer really feels safe and they could, take footage of that and then, get it to that EEO info at Oakland CA dot gov that'd be ideal.

Excellent. Any additional questions? Excellent. Well thank you so much, Director Garland for these important updates and we look forward to continuing the dialogue and also just the positive changes that we know that we will see with some of these changes that both the mayor and the council have been making making in this space and under your leadership. And so congratulations as well.

Thank you so much.

You so much.

And there's bulky bulky pickup flyers right over on the table over here. Thank you.

Okay. Perfect. And so we can hear from the public speaker.

Miss Asada.

If the issue of illegal dumping at school sites would be considered a serious issue, somebody would have taken opportunity to mark when it's on the agenda for the ordinance to strengthen illegal dumping enforcement to have in that ordinance a prioritization for schools that are dealing with illegal dumping. That's not on there, but you could have taken the opportunity to do it. The other thing is, this presentation should have at the top of the list, what are the schools that have been challenged highly with illegal dumping issues, and how have those issues been resolved. For example, on Fontaine, I think the school is the academy of knowledge, they have tremendous challenge with illegal dumping. Another school is McClymonds, and then the process, the process as I understood it from McClymonds is, the office clerk makes a call to someone from the city to come pick up the illegal dumping, And that takes quite some time.

But what has happened is it takes so much time that the custodial staff at McClellan starts picking up all the illegal dumping around the school. And I'm talking about every week on a regular basis illegal dumping, pieces of furniture, mattresses, everything you can name. So this reporting process, you guys aren't serious. What is going on at certain schools that we have intervened to stop the illegal dumping? And in some schools it's very serious, you had a generic report that doesn't specifically look at the schools that are being challenged and how you work through it.

So when you all decide to get serious, just like with the last issue, $19,000,000, who approved the $19,000,000? You just you just overlooked it and went on to something else. And these children have to

Thank you for your comment Ms. Asada. Alright,

thank you so much. And so just really want to also take a take a moment to appreciate you know Vice President Batchelor and just the team at OUSD for the partnership because I received a detailed list of the schools in the district that are impacted by illegal dumping and have communicated that information to our public works team and so that's why we're proactively working to you know improve these conditions. And so thank you so much for the continued partnership. And so at this time, we'll just entertain a motion to, receive and file this report.

That's correct. That would be just.

Member Houston. I'll I'll make a motion. I just need a second.

I'll second that. I'll second it. Council member Brown.

Thank you so much, council member Houston.

And I had something to say too.

Oh, go,

go ahead, council member Houston. Sorry about that.

Oh, yes. So so so I'm in transit right now coming from, Southern California, and it's gonna be great what you're gonna hear. It's about the graffiti, vandalism, illegal dumping, and about our children. And I just wanna make announcement that in the neck this month, we're gonna have a whole school come down to city hall. They're going to ask questions.

They're going to act like, or pretend or or act like they're the public to act ask questions. It's gonna be beautiful. So and I like to, thank mister Garland that he picked up council member or not council member, but Nate Miley's, three e's, eradicate, enforce, of of education, which is powerful, powerful. I appreciate that. But I did have one question for, mister Garland about the EEOs.

The EEOs, they were supposed to be trained, and I'm in traffic right now. I'm I'm running down the the airport to get my plane. Mister Garland, the EEOs were supposed to be trained on Okay. Hazmat and hazardous materials so they can document, create more data. What happened with that money that was put to the side for that training on from the budget? That's the question I had had

for him.

Council member Houston, I appreciate the question. And I know that you've asked this question in the past, so I apologize for not having an answer tonight. Give me two or three days. I'll reach back out to you and get you an answer to that question.

Okay. Because it's very, very important because the data and metrics and measures have to be, data collected because because if we're just picking up trash or identifying it as just trash and they have asbestos, they have hazardous or contaminated material, and they're dumping on our streets, committing a crime against our community, that documentation will allow the DA to prosecute to the full extent of the law. And that's very now I didn't ask for too many things in the budget. I didn't ask. I asked for a few things, and I was able to receive everything that I asked for.

And I wanna know where that's at and where our training is for our EEOs, not only to collect the data, mister Garland, but to actually protect them from what they're doing out there also. So I like to greatly appreciate you, council member Brown, for allowing me to participate

I believe you're lucky to

practice on this online virtually because it's very important when I'm a brain for the kids. It's just beautiful. It's great. So thank you so much, mister Garland. Get back with me on that because that's very critical to the EAP that's about to be passed and the collection of the data so we can actually prosecute to the full extent of the law. These people that are committing crimes against our community. It's very important, and that's what I'm a stick to. So thank you so much.

Thank you, council member Houston. And, director Garland, you will, get back to council member Houston. Thank you so much. Thank you. Excellent.

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Brown, seconded by council member Houston to receive and file this oral report in the education and partnership community. On roll, council member Gallo?

Aye.

Thank you. Council member Houston?

Yes.

