Education
Mayor Speaks at Fundraiser to Support Pro-Charter School Board Candidates
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were keynote speakers this week at a $250-a-person election fundraiser for Great Oakland (GO) Public Schools, which protesters say is an organization that backs school board candidates who are pro-charter and uncritically supportive of pro-corporate policies in the Oakland Unified School District.
The “Education Evening with the Mayors” fundraiser on Tuesday at Impact Hub in downtown Oakland was organized by the GO Public Schools Oakland Advocates’ Families & Educators for Public Education political action committee –“to help elect great school board members.”
Standing at the entrance to the event at 2323 Broadway, dozens of protesters passed out a flyer that criticized GO, saying, “Oakland students deserve a functioning school board.”
“GO Public Schools sells itself as a benevolent, pro-public school group, but it is a part of an interconnected network of well-funded organizations in Oakland that are undermining our public schools by directing much needed resources away from our neighborhood schools and giving them to privately managed charters,” according to the protesters’ flyer.
The teachers’ union, the Oakland Education Association (OEA), is also raising concerns about the participation of Mayor Libby Schaaf in a fundraiser that is designed to build support for GO’s school board candidates.
“I think it does not bode well that the mayor of our city is getting directly involved in the election of an ideological school board,” said OEA president Trish Gorham. “We have seen this in the failure of Mayor Jerry Brown’s involvement in appointing school members. We don’t want to return to that kind of mayoral interference.”
Erica Derryck, spokesperson for Mayor Schaaf, strongly denies that GO seeks to elect pro-charter school board candidates.
“GO Public Schools is not pro-charter, it’s pro kids,” said Derryck in a response to the Post.
“Mayor Schaaf believes there is nothing more important for our city than delivering a great public education for our children,” said Derryck. “Mayor Schaaf supports an organization that is focused on educating voters on school board elections because they are so critical.”
GO describes itself as a “coalition of parents, teachers, principals, 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.”
GO’s participation in local school board elections goes back to 2012 in an election that was covered by the Oakland Tribune in an article titled, “Big Money in Play in Oakland School Board Campaigns.”
The teachers’ union jumped into the 2012 election for the first time in 20 years, funding a political action committee to spend $20,000 on three candidates, according to the Tribune.
GO Public Schools collected $123,000. Most of the money came from two individual donors, including the San Francisco-based venture capitalist and philanthropist Arthur Rock, who gave $49,000, the Tribune reported.
The California Charter School Association also donated $50,000 to the GO PAC.
The Tribune quoted Henry Brady, dean of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy who observed that, “The polarization of the American political system is now getting all the way down to local politics.”
“Districts are grappling with … sharply different views on school board governance and the role of publicly-funded, independently run charter schools,” said Brady.
“I think there’s a big ideological fight out there right now with how schools should be controlled,” he said.
Support for GO includes $200,000 in 2014 from the pro-charter Walton Foundation (connected to Walmart). For several years, the Rogers Private Family Foundation paid the $200,000-a year-annual salary of GO’s former Executive Director Jonathan Klein.
Gary Rogers of the Rogers Family Foundation, who helped create GO Public Schools, is well known for his support for charter schools.
A Rogers Family Foundation Education Strategy document states:
“Our goal is to facilitate the conditions, partnerships, and direct school investments that will result in creating new and redesigned high-quality schools with the collective capacity to serve 10,000 students by 2020.
“Our tactics will be to stay the course of growing small-but-mighty, high-performing charter schools, making big bets on trusted and successful charter management organizations.”
Activism
Lend A Hand Foundation Celebrates 25th Anniversary
Lend A Hand Foundation Celebrates 25th Anniversary at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland. On stage: KTVU Fox 2 Broadcasters Roberta Gonzales and Dave ClarkDance-A-Vision Founder, Carla Service, Vice Mayor Kimberly Mayfield-Lynch, California State Assemblymember Mia Bonta and Lend A Hand Foundation Executive Director Dee Johnson with the Dance-A-Vision Dancers. Photo By Carla Thomas
By Carla Thomas
The Lend A Hand Foundation (LAHF) celebrated the 25th anniversary of the organization’s Stay In School Program on May 9 at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland.
