Great Oakland Public Schools

Great Oakland Public Schools is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit social welfare organization that connects and activates an informed community network to advance policies that ensure all Oakland students have the opportunity to attend quality public schools.

Our network believes that every child has a right to a quality education and everyone has a responsibility to help provide it. At a time when the overwhelming majority of family-wage jobs require post-secondary education, less than two-thirds of Oakland's students graduate from high school. Barely half of our African-American and Latino students finish high school on time, and the average African-American and Latino twelfth grader reads and does math at the level of white eighth graders. This is morally unacceptable and economically untenable.

Great Oakland Public Schools 501(c)(4) also sponsors a political action committee, Families and Educators for Public Education, to empower our network to participate in electoral politics - school board elections in particular - because our elected leaders set the policies, culture, and tone that govern millions of dollars to benefit Oakland children and youth.

In addition, Great Oakland Public Schools Leadership Center - a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that provides education, advocacy, and leadership within the Oakland community so that all our students have the opportunity to attend quality public schools - leads and manages projects that include a School Board Agenda Watch, a Teacher Policy Fellowship, informational tools about OUSD, and an Effective Teaching Campaign.

2. Who participates in GO?

We are a coalition of families, educators, and community leaders from the hills and flatlands, East, West, and North Oakland, charter and district public schools who share a vision of an Oakland where all children receive the schooling and support they need to live successful, fulfilling lives. More than 550 individuals have made financial contributions to support our work. Our 2012 network meetings each attracted more than 100 attendees from across the city.

Click here to read profiles and stories from our network.

Click here to become a member today.

Click here to read about our board.

Click here to read about our staff.

3. How did GO start?

In September 2008, the leadership of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) presented a plan suggesting that the school board close 10-17 small schools with little regard to school performance. Community and school leaders organized parents, teachers, students, and principals to talk to school board members about the positive impact these small schools were having on increasing student achievement in Oakland schools. In response to this organizing, the board decided not to close schools based only on size, and, instead, to organize citywide community engagement about the future of at-risk school communities.

In January 2009, the Interim Superintendent announced a plan to pass nearly 100 percent of a $17 million midyear budget cut on to school sites. Parents, teachers, and community requested copies of the central office budgets and recommended more than $17 million of cuts to the central office that they would make prior to cutting programs and services directly serving children at schools. These recommendations were presented to the school board who directed the Interim Superintendent to keep cuts as far from classrooms as possible. In the end, 75 percent of the 2009 midyear budget cut were made in the central offices.

Based on these experiences, our network of parents, educators, and community members began building Great Oakland Public Schools to ensure that the Oakland community had information and opportunities to shape decisions about our public schools and hold leaders accountable.

4. What are GO's values?

Our GO network is guided by six core values, which drive everything we do in order to be effective advocates for children:

Students First: Every decision should focus on what Oakland students need in order to attain a quality education. For many Oakland students, accessing quality public schools is an issue of life or death. We must work with tremendous urgency. Students cannot wait until tomorrow.

Sense of Possibility: All children can succeed as a result of quality schools and effective teaching. Innovation and inquiry are essential to disrupt the status quo in service of students.

Equity: Students of all backgrounds and in all neighborhoods deserve equitable and excellent outcomes. Resources and opportunities must be prioritized for historically underserved communities and students.

Power of Community: Our Oakland community has high expectations for our students and public schools - and the power to deliver quality education for all students. Together, we are responsible for preparing all students with the skills and knowledge required for success in college, career, and life.

Shared Decision-Making and Accountability: People should have a say in the decisions that shape their lives, and educational decisions should be made transparently, based on evidence, and by those who are closest to students. Those who are responsible for making decisions should be held accountable for those decisions based on student results.

Respectful Communication: We communicate directly and with respect at all times, enabling us to be transparent and pragmatic, foster learning, and create long-lasting, accountable relationships.

5. How is GO funded?

Over 550 individuals have contributed to GO since we formed nonprofit organizations in 2010.

We are intentionally working to build a donor network of families, educators, and community that is socio-economically, racially, culturally, and linguistically inclusive and that shares a positive, solutions- and results-oriented vision for improving Oakland public schools. Dozens of district and charter parents and teachers make monthly contributions as sustaining members of Great Oakland Public Schools.

We welcome the contributions of individuals and organizations that share our values and vision of an Oakland where all children receive the schooling and support they need to live successful, fulfilling lives. Click here to review the campaign finance filings of GO's political action committee - Families and Educators for Public Education.

Great Oakland Public Schools Leadership Center 501(c)(3) is funded primarily by local foundations. Click here for a list of the Leadership Center's foundation support.

