Putting Equity At The center:
A Forum For Parents in OUSD
On September 29, 2018, roughly 100 community members came together at our 2nd Equity Forum to listen, learn, and discuss pathways to achieving equity for students in OUSD. Interested in more information? Slides from each presentation are linked below.
"What You Measure Is What You Get Done"
Cliff Hong, Principal of Roosevelt Middle School
Cliff Hong, principal at Roosevelt Middle School hosted a session discussing equity in terms of academic outcomes. He highlighted some of the achievement gaps within OUSD. Cliff provided an overview of how OUSD and the State define student outcomes and shared his own efforts at Roosevelt to create more explicit outcomes for their students. Participants then spent time in breakout groups discussing the specific outcomes they wanted for their own children (e.g. I want my child to have the skills and abilities to get into whatever type of post-secondary education program they want to pursue). The session ended with a call for participants to take concrete actions to build towards those outcomes, such as volunteering to read at an elementary school other than their child’s school. View the slides here.
"Equity Fund" Session
Equity Allies
We provided an overview of the Equity Fund and answered questions from the audience. You can see our slide deck here.
"Budget" Session
Kim Miyoshi, Justice 4 Oakland Students
Nilofer Ahsan, Equity Allies
We provided a quick overview of the latest news from the district on budget related issues. Then, Kim Miyoshi, from Justice for Oakland Students, presented a framework for thinking about parent response to OUSD’s ongoing budget issues through an equity lens. We also invited participants to join us for an upcoming Q & A and dialogue session with board members Shanthi Gonzales, Aimee Eng and Jody London focused on our fiscal vitality plan.
"Policy" Session
Katy Nunez-Adler, Oakland Community Organizations
We talked briefly about the policy work Equity Allies has engaged in over the last year including the successful push to get the state to provide funds to ease our budget crisis and the work to get key revisions to Board Policy 6006. Then Katy Nunez-Alder from Oakland Community Organizations talked about the ongoing campaign for Prop 13 reform—and the efforts to educate the community on the importance of a no vote on Prop 5 in this upcoming election.
MORE COMING SOON