Great School Voices sits down with Sam Davis ahead of the November 5th election and his planned departure from the seat of OUSD School Board President.
Davis, who decided not to run on November 5th, talks to Keonnis Taylor and Great School Voices about reflections on the challenges and solutions faced by the District, offering his suggestions on how the District might move forward as he prepares to exit the OUSD Board.
Keonnis Taylor: Greetings. Greetings. How are you?
Sam Davis: I’m doing good. How are you?
Keonnis Taylor:
I’m doing great, thank you. My name is Keonnis Taylor, and I’m with Great School Voices. And I am so excited to welcome Mr. Sam Davis, the present president of the Oakland Unified School District School Board, with us on the program today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Sam Davis: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Keonnis Taylor: Of course. Well, we have a few things to cover today, so if you are good with it, why don’t we jump right on in?
Sam Davis: Yes, let’s go ahead.
Keonnis Taylor: Okay, great. So, as we know, November is tomorrow and the elections are right around the corner. So as we approach the November elections, what are you most proud about? What you have done to improve education for young people in Oakland?
Sam Davis: Well, yeah, and happy Halloween. So, yeah, I’m not wearing my costume yet, but, you know, it’s funny, I was. We had a celebration this week for measures G and G1 as we start to think about, you know, possibly needing to renew those tax measures in the future. And I told the young people who were performing for their families and, you know, they were really excited. I was like, you know, how I became president of the school board is like any election. People voted for me. And elections have very big consequences. And we all know we have one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime coming up next week. But so my proudest moment was leading the campaign for Measure H, which renewed Measure N, and it funds all the work in our high schools for career and college pathways.
And it passed by 82%, which was just a ringing endorsement of how successful that work has been and real testament to the young people who were active in that campaign. And that was my most joyful moment on the school board, working with the young people, knocking on doors, hearing from them how meaningful the pathways have been in their lives, the internships, the work based learning, the dual enrollment college classes that they got to take on their campuses. So, yeah, renewing measure N through Measure H and guaranteeing that funding for our high Schools for another 14 years was absolutely my proudest moment.
Keonnis Taylor: Wow. Congratulations. Over 80% is outstanding. And also to have the children involved in civic readiness, college readiness as a part of their education is extremely commendable.
Sam Davis: Yeah. And we’re so excited to see youth Vote get implemented. So I think that’s another piece that I’m proud of is having supported the young people and getting that to be implemented this year.
Keonnis Taylor: That is great.
Sam Davis: There’s many things.
Keonnis Taylor: Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, straight and simple is Oakland public education Moving in the right direction?
Sam Davis: Well, we’ll find out. I mean, I don’t know if you saw Ashley McBride’s article yesterday about the $95 million deficit that we’re facing, but it ended with a quote from our county superintendent, Elise Castro, that I thought was very to the point. And it says, we’re at a fork in the road. And so when you say, are we moving in the right direction? I think we are at that fork. And it’s like, okay, which way are we turning, left or right? And, you know, one fork is we take the very painful and difficult steps that we have to in order to adjust our budget. You know, we’re recovering from the pandemic, and. And we’re coming to the end of the pandemic relief funds that allowed us to postpone some of these difficult decisions while were just wrestling with the pandemic.
But now the pandemic’s over, and the pandemic relief funds have dried up, and we don’t have an Oakland Coliseum that we can sell to put off the decision by a year. We have to take the decision now. And so are we going to take that decision, in which case we get to pivot and turn towards that fork in the road. That takes us, you know, looking more at student outcomes, focusing on the future, starting to talk about the transition. We know we have the superintendent for two more years, and we want to attract a new, excellent superintendent that will try and fill her very big shoes, you know, two years from now. Or are we going to take the other path where we continue to agonize about this? We can’t make a decision. We, this cohort, that cohort. How’s it going to work?