6. Who are GO's partners?

Partner organizations are essential to our work.

We are partnering with Youth Together, Education Trust-West, SEIU Local 1021, Youth UpRising, Oakland Community Organizations (OCO), and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights to produce a study about effective teaching policy in Oakland.
We participate in the "All Kids" campaign with Urban Strategies Council, Oakland Community Organizations, 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, East Bay Asian Youth Center, Youth Uprising, and the Prescott Joseph Center to ensure students are successful by giving all district schools increased autonomy over staffing, budget, curriculum, and schedules. In April 2012, the OUSD school board passed a School Governance Policy in alignment with the values and goals of the "All Kids" campaign.
In 2011, we joined a statewide collaborative of community-based organizations including Families in Schools, Alliance for a Better Community, Reading and Beyond, COPE, and Education Trust-West working to advance effective teaching policy across the state.
In 2012, we joined with the California State PTA, the California School Boards Association, education reform, and civil rights organizations to oppose AB5 which, as written, would have significantly weakened California state policies regarding teacher evaluation. Going forward, we will work to support legislation that ensures robust teacher evaluations that provide teachers the meaningful feedback and support needed to ensure all students have access to effective teaching.
In 2011, we helped organize a broad coalition of partners, including the Oakland Education Association (OEA), SEIU Local 1021, Youth UpRising, National Equity Project, California Teachers Association, Urban Strategies Council, Oakland Parents Together, Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN), Oakland Schools Foundation, and Teach for America to support AB 609 to reverse millions of dollars in audit fines to OUSD incurred during the period of state administration.
We have collaborated with groups such as New Leaders for New Schools and The New Teacher Project to help bring best practices to Oakland.
We have worked with the California Charter School Association and other local charters such as Education for Change, Aspire Public Schools, and Lighthouse Community Charter School to supporting these schools and work toward a vision of closer partnership between OUSD and charters.
We have worked in partnership with OUSD to help access resources to support the district's work, advance the strategic planning process, and to make information more accessible to our community.

ABOUT THE 2012 ELECTIONS

1. Why is GO involved in school board elections?

Our network understands that great leaders are essential to expanding high quality public education and opportunities for Oakland students. Great Oakland Public Schools 501(c)(4) is excited to be endorsing candidates for the first time in the November 2012 elections. School board members have an extraordinary influence on the performance of our schools and the culture of our city. Our school board oversees the Superintendent, sets instructional and school management policies, votes on school closures, approves and denies charter public schools, and makes critical financial decisions about $600+ million annual budget.

2. What are GO's activities with regards to the 2012 school board elections?

We are supporting a campaign powered by Oakland parents, educators, and community members. Over 200 people have given donations to this work - some chipped in as little as $5 - for a total of over $20,000 in grassroots contributions. Hundreds of other Oaklanders have participated as volunteers - an average of over 60 per week and growing - to phone bank and walk door-to-door to talk with voters. This level of support and activity is unprecedented in recent Oakland school board elections.

Click here for photos from our neighborhood walks and phone banks.

See below for a video from a recent phone bank.

3. Who are you supporting for the School Board elections?

GO's endorsement process is similar to political party committees and the League of Women Voters. In addition to alignment with our values and policy agenda, we evaluate candidates on their viability to win and capacity to serve as effective as board members. We ask each known candidate to respond to a questionnaire and then invite them to an in-person interview with our members. We then put these questionnaires and interview videos online to get feedback from our membership. Our board of directors collected the feedback and decided which candidates to endorse. For November 2012, our membership was overwhelmingly aligned in wanting to support Jumoke Hinton Hodge, Rosie Torres, and James Harris for school board.

4. What other issues are you engaging with in the 2012 elections?

We have also taken a position of support for Measure J, Proposition 30, and Proposition 38. We believe that our schools are in serious need of more resources and urge all Oaklanders to support these initiatives. To see our full November 2012 Voter Guide, click here.

GO Public Schools Leadership Center also asked all Oakland City Council candidates to complete questionnaires. See here for those completed answers about their positions on education issues.

5. What is GO's position on Measure J?

All students deserve a school that is safe, clean, and healthy. Measure J is a $475 million school facilities bond that is about one thing: improving the quality of Oakland schools.

In short, Measure J proposes to:
Improve the quality of Oakland schools and school facilities to better prepare students for college and jobs;
Upgrade science labs, classrooms, computers, and technology;
Improve student safety and security;
Repair bathrooms, electrical systems, plumbing and sewer lines; and
Improve energy efficiency and earthquake safety.

All Measure J funds will stay in the community to benefit Oakland children. GO proudly joins businesses, labor, teachers, parents, principals, and community leaders in supporting Measure J. We urge Oaklanders to vote YES on J this November.