Thank you. Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes to receive and file this oral report and the Educational Partnership Committee. Moving to your next item which is item five. Receive an informational report from the Oakland Youth Commission and you do have one speaker for this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. So thank you to Sarah and the youth commissioners. I know that you all have a board meeting at 05:30 but you all are welcome to take as much time as you would like. And so thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much. It's very loud. Good evening council member Brown. Thank you for inviting us and all members of the education partnership committee. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Sarah Tyrus, and I am the proud staff to the Oakland Youth Youth Commission. I'm joined by three commissioners who are gonna be giving our twenty twenty four, twenty five annual report along with current updates of our work and some areas for support. And we have a bunch of other Oakland youth commissioners here in the front row that are joining us as well. And we do have a youth commission meeting tonight. So we will be heading there shortly. Let's see here.

This does the slides? Alright. So just a little bit about our current commission this term. We have 16 youth commissioners. We have two or more coming from each of Oakland's seven districts, so we have a full commission.

In our last term for 2425, we had 19 youth commissioners between the ages of 13 to 21. We also had two or more youth from each district. We had 12 that were returning and seven new commissioners. We increased our BIPOC representation from 80 to 95% and increased our OUSD public school student to 79% up from 35% when I first started four years ago. Last term was also the first time in over five years we didn't have any youth commissioners vacate their seat midterm.

And we have a vast majority now that stay on the commission more than one year. So very proud to be cultivating a culture of accountability and increased support so that youth commissioners can serve their full terms and we can really build and develop their leadership. I'm gonna turn it over to my youth commissioners to give you the bulk of the report and tell you what projects we're currently working on.

And yeah.

Hello, everyone. My name is Edemevo Ojai. I'm 17 years old. I live in District 4, and I serve as the co chair for the Oakland Youth Commission. Like any other commission oh,

can I

have that?

Oh, perfect. Like any other commission, we we we meet regularly every other Monday, specifically 16 times a year. And in these meeting, we've been able to meet with different city departments organizations who've taught us about the issues that affect Oakland. And we've also been able to meet with council members such as council member Unger and council member Brown as well as assembly member Mia Bonta. Okay.

So if okay. The Oakland Youth Commission isn't like any isn't just a commission. It's also a youth empowerment and leadership program where youth are set on the track of advocacy and civic engagement. Yes. In our commissions, youth develop the skills that they need.

On the left here, you can see the programs that we have been that we've received, and on the right, you can see the skills that we have gotten from doing those programs. As you can see from our end of the year survey, a 100% of commissioners reported an increase in personal confidence in sharing ideas. 90% represent reported an increased awareness of city issues and local policies. 94 reported increased confidence in writing public comment. 84% reported greater confidence speaking in leader with leaders and elected officials.

68% reported increased their public speaking skills, and 63% gained experience participating in campaign. So, yeah, we just highlighted a few of the skills that we gained from being on the commission. If you'd like to see the rest of them, you can look at our annual reports. So in order for the youth commission to function well, we have to dedicate time for community building. We can we continue to host two retreats a year to allow our group ample time to build our relationship to strengthen our work throughout the year.

Our group created strong connections and for many of us, this is the only space that brings together youth from different neighborhoods and backgrounds from all around Oakland. I wanna share a few of the youth's reflections from our evaluation to show you the impact that the youth commission has on building our leadership. From our district five youth commissioner, Katie Liang, she said, I've learned how powerful youth voices are in driving change and it's inspired me to remain involved in local politics and to keep advocating for what matters most. And from our co chair last year, Amber Johnson, she said, I felt so uplifted and supported when I shared something in the Oakland Youth Commission. This confidence I gained helped me succeed in anything I put my mind to.

As you can see, the Oakland Youth Commission isn't just a commission, but it's a place for students to learn about the local government and to build a lifelong skills that's important for being successful in our community. Now I'll pass it on to my co chair, Ashley, to talk about some of the things that we're are doing this term that we did last term as well.

Good evening members of the committee. My name is Ashley Chinyum, I'm 17 years old and I live in and represent District 3 on the youth commission as well as serve as the co chair alongside Mehta. I wanna start with an overview of our groundbreaking work last term on Oakland Youth Vote. As you know, after four years of waiting, we finally got to vote for the first time and made history as the first youth in America to vote in any major city. Although we had only two months to prepare for the first youth vote in 2024, we got to work right away and youth commissioners were at the forefront of every effort to inform, register, and inspire youth voters.

We did a lot of tabling at schools and community events including town nights and the Oakland ballers game to inform the community about youth vote. And in the end, our youth commissioners alongside their peers on the youth vote coalition, teachers, and other allies were able to register around 1,500 youth.

The

registration process isn't straightforward or accessible in many ways. We learned paper registration is much more effective and that tabling didn't register nearly as many people as when we got into classrooms to do it. We will take these important lessons into the next election cycle. This year? Next year? It's this year, guys. Next fall. In order to kick off early voting and celebrate the very first youth voters in our city, we organized an event on the steps of the county courthouse. We invited media outlets to come and document our youth making history, and I was proud to be able to be the first youth in the city to cast my vote for school board. Check out the picture on the slide capturing this historic moment.

Before before this, I assumed not many youth would be interested in voting, but the more I poured myself into the work and the organizing, the more I talked to youth, the more I realized it wasn't true. Youth were really excited and energized to vote, and I was proud to be able to help them do so.

