State of Black Education Oakland (SoBEO), a collective co-founded by our founder Dirk Tillotson, is gathering information from the Oakland public education community about the state of Black education in Oakland through a survey we developed. (We would love to hear from you, please take five minutes to complete it!)
With the 2024 election right around the corner, we wanted to hear what candidates for the Oakland school board had to say about solutions and problems around the state of Black education in Oakland. We reached out to each candidate with the same set of questions. Here is our interview with Dr. Clifford Thompson, the current District 7 school board member who is running for re-election. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
SoBEO: Hi, everyone. My name is Paul Le. I’m part of Great School Voices and State of Black Education in Oakland. And today we are conducting an interview of Patrice Berry, who is a candidate for District 5 and OUSD to prepare you all for the election coming up next week or the week after. And ballots have been mailed out for you all. And early voting has started, especially for our 16 and 17 year old students thanks to Measure QQ. And so we’re excited to have you here, Patrice
Patrice Berry: Thank you for having me. I so appreciate the time.
SoBEO: Our first question on the screen is, what are you doing, and what have you done to improve education for young people in Oakland, particularly in your District? And how does that make you the best candidate for the role?
Patrice Berry: So not a hardball question at all. I am a longtime career educator. So I started my career teaching history and then when I left the classroom, the traditional classroom, I helped build a college career center and did some workforce development, community school programming. And when I moved to Oakland, I worked for College Track, and I did primarily post-secondary readiness for first gen college students. And after leaving the education nonprofit space, I moved into doing education at the city government level, worked for our former mayor here in Oakland, and I led a few post-secondary education initiatives.
So the first thing that I worked on here in Oakland is an initiative called the Oakland Post Secondary Education Workforce Success Collaborative, which brings together leaders across Oakland, our Peralta Community College district, CSU East Bay, Oakland Promise, and a few other folks so that we can put our heads together, identify the major issues affecting students and find out what we’re uniquely positioned to do together to affect change. And we also created a youth advisory panel to help lead and guide the direction of the work.
Something else I worked on here in Oakland, I started with a few other people, something called the Northern California College Promise Coalition, which is a coalition of college promise college preparatory organizations across the norcal region coming together again to build power resources and make sure that we most effectively serve students who are interested in going to college as part of their career pathway. And we are supporting 300,000 students across the state of California. And it’s growing. So we do anything from direct service programming to policy advocacy at the state level. And then the last thing I want to call out, something else I did here in the city of Oakland when the pandemic hit back in 2020.
At that time, I was working for the mayor’s office, and my closest connection to school was working with Oakland’s Future centers, the college and career centers dedicated to helping students, you know, define their college career pathway. And the educators I was working with at that time said one of the most urgent needs was making sure that students maintained connectivity, even if they couldn’t sort of show up for school in person. And so we decided to seek out donations to see if we could get computers. And that effort that was initially only dedicated to serving high school seniors became what is now known as Oakland undivided.
And so, as you don’t know about Oakland undivided, it is now making sure that not just students and families connected to the school system have Internet connectivity, high speed Internet connectivity, but that the city more broadly does as well.
SoBEO: We know Oakland Undivided very well. You know, Dirk had worked with them back in the day, you know, created a petition to create a Right to Internet. And so thank you for all that work. I’m glad to see that there’s a connection there, a through line with all your work.
Is Oakland public education moving in the right direction?
Patrice Berry: I think the thing that I’m most interested about doing in Oakland, I think some of this work has happened in the past and won’t be new to a lot of people. But let’s define what right direction looks like. I think a lot of people, we all want the same things, better education, quality education, more equity here in Oakland. But I think there are different ideas about what that looks like. And I think what that means is that we end up fighting each other in the weeds of things, because we actually have a different vision of what right direction means. And so I would love to help be part of an effort that brings people together, builds more solidarity amongst our varying vantage points to see if we can. Let’s.
What are the one, two, three things that we can agree on in terms of vision? What high quality learning and education looks like in Oakland, and build towards that. I don’t think that is happening yet. I think there are some signals of right movement happening in Oakland. When I visit schools, I’ve seen high quality science of reading being taught and delivered in classrooms. I’ve seen students deeply engaged in college and career readiness. Fremont High School has some really powerful workforce development programming happening. So there’s lots of, you know, bright spots across the city. But I think what we need is more solidarity, because I think we’re getting stuck. And if you show up to a school board meeting, you can see, you can hear, you can feel it, and I want us to be able to do more work effectively together.
SoBEO: What do you think? What do you see? Are the challenges affecting the state of black education in Oakland.
Patrice Berry: Somewhat related to what I was just mentioning? I think the one thing I want us to prioritize, if nothing else, is, like literacy and math. Why? Because literacy is, like, a huge. It unlocks, you know, someone’s confidence, their joy, their love of learning. It’s fundamental. It helps with math education. I think that if we could just agree that we need to focus on literacy, then we can also begin to have more targeted conversations about the conditions that need to be true in order for us to elevate literacy in Oakland. What does that mean? Well, ell, does it mean dual immersion special education programs and more accountability related to the delivery of special education services across the city?
Patrice Berry: Does it mean the redistribution of resources so that we can make sure that resources get to the right students at each of our school campuses so that they get the literacy education they need in each building? So that. And you map that same sort of framework onto math, and you map that same framework onto post secondary readiness. I think those things are really important.
SoBEO: Part and parcel to that, what do you think are the solutions?