Themed “Together We Can Empower Our Youth to Stay in School,” the event featured a pre-event reception featuring Oakland’s Kev Choice Ensemble.
The ensemble featured Oakland School for the Arts student, Ayo Brame, a 16-year-old, up-and-coming tenor saxophone jazz musician. The master and mistress of ceremonies were local broadcasters Dave Clark and Roberta Gonzales of KTVU Fox 2. Clark’s wife, Lucretia also supported the program.
A special appearance featured Dwayne Wiggins of Tony! Toni! Toné! on guitar, performing the group’s hit song “Anniversary” as guests dined on salmon, chicken, beef and vegetarian entrees prepared by the Food Network “Chopped” Champion, Chef Rashad Armstead of Oakland. California State Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Oakland) provided the keynote address and the Carla Service Dance-A-Vision youth dancers energetically performed a hip hop routine throughout the audience in white leotards as attendees clapped along. An auction led by Auctioneer Franco Finn assisted in raising funds for the organization with prizes that included a luxury resort vacation and other items.
LAHF presented District 5 Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson and District 4 Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley with Lifetime Supporter Awards. LAHF presented the Trailblazer Award to Guy Richardson of Ernst and Young; Dante Green of Kaiser Permanente; Antioch Attorney Gordon Greenwood of the Kazan McClain Partner’s Foundation; and Sarah Yoell of PG&E.
Oakland Unified School District Superintendent, Dr. Kyla Trammel Johnson acknowledged LAHF’s impact.
“Each year, LAHF gives backpacks and school supplies to thousands of students across Oakland,” said Johnson. “In 2022 the effort topped 25,000 students. No matter the need, big or small, involving lots of students or just one, Lend A Hand is always there ready to make a difference in the lives of our young people.”
Founder and executive director of LAHF Dee Johnson took the stage as the DJ played the Sledge Sisters’ “We Are Family.”
Guests gave Johnson a standing ovation as she thanked supporters and presented many of them with gifts.
“It’s heartbreaking to know some children don’t have clothes or supplies for school,” said Johnson. “The babies really need our support and when we deliver supplies to them, it makes them really happy.”
Since the LAHF Annual Stay in School Program began in 1999, it has provided over 150,000 educational school supply kits to students throughout Alameda County, including Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, and San Leandro, among other cities.
“This past August, we provided for over 12,000 students with supplies, with the help and support of our very generous donors,” said Johnson. “This year, we aim to do all we can to match that amount or provide even more.”
For more information visit: www.LendaHandFoundation.org
Community
Dasia Taylor: A Girl’s Powerful Success Story Is Inspiring the Next Wave of STEAM Leaders
Dasia Taylor’s journey began as a young girl in high school in her AP chemistry class. Her teacher at Iowa City’s West High School had just asked which students wanted to try out for the school’s science fair team. Taylor volunteered. At the time, Taylor was a high-school junior focusing on the humanities. She was already overcommitted as a member of the student senate, her district’s diversity and equity committee, and an array of other “anti-racism initiatives.” Her family had no history of participating in science fairs – and no desire to attend one, as she wasn’t really into science. However, Taylor says her life and decisions are guided by a simple rule: “Be curious.”
By Tamara Shiloh
Dasia Taylor’s journey began as a young girl in high school in her AP chemistry class. Her teacher at Iowa City’s West High School had just asked which students wanted to try out for the school’s science fair team. Taylor volunteered.
At the time, Taylor was a high-school junior focusing on the humanities.
She was already overcommitted as a member of the student senate, her district’s diversity and equity committee, and an array of other “anti-racism initiatives.” Her family had no history of participating in science fairs – and no desire to attend one, as she wasn’t really into science. However, Taylor says her life and decisions are guided by a simple rule: “Be curious.”