After the election, we continued our work doing media interviews and talking to other groups who are interested in expanding youth vote around the country. With talking to them, it was very inspiring because I was able to share what I learned in my experience to other people. Up on this slide, you can see me talking at a San Francisco radio show, KALW, l w, where I got to speak to other youth organizations who are interested about expanding youth vote to their cities. We also were able to talk at the UC Berkeley Goldman's School of Public Policy where they held a youth vote symposium where Sarah and Ashley spoke to people all around the country about our work with vote. And in recent months, we published a youth vote toolkit for cities to use as a guide in launching their own campaigns.

And we continued our work for youth vote this term as well as to get ready for twenty twenty six election and to make sure youth is supported better. And we are sure some more about that in the end.

Good evening, members of the committee. My name is Palai Llamas. I'm 16 years old and I'm currently an at large commissioner for the Oakland Youth Commission from District 4. And last year the Oakland Youth Commission also partnered with RECAST which stands for Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma which is a federal grant program which funds youth led projects in Oakland addressing community trauma. And through these programs, youth across Oakland are able to take part in the youth granting board to review these grant proposals.

And last term, four youth commissioners joined the youth board that designed the application and grading rubric to decide which programs would receive these grants. And through this, we learned about the importance of youth philanthropy and received hands on experience with the grant making process. And it seemed to be a natural fit for the youth commissioners to collaborate with this city program and use our interpersonal skills and leadership to empower other Oakland youth. We've also continued this work with recast this term and I'm proud to be serving on the youth board currently And we've also expanded our grant making work this year to increase youth voice in the grant making process through other organizations and through this I've joined the planning and oversight committee as well as have been a scorer for the Oakland Fund For Children And Youth proposals and this has given me opportunity to empower, I mean I'm sorry, to see the different types of organizations that foster and uplift the youth in Oakland. And additionally we have also continued our work with as an active member with the CTE TAE Hub Coalition, a housing complex initiative where transitional age youth who are housing insecure are able to live and receive variety of resources helping them through the pivotal transition from youth to adulthood and our focuses include meeting with workforce development leaders to consider what pathways and programs the hub should incorporate as well as continuing advocate for timely need of construction at 1025 2nd Ave as the site is currently an abandoned building that unfortunately leads to increasing violence, drug use, and blight that is disrupting the lives and education of many youth in the surrounding blocks.

We have also been able to share our training with city employees in Oakland Youth about adultism and youth empowerment. In these trainings, we talk we break down power, oppression, and intersectionality and use Hart's Ladder of Youth Empowerment as a guide. The final component of the trainings provided participants with a list of ways to incorporate youth perspectives in their work as adults and as city employees. We also provided this training for 30 OEC students and for 40 adult volunteers at CASA. I had a great time facilitating these meetings because these meetings gave a space for youth to share their concerns and the experiences that they face with depression and as well we gave them feedback on how to address those problems in the future.

We also wanted to share a few honors that we have received last year, the first being from the Oaklandside News Group inviting our former co chair Amber Johnson to speak on a panel at their change makers event on youth leadership and also from the Oakland Museum for inviting our other former co chair Olivia Richardson to speak on their panel at an event about democracy. And lastly we were very honored to receive the award of youth organization of the year from Assemblywoman Mia Bonta. In addition to this, individual youth commissioners received many accolades for their work both on and off the commission and we are very proud of our work last term and enjoying building off of it this term. Next slide please. And on that note we would like to invite you to an event we are cohosting with Evoke on May 2 in West Oakland to reimagine what we could do with the space that is currently the 980 Freeway and we are hoping to engage about 25 youth in the work to repair the harm done by the construction of the 980 and reimagining a just future in Oakland.

And finally, we wanted to share that the Oakland Youth Vote Coalition just published our evaluation report from the first youth vote. Our key take our key with our key takeaways and recommendations to ensure youth vote is adequately supported and institutionalized in Oakland. We will be providing a full presentation next week at the school board meeting on the twenty second and we will share with you all a copy of the report and we hope that you will read it. Our hope is that Oakland is a city where all eligible youth are registered, inspired, immobilized and to vote and exercise their voice and electoral power. In a time where democracy is under attack, we are proud to be a city that is cultivating young lifelong voters at an early age.

For this to happen, we need the school board to give direction to the superintendent and schools to develop a comprehensive plan to implement civic engagement curriculum in eleventh and twelfth grade social study classes. Along with the day devoted to voter registration conducted in class with teacher support and opportunities to attend student centered candidate forums, we will share our proposal in more detail next week.

That concludes our 2024, 2025 informational report and current updates to the Oakland Youth Commission and we want to express our gratitude for your time and opportunity to serve on the Youth Commission and we look forward to any future opportunities to partner more with our both our city council and our school board members in the upcoming year. And once again thank you so much for your time and we are happy to take any questions you may have.

Amazing, thank you so much. And so before you leave I just wanted to take an opportunity for all of the youth commissioners that are here, can you stand up? Well thank you all so much for that amazing presentation just really showcasing just all of the What it takes to serve on the youth commission, right? The time, the commitment and then also the passion behind it as well and just how hard at work both returning youth commissioners and the seven new commissioners that joined. I know it's been an absolute pleasure of mine to meet many of you on multiple occasions and so just really want to encourage you all to keep up the amazing work.