Patrice Berry: Well, one thing I want to add. I mentioned literacy, and I mentioned math, and you can add post secondary readiness to that. The rates of literacy, math, and post secondary readiness among black youth in Oakland are far lower than their white counterparts, for instance, and in some instances, our latino counterparts as well. So, you know, we’re struggling in this area, and I think I. We need targeted support and attention. That would be one of my solutions. I think having a unified vision or standard for literacy education across the city would be helpful. Can we all agree that the science of reading is really helpful and powerful tool for the instruction of reading? It’s something I really believe in, and I think that would help.
And then I think if you talk to literacy educators, they’ll tell you that differentiated instruction, individualized attention, small groups, and the ability to pull students out of bigger classrooms to do more targeted work, all of those things cost money. And so I think that’s a solution if we want to improve rates for literacy, math, postsecondary readiness across oakland, focusing on the groups of students who are struggling the most, makes so much sense to me.
SoBEO: Here are some of the challenges that the community has shared with us in our state of black education. Open survey. And I’ll just start with the challenges first. The challenges include resources, racism, poverty, poor leadership, lack of political will to make hard decisions, wasted money, teacher quality, and lack of diversity and adult special interests from the survey. We also have some solutions coming from the community, which is more political will, more school collaboration, more funding, better teacher pay, better teachers, more experienced teachers, more teachers of color, and support for families. So I’ll give you time to digest that. And then the question really is, how would you really adjust all these concerns?
Patrice Berry: I think the first one that I have the most control over is political will. So that’s like a leadership issue. I’ve met with almost every single school board member. There’s one student board director I haven’t met with, and we’re scheduling right now. And there isn’t a school board member currently on the board or running for school board who I couldn’t work with. And when I say solidarity unified vision earlier, I actually believe that’s possible with a group of people who could possibly be the next school board. And I think political will is something we can achieve together. I think that there isn’t a lie or inaccuracy on the list. None of what you share with me are surprises.
And I think the first thing that I’m really excited about doing as a school board member is starting what I’ve been calling local advisory councils, name TBD, but just an opportunity to be in real dialogue with people across the district, and I’m in district five. Ideally, other school board members would take up the opportunity and establish local advisory councils in their districts as well so that we could have a two way conversation. Right now, if you go to school board meetings, there’s an agenda. People can make public comment, the school board members receive that public comment. We listen, we take notes, but there isn’t live conversation. There isn’t live problem solving. We go back into a closed session and we do the problem solving there.
But where are there opportunities for us to actually have people who are most affected by our decisions at the table when we’re detangling all the messiness? And so I think one of the my offerings for addressing some of those, for solving some of these issues is establishing local advisory council so that we can more directly engage people in decision making and in identifying the best solutions.
SoBEO: Which of those solutions? You mentioned advisory council. Any of the solutions that were discussed that you feel are viable and how would you ensure that they happen when elected?
Patrice Berry: Or if so, I only wrote down a handful here on my notes. Okay, thank you so much. More political. So I think also within reach is more school collaboration. I haven’t talked to an educator who’s like, collaborate with other schools. Why do I want to do that? No, I think people really get a lot out of it, but that, again, has to be resourced. When teachers come together within a building and across school buildings, that’s time away from the classroom. So how do you make that happen? How do you compensate them for that time? And I think the more funding listed after that is the messiest, stickiest issue because right now we’re like $95 million short and that we have to come up with that money. And so a lot of these solutions cost money.
I’ve been telling people that we too often try to stabilize our budget, doing implementing one time solutions that aren’t that lucrative for us. School closures are a big deal every single year. We talk about them as if it’s like the major money making agent when it comes to our budget, and it’s not. So I think we have to get more creative about funding. And what does that mean? We have to make sure that we spend as much time thinking about our income and alternative revenue sources as we do what resources we’re going to divert away from things we’re already doing. Another part of that equation is optimizing existing resources and reducing inefficiencies. But I really think. I just don’t hear us talking enough about where we can pull more money into the district. And some part of that conversation is thinking about enrollment.
How can we keep the students we have attract more students into the district? And I think there are lots of interesting conversations around enrollment that we also need to have. I think with better teachers and more teachers of color, there are some really powerful initiatives in Oakland, in California, and across the country. I think there’s an opportunity for us to deepen the partnerships we have with folks that are really committed to the mission of making sure students have educators who look like them and related to that those educators can afford to live in Oakland, which is a larger issue. Which makes me say the last thing. All of the problems that I think exist within our schools are problems that exist within our communities. And I would love to see us deepen the collaboration we have with the city, the mayor’s office, the county.
And I think we need to build power so that we can hold the state accountable to partnering with us to solve some of our local issues, because a lot of these problems don’t start within our schools.
SoBEO: Anything else that you want to add? Those are our questions. So, is there anything else you want to add about your candidacy or any message you want to send?
Patrice Berry: I just want to reiterate that I think part of my campaign and what I hope is really clear about what I’m trying to do, there are. My priorities are very clear. Literacy, math, post secondary readiness. Some of the conditions that will enable us to be successful in those areas. So student and educator well being and a stable, sustainable budget. And my campaign is also about how I get work done. That is unity. That’s solidarity. It’s coalition building. It’s community inclusion. It’s. And community inclusion is not just like us sharing information with the community, but us being in frequent, regular communication. That is two way with our community, and making sure that they have seats at the table where they’re involved in. In decision making. That’s something, as a parent, that I value. And I’ve never done anything in education without students and families.
And so I hope it’s very clear to y’all that I care about these set of issues, but I care just as much about how we get work done.