Click here for the Measure J fact sheet. [Spanish]

6. Where does GO stand on Propositions 30 & 38?

Proposition 30 and Proposition 38 will provide desperately needed funding for California public schools. Over the past several years Oakland schools have been forced to increase class sizes, cut after-school programming, delay facility repairs, and choose between essential school services (e.g. cutting counselors or library staff). If voters do not pass one of the initiatives, our students will face further cuts including possibly cutting up to three weeks of the school year. This is clearly unacceptable.

Join GO in voting Yes for Education on November 6th. We are supporting both Proposition 30 and Proposition 38. If both propositions pass the 50 percent plus one threshold for passage then the proposition with the most votes will go into effect. Both propositions will make a tremendous difference for our students.

7. Who is GO supporting in the City Council races?

These races are critically important for our children and public schools across the city. Together, the city council and school board control approximately $1.6 billion annually to invest in services and support for our community.

In order to help voters understand where the candidates stand on education issues, GO asked each of the city council candidates to respond to ten questions about their approach to supporting public education. All candidates received the initial request via email and were sent two follow-up emails encouraging them to respond to questions such as:

What specific actions will you take to ensure students have safe routes to and from school?
Of the city's current initiatives in support of ensuring all students have access to a high quality education, which do you think are the most effective? Are there initiatives you would eliminate or change?
Do you support state revenue initiatives Proposition 30, Proposition 38, or local Measure J - OUSD's facilities bond measure to ensure safe, healthy schools?

Click here to view the candidates' responses.

ABOUT GO'S POLICY AGENDA

1. What is GO's policy agenda?

During the spring of 2009, our network of families and educators drafted a founding vision statement that we called our Declaration of Community Beliefs and Visions for Oakland Public Schools. More than 250 parents, educators, and concerned citizens signed their names to the declaration.

In 2011, we developed a Social Change Model that describes our approach to improving outcomes for Oakland students. We updated our policy agenda in advance of the important 2012 local elections.

Click here (English and Spanish) to download our 2012 policy agenda.

2. What is GO's relationship to the teachers' union?

Unions are important. They provide an important voice for teachers and other school employees and serve as an important counter-weight to some of the tendencies, pressures, or incentives that any district might face in a management position. The labor movement has played an essential role in creating and supporting a strong middle class within our democracy.

Many Oakland teachers participate in GO who are also members of the Oakland Education Association. GO is working to increase the leadership of Oakland teachers in decision-making about public education and supports teachers to get involved in the policy-making activities of the union and the district.

We share the perspective that we have heard over and over from OUSD teachers.They want a strong union that advocates for teachers while advancing the profession and craft of teaching and serving the needs of students. Teachers' unions across the country have embraced new research and understandings of the teaching profession and have joined forces with their districts as powerful collaborators. Teachers across Oakland have expressed a desire for and support for this type of positive, constructive relationship -- which moves beyond the 'us v. them' mentality that seems so pervasive in the current relationship.

We look forward to continuing to find ways to partner with OEA and other labor partners such as SEIU Local 1021, AFSCME, UAOS, and the Building Trades to bring more resources to Oakland public schools, support teachers and district employees, and improve educational outcomes for Oakland's children and youth.

3. Does GO want to eliminate seniority rights for teachers?

No. We are fine with seniority playing a role in how the district places teachers. We do not, however, believe that it should be the end all, be all of every staffing decision. Teachers are important, teaching is extraordinarily complex, and effectiveness cannot be reduced to the number of years a teacher has been teaching. Many factors should be considered in hiring, placing, and retaining teachers, such as:

growth mindset,
fit with school culture,
track record of advancing student learning,
previous relevant training or experiences,
feedback from colleagues, supervisors, students, and parents/caregivers,
willingness to engage in culturally relevant instruction, and/or
willingness to collaborate and strengthen instructional teams.

The current system does not allow for these factors to be considered.

4. Where does GO stand on using test scores in teacher evaluations?

First, to be clear, a teacher's evaluation should be one part of a professional growth system whose purpose is to (1) support and develop the teachers who have chosen to serve Oakland's students; and (2) ensure that students are achieving.

As a part of that evaluation, we believe that state test scores are one of multiple measures (including, for example, student portfolios, benchmark assessments, and peer, student, parent, and administrative feedback) that should be included. We believe that student test scores on state assessments are relevant to talking about teacher effectiveness, but not reliable enough to be the sole or even predominate basis for measuring teacher effectiveness. We believe that assessment of student achievement should be focused on student growth over time which allows for more analysis of where a given teacher's students started when they walked into his or her classroom. There are promising models emerging from around the country such as the Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) programs in San Juan and Poway and The College Ready Promise Program.