So so proud and board members do you have any questions or comments? President Brugard.

Yeah, thank you for an excellent report and thank you for all the work I know that you've done on the CTE day hub. We are getting ready to demolish the building so we are slowly moving forward but I think again looking forward to being able to make that a reality. I did have a question about the training that you did with the adultism and maybe we could talk about that more offline but I think that's something that the board would also be interested in doing as well. So again, thank you. And

then vice president Bachelor.

Yeah, can just share that we offer it both for adults on how to partner and work with youth and we also offer it for youth and we'd be happy to offer that for the school board or any school leaders.

Thank you. Excellent. School board member Simmons.

I just wanna say congratulations. I'm very proud of you guys. I've done a lot of work with you guys over over the course of my high school career. Me, director Smith, and really anybody, any other youth in this room, Caleb, Sophie, Ashley, but I really just want to say I'm super proud of you guys and I use you guys and all of the other youth organizations in Oakland as kind of like a influence for how I chair my council. So I really am indebted to you guys and I appreciate you guys a lot. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I just also want to uplift the Oakland Youth Vote student school board director forum that you all put up each year at Fremont High School. I like love getting questions from students because I know again like you all are now able to vote and also have the most expertise about your school experience so sharing the that is really great. Would love to see something like that for the city council so that they can also answer some of these questions especially around some of the hot topic issues that students have in our city. Because again, I really want us to make sure that we are creating a city and a city culture that supports young people and has then young people want to stay in Oakland and or come back to Oakland.

And so making sure that we are having those conversations. I wanna double tap on the training around adultism and youth empowerment for the school board and I also am really interested in what you all want to move forward around the civic engagement piece because like going to eleventh and twelfth grade classrooms to do know your rights workshops around immigration, doing outreach around housing and the housing crisis that we have, young people really want to figure out what are the action moments in which they can like take action and support some of these causes or or change the narrative around what's happening. And so would love to incorporate that as a part of the work that we do with our eleventh and twelfth graders throughout the district. So look forward to your presentation on the twenty second.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Any other additional questions or comments? Alright. Can hear from the public speaker. Miss Asada?

So the question for me, who is gonna continue with the indoctrination? Who's gonna be the one to step up and say, I see a problem, I see things that are not done right, I see misappropriation of funds, I see weak, I see wait weak oversight, I see lack of transparency, all you're gonna be a part of the system continue to be what it is in place. Who's gonna challenge the system? I challenge you young people on that voting process. In order for you to vote, you had to ignore the constitution of the state of California, that says you have to be 18 to vote, oh, we're ignore that.

You went through a registration process, the registration form that you used was for student for children 16 who were applying to be licensed drivers, and with that application for becoming a licensed driver, you could pre register when you become 18 to vote. That's the form that you used. It had no ability to check anything as far as the authenticity of where you were living or anything else, but you went along with it. You see, you're in a position where everybody's gonna smile in your face, and tell you you're doing great. You're not doing great till you start to challenge what's going on in this country.

Not just with Donald Trump, but with all of these people up here. Because I brought before them a situation of $19,000,000 not being done right, and they all ignore it. And I do it all the time with this o u s d and with this city council, and you're gonna be a part of it, and you continue to be in this situation. Who's gonna stand up and challenge the wrongdoing in the city and in school district.

Thank you for miss Asada.

Alright. Thank you for your comment. Was that the only public comment?

Okay. Okay

excellent. Alright so on this item we can receive and file but thank you all for spending some time with us and thank you for the amazing informational report and also wishing you all a great board meeting later and don't hesitate to stop into any of our council offices at any time, and it's always a pleasure. Thank you. Oh, and then council member Houston, go ahead.

Yes. I'd just like to say I'm proud of every single one of you for standing up, coming up. It's hard to speak to the public. I'm just proud of you. Just keep up the good work. You guys are older. I'm a start working on the younger. You guys just keep up the good work. That's all I like to say. Thank you.

Is there a time for our co chair to respond to comment?

Or Absolutely. Go ahead. Okay. Okay.

Hi, everyone. Ashley again. And I just wanted to highlight and honestly just bring to light the five long years that youth fought for Oakland Youth Vote, you know. It started back in 2019 after foster resources were cut in the district and youth were empowered and decided to make a change within the district. And, you know, there are so many youth that came before us that you see on this stage and before the youth even sitting in the crowd that fought so long and hard and weren't even able to see the fruit of their labor.

I just wanna say I'm so proud of the work that they've done and the proud of the proud of the work that my fellow youth commissioners and the people in the youth vote coalition have done. And this is really such a historical moment, you know? It's not something to to just take light of. I think that we should really just like, it's a crazy thing we did. We've made history in Oakland, right here in Oakland, kids 13 to 18, kids in college, and we're gonna you know? And we've created this change, and I think that that is just so beautiful and it's something to highlight and it's something that affects thousands and will continue to affect the thousands of Oakland Oakland youth. So thank you.

Okay. Alright. Thank you so much and we can council member Houston, did you have another comment? Okay.

No.

I didn't. I just I kept my hand up. I'm sorry, council member.

