Oakland Collaborating for Our Kids: The Equity Pledge
Bringing District and Charter Communities Together
Dear Oaklanders,
We wanted to make you aware of an important emerging effort in our community — The Oakland Public Schools Equity Pledge.
The process that’s just getting started to define the Equity Pledge is a new and much needed collaborative opportunity for our district and charter communities.
It is an opportunity to move beyond ideologies or politics and to identify solutions for the real issues that need to be addressed in pursuit of quality, equity, and sustainability across all our public schools and all our KIDS.
Although in the very early stages, we believe it’s long overdue and has enormous potential to offer ALL students the opportunity they deserve.
The truth is, kids don’t care a lot about whether the public school they attend is a district, charter, or other type of school. They care about whether they are encouraged to learn at the highest levels, whether they have great teachers, and a safe atmosphere that fosters cooperation, creativity, and joy. Those are the same things families care about.
It’s what we want to be true of all our public schools.
The truth is, absent a solution like the Equity Pledge, our community has a fractured public school system without a defined set of expectations and guidelines to ensure quality, equity, and sustainability across all public schools in service of all students.
Without collaboratively defined expectations and guidelines, we are a community divided around ideologies and politics as opposed to a community united in pursuit of better for all kids.
We must all come together to create solutions that focus on how all of Oakland’s public school students are doing, no matter what school they attend.
We must have an elected school board and charter community that takes responsibility for all public school students and has a framework like the Equity Pledge through which to ensure quality, equity, and sustainability across all public schools.
To be clear, done right, the Equity Pledge will demand working together and sacrifices from the charter community and district in pursuit of the best solutions for our students and families.
Please expect more resources and information from us soon about what exactly an Equity Pledge entails, the nuts and bolts of a great Equity Pledge, as well as what solutions we hope it will include.
In the meantime, I encourage you to check out Superintendent Wilson’s message about the Equity Pledge here and to visit the website – oaklandequitypledge.org for more information.
This is a first step. We must all come together in supporting this effort and in setting high expectations for the results it will produce for students.
Thanks for all you do.
Ash