Additionally, we believe that there are strong models and frameworks for effective teaching that, if adopted by a district, would help establish clear expectations and help align professional development to actual teacher need in a systematic way that is focused on the core skills (and art) of instruction.

5. What is GO's Effective Teaching Campaign?

As a result of a spring/summer 2011 strategic planning process that included input from more than 100 Oakland public education stakeholders and community leaders, GO's board and staff prioritized the development of an Effective Teaching Campaign with a vision of every Oakland student having access to effective teaching and our highest need students having equitable access to our most effective teachers.

Last year, about 20 teachers and parents supported by GO conducted research meetings with district leaders to understand OUSD policy initiatives such as "mutual matching" placement of teachers. We also featured teachers asking questions of Superintendent Smith at our March 2012 network meeting.

This 2012-2013 school year, we will continue to develop our network of parent and teacher leaders to advance five core policy goals to support effective teaching in Oakland public schools:

Increase compensation to ensure that OUSD attracts and retains highly-skilled educators.
Ensure assignment policies increase student access to effective teaching and allow school communities a strong voice in determining the composition of their staff.
Create a fair evaluation system that includes multiple measures of good teaching and student growth, and emphasizes professional growth and support for teachers.
Ensure principals are given the training and support necessary to provide strong instructional leadership and fair, meaningful evaluations of staff.
Develop teacher career and leadership pathways that ensure that Oakland's best teachers deeply influence policy and decision-making, and lead to greater responsibility, compensation, and mentoring of other teachers.

As we develop and support a cohort of Oakland parents, educators, and community members that can advocate for policies that support effective teaching in Oakland, we will change local and state policies that otherwise serve as barriers to ensuring equitable access to effective teaching for all students.

6. What is your opinion about/stance on charter schools?

We believe in high quality schools, period. In our experience, most parents do not make distinctions about the governance structure of a school and neither do we. Parents want safe, nurturing, challenging public schools that prepare their children for success in work and life. Our bottom line is that we need more great public schools in Oakland - and we need to put more energy into collaborating and partnering to expand high quality educational opportunities.

7. Is GO trying to replace OUSD with a network of charter public schools?

No. We think that high quality charter schools bring important strengths and values to the Oakland education community. However, charters are not a good in and of themselves. We are only interested in making sure that all Oakland students get a great education. The majority of our network's energy is spent working to support OUSD and the implementation of the Thriving Students strategic plan.

8. Do you think that charter public schools are better than district public schools?

No. A school is only as good as the extent to which it helps its students achieve. Some district schools do better than some charter schools and some charter schools do better than some district schools. There is nothing about a charter public school that makes it inherently better than a district public school.

Ultimately a charter school and a district school are just two different governance structures for making sure students get a high quality public education. Charters offer some benefit structurally with respect to allowing school sites greater autonomy over budget, staffing, calendar, and curriculum, District structures offer other benefits such as economies of scale. What they both have in common is that they need highly skilled dedicated people to actually make it work for students.

OTHER QUESTIONS

1. Why do you have a "School Board Agenda Watch" and what is it?

GO thinks it is important to help Oaklanders follow the important actions and issues being addressed at the district leadership level. The Board Agenda Watch is an email list and blog that tracks the decisions and happenings of the Oakland school board. For most meetings we review the agenda and highlight issues of particular interest to the GO community based on our values and priorities. We then attend each meeting and provide a summary what happened during the meeting for each item.

Click here to sign up for email updates when we post new information about the Oakland school board.

2. What are "School Work Days" and why do you do them?

School Work Days are opportunities to bring the GO network together to help out schools with particular needs and projects. Principals and school leaders define their needs and work with GO staff to organize the projects. Here are some examples of projects from past GO School Work Days:

Frick Middle School - We posted student work, and reorganized the supply room.
Garfield Elementary - We reorganized the book and supply rooms.
Community United Elementary - We organized classroom libraries and the supply room
Roosevelt Middle School - We reorganized the bookrooms and the library.
Hoover Elementary - We labeled over 3,000 books by reading level so that teachers can ensure students are accessing academically appropriate material.
Elmhurst Middle School - We hung up student work, academic awards, and school spirit posters throughout the campus
MetWest and La Escuelita - We helped these schools pack up to move into the new Downtown Education Complex.
Prescott Elementary - We built bookshelves, created bulletin boards, planted flowers across the campus.

3. What do you do with your free time?

We sleep at the office. We frequent establishments that serve Linden Street. We hang out with our families, our friends, and our kids. We attend school board meetings for entertainment.