Okay. Thank you so much council member Houston. I'll make a motion to receive and file this item. Just need a second. Thank you, council member Gaia.

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Brown, seconded by council member Gaia to receive and file this in Education Partnership Committee. On roll, council member Gaia?

Aye.

Council member Houston?

Houston on speaker, aye.

Thank you. Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes. To receive and file this in the Education Partnership Committee. Moving to item six. Receive an information report from the Oakland Unified School District regarding current school safety protocols, funding structures, and strategic safety updates. And you do have two speakers.

Okay, thank you so much. And so council member Gayo, this is our last item. Should be about ten to twenty more minutes. Well I, to the parliamentarian I believe, quorum, requires, three of us here. Yep, in person. And so this school safety update definitely very important and we'll go ahead and allow about ten minutes for the presentation and then any question and answer. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Good afternoon city council and board directors. Thank you for having us back at this time today to update you on the OUC school safety work specifically on our investments and how we're implementing those across school sites and what outcomes we have seen so far. School safety today is very complex. Right?

Schools are managing what happens on campus, but they're also managing what comes in from the community, whether that's conflict, mental health needs, or safety concerns. So the work really requires both strong systems inside schools and alignment with what's happening outside of them. That would not be possible without a strong team that's joined me by joining me today. Have I a director of student support and safety, Misha Karagasha, as well as our student leader today, Iman Ebrahim, who will present shortly. Our work is grounded in a lot of few principles which you have seen before.

First, it is creating our making sure our schools are safe and joyful and inclusive. Second is the GFR resolution, which we'll spend some time today, which really shifted our approach on school policing and toward building relationships, prevention, and restorative practices. This is the elimination of the school police. This also includes the development of our village response teams, which are site based teams that handle coordination of prevention and intervention and response at school sites. Third is the pillars of safety, which allows us to look at our facility supports, our cultural and climate supports, emergency preparedness response programs, as well as our central team supports.

All of these help us address safety from multiple angles. And, again, it reflects our viewpoint of safety. It's not just responding to a lot of the incidents that we have daily. It's how do we address them and address the conditions to prevent them. So the GFR was in 2020.

It was a school board adopted resolution that was in partnership with the Black Organizing Project, and it changed how OUC completely addressed safety. It removed the school police department and redirected the resources for into school based support systems. And that looks like today and, again, it's not the removal of safety. It was a different model in in how we can have more adults on campus focus on behavioral health and student support structures and then have coordinated way coordinated ways to respond to student needs and incidents. As we've previously shown and we discussed these roles, it this is all it takes to create a holistic approach to school safety at the site level all the way up to the district level.

And we're gonna break this down even further with some of the numbers of how we have employed and increased that investment. Here, we can see that the district's investment to school safety is what the George Floyd resolution envisioned. The majority of investment is the people, staff who are on campuses every day working directly with the students. In most recent in the most recent year of data that we have from 2324, it is 419 full time employees with a total FTE of 535. That's an increase of 71 from the previous school year.

And in these in these roles, we can see positions such as counselors, restorative justice facilitators, social workers, our culture keepers, and our other site based staff that are focused on supervision, intervention, and support. We can also see the central teams that are invested in supporting violence prevention and behavioral health across the school district. And, again, this is from the initial point that the $6,000,000 that was initially invested into the SSO program when we eliminated the school police department has increased and we reallocated broadly into a more comprehensive system. And that total investment has only increased throughout the years. Right?

Throughout any throughout any of the OUC's budget challenges, safety has never been deprioritized. The numbers represent a very significant and ongoing investment into school systems and the systems across the district. So how do we actually implement it, and what does that data show? And how does what are the examples of what those systems are investing into? One of these systems is our intake line that we had.

Last time we were here, we talked about the breakdown of the type of calls that we received in the last school year, but not the impact that is made since the GFR. The system gives schools a centralized way to respond to concerns and support instead of calling 911 directly. This does not mean we never call the police. There are some things we must call the police for and are thankful for the partnerships we have with OPD that are navigating our systems with them on this journey. There were over 2,000 calls made to police before the GFR.

Since then, we have significantly decreased those calls throughout the system as you can see on the left. We're covering everything from student conflict to mental health concerns to student threats internally. And we're seeing that the data is consistent use of the system, especially as we address the student behavioral mental health needs. And, of course, these situations are being routed to supportive and coordinated responses that provide the higher level of care that our students need to address the root causes of the issues and rather than default defaulting just to discipline or involving law enforcement. The city has also invested into our work of safety in violence prevention and has played a long important role alongside this work.

Schools can provide that structure and support throughout the day, but many of the challenges that some of our most high need students face extend beyond the school site. Where the strongest impact is when school sports and our community based partners through the Department of Violence Prevention are aligned through the same are aligned around to support the same students. That is through the violence interrupters, the life coaches, and the gender based violence specialists. On our left, there is a small error. Castlemont High School is funded through the DVP grant.

Oakland Tech is a school that OUSD funds as well as Skyline. For the VIP impact, there is some more data around violence prevention work when we look at significance of out of school suspension for for violence, bullying, harassment, and weapons. Since the GFR and the VIP implementation, we have seen a decrease in suspensions for these reasons. We are actively monitoring data for this year as we can also address issues around suspension for students of color. VIP impact for OUSD, we are constantly facing budget or we are facing budget challenges and are committed to safely looking at pursuing external funding sources to continue the VIP program.