With cash prizes in the four-digit range and competitors polishing concepts and techniques since grade-school, today’s science fair projects are much more advanced than the simple papier-mâché volcanoes we used to see.
Taylor says her chances of entering the science far, let alone winning, were slim to none.
However, she won her next competition, then the one after that. Finally, she ended up in the last stage of the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Super Bowl of high school science competitions. And the publicity resulting from her unlikely story and potentially world-changing proposal made Taylor a viral sensation, putting the bubbly 17-year-old on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’, ‘PBS NewsHour’, CNN, and many other shows.
In fact, equity work was the inspiration for Taylor’s science ideas. Her medical suture, which colors beet juice to reveal an infected surgical wound, is based on research that shows that Black individuals are particularly vulnerable to post-surgical complications such as infection – and that what appears on some patients’ skin as simple signs of infection, like a red patch and swelling, doesn’t show up on darker skin.
Taylor’s suture concept, which she is trying to patent, could provide a simple low-cost fix in poor countries where infections that can easily be treated are often fatal.
Two years after her forum-moments virilization, at 19, Taylor is a college student, but also the founder and CEO of VariegateHealth, creating inclusive medical devices; and the owner of her own “head nerd brand.”
“My life’s work is helping kids embrace their inner nerd and just be their authentic selves,” Taylor says.
Through “hands-on innovation workshops,” she inspires teenagers to make science bolder. By bolder, Taylor says she means more exciting and socially meaningful.
By the time the debate wrapped up, Taylor had been chosen for the 2023 Iowa’s Woman of the Year prize by USA Today, which annually showcases creative leaders with “stories that influence their communities.”
She was featured in the collection “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women,” which is part of the Rebel Girls series.
Through her innovative work and advocacy for STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) programs, Taylor is proving that it’s possible for students to be curious about the issues that affect their lives, engage in learning experiences not just in the classroom but beyond, and change the world.
With this constant motivation and her focus on improving the lives of others, she has become a public speaker, and a role model for the millennial generation worldwide.
Taylor says she has a penchant for the color yellow, music and creating any rule she wants.
California Black Media
California Approves $1.3 Billion to Restructure Community Schools
The State Board of Education and Governor Gavin Newsom announced last week that they have approved $1.3 billion in grants to implement a new school initiative that offers students support outside the classroom. According to a press release dated May 8, State education officials have appropriated funds since 2021 to offer students and their families resources such as health care, mental health support, and social services.
By California Black Media
The State Board of Education and Governor Gavin Newsom announced last week that they have approved $1.3 billion in grants to implement a new school initiative that offers students support outside the classroom.
According to a press release dated May 8, State education officials have appropriated funds since 2021 to offer students and their families resources such as health care, mental health support, and social services. The State’s board awarded $1.3 billion to 288 local education agencies that fund and support 995 schools statewide.
The California Department of Education plans to mobilize resources to help students thrive in school and at home. This initiative includes summer programs, tutoring, and counseling.
Gov. Newsom said that the state is expanding community schools across the state. Students will be offered free meals twice a day, mental health counseling, and after-school programs.
“California is transforming education to make schools a place where every family and student can succeed,” Newsom said.
The state is developing the initiative as part of the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP), a ten-year plan that promotes equity and quality education for students in California. The state will spend $4.1 billion with its partners including community schools, local counties, government agencies, and nonprofits that provide health, mental health, and social services.
State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond is eager to uplift communities with well-resourced schools and achieve equity in public education.
“We know children learn best when they are healthy, happy, and in a learning environment where they are surrounded by knowledgeable and caring adults attuned to their needs,” Darling-Hammond said.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond endorsed current school programs and anticipates promising results as grants are invested in these programs.
“Our Community Schools continue to serve as exemplars of programs that educate the whole child. I am proud to see California continue to be at the forefront of recognizing that student wellness is a cornerstone of learning,” Thurmond said.
The California Department of Education will award a final round of grants to community-based organizations and schools during the 2024-2025 academic year.
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