We've been doing extensive reviews of what services are we currently offer through the DVP program and how we can continue and expand on those, as well as collecting a lot of the school site data, incident data, and, of course, managing the budget constraints. When we interviewed our principals recently, one of our principals said that the folks who are most effective are the ones who can know the community, can speak the language of our students. They can deescalate situations in ways school staff sometimes can't, and that is talking about the VIP staff who are outside in the community addressing the violence issues. Since our last presentation, we came to you with how ways we can partner and deep deepen those partnerships. We've had some success stories from that.

As you heard earlier from the Department of Public Works, the cleanup efforts around schools has been increasing. There's been very successful cleanups with I know council member Gayle has led some of those as well, other council members have led community cleanups. We look forward to partnering with the public works to really centrally address those issues and escalate them as I mentioned in their presentation. And from also, we had challenges with immigration enforcement. Right?

What did that look like as a city? We have been thankful to be able to partner and be part of mayor Barbara's Lee Protected Town task force where I've seen council member Gallo and council member Buang is there to really address that coordination around the city teams and their district, which we have more broadly strengthened since this last Ed Partnerships Committee meeting. So, again, some of the future things that we have worked on this school year. This school year has been a lot about implementation and taking those investments from the amount of money we spent in the systems and putting them into practice. One of the biggest examples is the launch of CAT, which is the community assessment and transportation direct dispatch pilot through the Alameda County behavioral health team that expanded a law enforcement alternative for students in mental health crisis.

We're able to call on them directly to have them come out with a behavioral health clinician and an EMT to assess the student rather than calling police. Since then, we reduced those mental health crisis calls from 38 last year to nine this year. We've also strengthened a lot of the site based systems, including the village response team, which I mentioned earlier, increasing participation, increasing training for them. In addition, over the summer, we trained three three hundred administrators on our practices. And over the last year, we've onboarded 700 new staff where we've implemented safety as part of their onboarding practice.

And more importantly, we brought students into the work along the district of addressing safety and violence prevention with a safety and violence prevention committee. And today, we're gonna look or we're gonna have one of our students talk about some of that.

Okay. Okay.

Good evening, my council members and the school board directors. My name is Iman, and I am the culture and climate director of All City Council. All City Council is the school school and government that represents all 34,000 students of OUSD, and I'm also the co chair of mayor Barbara Lee's with advisory council. I'm here today to share with you guys the launch of the student and safety prevention program that is focusing on increasing student voices within our decision making regarding OUSD safety policies. And it is a very new committee that has launched, and it hosts currently eight members that are from about six different sites ranging from middle school to high school.

This includes Bret Hart, Skyline, and Oakland Tech. We have all individually launched about five action broad projects in all of our school sites that is asking for our student voices regarding what is going on in their schools. This includes the escalation techniques that are being done by their staff members and also inappropriate behavior that is being faced by students through their culture keepers and also how to prevent conflicts before they happen, and some things that students believe are causing conflicts to happen and staff members are not paying close attention to. For the past few months, have been dissecting reasons for why these conflicts have started, and our next step will be to launch our action project that will be asking our students about ways to de escalate for de escalation measures by our staff members, and we will also be asking for some ways that we can train our culture keepers to have a more appropriate behavior around their school. And we're also gonna be asking for ways as to how prevent how to prevent measures or how to make preventative measures that our our staff members can use to have context clues for when conflicts are about to escalate and for context clues on which students are having some type of conflict or how to support students during in their houses and within their classrooms.

We will be analyzing this data and presenting it to our board directors on May 13 and after analyzing this data, we are hoping to present to to present to some student centered safety policies that is backed up by research, and we are looking forward to doing that. Thank you so much. I'll be passing it back to Nelson.

You. And that concludes our presentation. We're happy to take your questions.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Do we have public speakers? May we hear from the public speakers?

When I call your name, please approach to podium. State your name for the record. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified. As practice, we will take in person speakers before Zoom speakers. Miss Asada and Laura Blair.

Hello, my name is Laura Blair and I hope I do as good a job as all of the students who've spoken today. I've been so impressed and honestly just so proud to be an OUSD parent today. So thank you for that opportunity. I'm a Skyline parent, and I also wanted to thank Nelson Alegria who has met with our group many times since the shooting that happened at our school, and I also wanted to thank Councilmember Brown for alerting us about this meeting. I'm a member of the PTSA and also a group of parents who came together after the the shooting that occurred at our school.

The I want to ask you as elected leaders in our community to not leave the funding for the VIP program to external sources. Please don't outsource that funding. We had a shooting at our school. We've had lots of violent incidents at our school. Skyline is not unique in that.

Since the shooting at our school, I've had an opportunity to meet with many stakeholders and leaders around in the high school community and parents and students are mutually concerned about the the violence and believe that the violence interruption program is critical to address the addressing safety. The George Floyd resolution was shows the commitment of our community to removing police officers from our school and having violence interruption and having preventative preventing violence before it starts. The violence interrupters, they are embedded in the community and they are trusted adults in our school and now we are looking at having those trusted adults taken away when they've created valuable relationships. So I'm asking that you all collectively work together, OUSD, the county, and the city, to try to find funding for this program. I thank you for all of your work.

I thank you for all of your work. I please ask you that you fund this really critical program so that we can have these trust.

Thank you for your comment.

Well, there's so much let me start with Skyline. Skyline is not a secure site. There's gonna continue to be problems because you can't fence in people have access to Skyline. My biggest issue with y'all is y'all completely ignore the evacuation from Skyline in case of a fire or earthquake or any emergency. You cannot evacuate those students, and you refuse to do anything about it.

The parents are concerned about the shootings, they're not concerned about their children can be caught up there and burned up because the regulation that the fire department has for skyline is to shelter in place on the football field. Rugsdale. I heard Bay Tech at a meeting of the Bay Tech community about the problems with Rugsdale, the violence at Rugsdale, the constant need to the point where they hired security. I came to the school board meeting at closed session and told you all about it. Something needs to happen.

You did nothing, and we had a person that was killed, one of our employees, because you sat on your behinds and didn't respond to the problem of Rugsdale. That's what I'm talking about. You sit on your you are responsible for what happened at Rugsdale because you didn't do anything. You are responsible if anything happens at Skyline, another shooting, because that site is not secure. Anybody can walk on that campus.

McClymans. McClymans has been sitting for a whole year and half of the building in with no intercom system. Anybody comes to the door, you got to open up the door and let them in, because you can't use your intercom system, you're not in that part of the building anymore. Anybody can come on the campus. You've been sitting in that building all that time.

Thank you for your comments Ms. Lozada. That concludes your public speakers for item six.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you Nelson so much for providing this informational report and also just linking the presentation to your last presentation in September. I thought that that was really helpful. So I just had a couple questions and you know as I think many of us know the school board has been facing some financial challenges and I guess I just wanted to ask a clarifying question because I believe that the presentation really paints a picture of zero impacts to like student, like to safety efforts that OUSD is making.

And so I just wanted to get some clarity on like just some of the numbers that were given. So in the passing of like OUSD's most recent budget has there been any service impacts to I guess kind of what was listed on slide number six around like you know how many employees are actually kind of under this umbrella of site culture, climate personnel, all of these umbrellas. Like have we seen a decrease in those staffing levels?

Overall no, we have not. So the budget lines that affect culture keepers, that affect our CSMs were not directly affected. And if they were they were pushed at the site level. The site levels did prioritize to keep those services on the site. So overall we have not seen a decrease in the site support staff that supports safety.

Okay, excellent. Thank you for that clarification. And then what is the current what is OUSD's current plan to ensure that the violence interrupters this program that as we know started off as a pilot, what what is OUSD's plan to, ensure that, these violence, interrupters can, stay supporting schools?

As the city grant is ending and sunsetting this year, we have been meeting with the DVP program or the DVP staff for a transition plan of what that looks like. From that, again, we are assessing a lot of the data around crime around certain schools, the impact that it's had on certain school sites with the data of the referral rates that the DBP has already been collecting. And then we're also we just did a feedback session of our principals and gathering how it's impacted their site and how ingrained into their system it's been. So we're still, again, just assessing all that data, creating an outline plan of what services can we actually keep with the budget that we have. And how do we prioritize sites that have actually not been captured by the program because they do have increased needs.

That's highlighting such sites as MPA Upper Campus, which is a high school level campus, grade six to 12 that has had increased significant safety needs where the city has the d v the city's DVP team has actually addressed some of those concerns. So how do we get them a team that supports that work? And then how do we also reallocate some of the work that some of our staff internally can do? And then making sure that we have teams to be able to cover the sites that are high needs. And it is looking incidents that have happened. Again, Skyline is an incident where they were looking at how do we actually get them involved in Syncope to work and life coach work which was also impactful from what the principal mentioned.

Got you. Then for the, I know you mentioned the transition memo. What does it look like to ensure that the school board directors, will they be receiving that memo prior or like can you outline that process just so everyone has clarity?

Once we again identify the budget sources that will be going into investing into the programs, we will make sure we have an outline of what programs will be continuing and what school sites as well as the decisions that were what data was used to make those decisions.

I see. And then I guess sorry if I missed it. And do you have I know you're currently in the process of creating the transition memo. Do you have a ETA on that?

We're hoping to do that before the start of the next school year.

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much, Nelson. Thank you. Any other questions? Vice president, bachelor.

Thank you. I should leave the button alone. Yeah, I appreciate the presentation and all of the different pieces that you've added. I will just add that our students deserve safe classrooms and our staff deserve safe workplaces. And we know that this violence prevention program works.

We have the numbers for it, we've had the track record for it, now we just need the funding. Everyone knows that we are going through our own budget process. The city is also facing budget challenges of over, it sounds like $30,000,000 in budget deficit. So we have to be able to work together to plug all of those holes. So I'm moving forward a resolution to support measure e which is a parcel tax extension that you all are moving forward because we have to make sure that we are not triaging issues around budgets, that we have the resources that we need to continue to keep our communities whole.

I would appreciate if there are any revenues that the city can add once measure e gets passed to a violence prevention program that is added to what we're gonna put forward, I would appreciate city council members that are sitting in this committee to move that forward. We are also, as folks mentioned, talking to philanthropy, actively having those conversations with different foundations to support this work because again, we have like we've done the pilot phase, now we just need additional funding. But again those conversations as the public speaker mentioned are not gonna be enough and they potentially aren't gonna aren't gonna happen as quickly as we need to. So I would love to call on all of us to really think about and be diligent about funding the things that we know work like this violence prevention program and knowing that we have other school sites that need these funds too. So it's not just about maintaining what we have, it's about also growing these programs and supporting our students while they're at school, while they're at, you know, down the street, while they're at grandma's house, while they're, you know, in our communities every day at the rec centers and things like that.

So again, this is me asking for mutual support from the city council to make sure that any penny that we can throw into this bucket can be thrown in, but I will be walking for measure e, I will be canvassing for measure e, I will be promoting measure e as much as possible because we need to make sure that we have the budget. And as a as a homeowner, I will be proudly giving my contribution for measure e to make sure that those dollars are invested in our schools and are invested in our whole community. So I hope that everyone votes yes on measure e.

Excellent. Thank you so thank you so much. Order in the chamber or you will be asked to leave.

I don't care what you ask. I leave.

Alright. President, Brewhard.

Oh, did I do it? Sorry.

There you go.

Great. Thank you. Again, I I really do echo what, vice president Batchelor said in support of of measure e. I also feel in the collaboration with the city and the schools that, you know, our kids don't exist only in one place. And I think the more that we can work together to ensure safety both at home, on their way to school and in schools, I think that again ensures a future for our youth.

And kind of building off what the youth before were talking about and building the CTE TAE hub, I think the resources that we can give to our youth, again to provide them with the ability to be college, career, and community ready. So, I support all the Measure E and as well as, working closely with the city and the county to provide the services, the funds, I'm sorry, to support our violence intervention program.

Alright. Thank thank you so much for your comment. School board director Simmons.

Thank you for you guys report. Iman, I apologize for making you come back up and speak, but I would love to know more about the youth action projects that you guys are have started and that you guys are doing.

Well it's still in the developing stages, and we had just started mixing up all of our action projects to launch it hopefully this month. We're gonna have our seventh meeting, I believe, soon, which then we're gonna finalize our survey, and we're gonna work on launching it but you will be hearing more about it.

Excellent, thank you. Thank you so much. And so just to on the comments from the school board members, I know that in conversation with our chief of violence prevention and her team I know that they have been working very closely with Nelson really just for a really long time really trying to ensure that all of the parameters and details of the program is executed on and really trying to figure out the path forward. And I know that as a city council body in our most recent like priorities all of the council members were able to list various priorities that we would be going to like our state and federal partners for funding. And so supporting OUSD around the violence interrupters was something that we listed as a key priority and we know

that

sometimes what that can look like are letters of support, right. So whether you're applying to various grants for those types of services, I know that the city of Oakland is gonna be right there ready to you know help support with the letter support because as was mentioned you know both of our entities are you know we are facing some financial challenges right and so we really want to make sure that all of the essential services that we need to provide as a city that we are focusing on. But of course we are here to support as needed. Colleagues any other questions for Nelson and the team? Alright well if not then I'll make a motion to receive.

Thank you so much. I'll make a motion to receive and file this item. Council member Unger. Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Brown, seconded by council member Unger to receive and file this information report in the Education and Partnership Committee. On roll, council member Gaia? Aye. Council member Houston is excused or excused. Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. This motion does pass with three ayes. One excused Houston to receive and file this information report in the education and partnership committee. Moving to open forum, we do have one speaker, Ms. Asada.

So I got to leave this meeting, go over to the facility meeting, measure b, j, and y, where they are refusing to service McClyman's high school. But don't vote for measure e. Measure e is the union, your fire union, and the other unions acting like they are citizens initiative to get it on the ballot, so you can get 50% voter approved, over 50% voter. That's conniving. That's underhanded.

That's what you call misleading the public just like you did with measure a eight, just like you ignored the $19,000,000 for measure a eight. Y'all are that's what I'm telling these young people, you cannot sit and be a part of this. Don't you see what's going on? And you are part of it right now. That's who I have to talk to because there's a chance you can be saved.

These people can't be saved. They're delusional, and they believe in their head they doing what's right. You are part of the corruption, you, you, you, everyone sitting up there. All of you, you have failed. What is this anti blackness going on in OUSD?

At Fremont, where black children are be called being and teachers are being called the n word. What is that? When is that going to come up for discussion? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you have no shame. You have no shame in what you do, you believe you're doing something good, but I will come to every meeting, I'll be here at nine, and I'll be here at 03:30 tomorrow, I'll be at every committee meeting I can go through with this corrupt o u s d board, that all they wanna do is help children who are newcomers.

You got 20 newcomer administrators. You have nothing for black children as any substance in this district. And you believe that you can have the George Floyd resolution where you don't have nothing to do with?

Thank you for your comment miss Asada. That concludes your public speaker's open forum.

Right. Well thank you all for attending our you know first convening of 2026 of education partnerships and so then this meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much.