What’s the process? And we end up, you know, more severe county intervention, constant conflict with the county where, you know, the county trustee is having to stay and rescind labor contracts and individual contracts that are on our agenda and individual decisions and individual, you know, new positions. Because she’s worried about our us actually being able to stay in the black and meet payroll every month. That’s just a period of conflict that could end up with. With the school board even losing control of the district once again, as it did in 2003. That’s no longer kind of a vague possibility or threat. It’s actually a very real possibility right now. Like, it’s. It’s kind of a Plan B that I hear the county talking about. And so we need to decide which path we’re going down.
And we only have a couple of months to do it. So that’s when I say, you know, it was part of my decision. I saw this coming, and part of my decision not to run for reelection was knowing that at this time of the year, I was going to be very focused on that, and I wasn’t going to have capacity to both do that and run for reelection.
Keonnis Taylor: Understood? Understood. So knowing that we are at this fork in the road, as you say, what do you see are the challenges affecting the state of black education in Oakland?
Sam Davis: I mean, I think the biggest challenge, you know, I was talking about the success in our high schools where we actually see the graduation rate for African Americans slightly higher than the overall graduation rate across Oakland. And that’s thanks to the investments in from measure N and measure H that have created career and college pathways where students are not having to choose between vocational or college track. They’re doing both because we know that students are more successful in college if they go in with a vision for what career they’re doing it for. So we’ve just seen huge progress in that area. I mean, there’s more left to do. We want to see all of our students graduating, not just 75%, which is. But it’s a lot better than it was just a few years ago.
I think about 10 years ago, the graduation rate in Oakland was 60%. And so when we look at that dramatic change that’s happened in our high schools, we have not seen that level of change for our youngest learners in. In terms of reading scores. Our reading scores are still very low in Oakland. And so I do believe change is possible, but we need to be able to pivot to focusing on that. And I think there’s been some really good investments in Oakland, but specifically, the African American reading rate in third grade is atrocious, and that’s not acceptable. And so on Tuesday, I got to go out to Korematsu Discovery Academy and to go to different classrooms from TK through 5th grade.
And I saw the TKRS just transfixed with their reading instructor and all the chants she was doing with them to increase phonemic awareness. I saw students in fifth grade, like, working with text and putting things in chronological order. And I saw student writing. I think it was a third grade classroom where students wrote about their dreams. And it was just fantastic work. And I got kind of emotional because in the school board meetings, it just feels like it’s budget, budget, austerity, austerity. And I’m like, when do we get to talk about literacy, about reading instruction? There’s some really good work happening that we need to be spreading across the district. But until we as a board get to focus on that and to talk about what are the iready scores at every school in Oakland?
You know, we don’t do that in our board meetings because we’re so busy agonizing around difficult decisions. I mean, very important decisions. But we need to be able to move on to focus on literacy because that is the civil rights issue of this time.
Keonnis Taylor: You know, it’s a really interesting point that you bring up the third grade reading level in particular, because thinking back, the third grade would have had a really particular impact with regard to reading due to the time outside of the classroom during COVID That’s right. Do you make that association as well?
Sam Davis: I mean, I think third grade is just, it’s just always been, you know, your. Up until third grade you’re learning to read, and then after third grade, you’re reading to learn. That’s always, you know, just the. And I mean, I think the other piece around the school to prison pipeline, right, is that it’s often said that when they’re deciding how many prisons to build in California, they look at the third grade reading rates, right? Because that’s, that’s how it’s that stark and that awful in our society that if you’re not learning to read, then you’re on the wrong path and, you know, society kind of gives up on you. We can’t do that as a society. We can’t give up on anybody. We need to rescue everybody and bring them all along.
I’ve been supporting a school board candidate, Patrice Berry, and she’s just like, so eloquent around the transformative power of education and what it meant for her life and how, you know, we overuse the word empowering. But it is, it’s like giving students power to do things with their life. And if they don’t feel that power, they’re going to find other ways to have power. And that might be, you know, on the streets finding power, you know, doing things that they shouldn’t do. We need to give students power to make change in their lives through education and career. And that’s the vision that the district has to provide to its students.
Keonnis Taylor: Thank you for that. And expounding on that, what do you see are the solutions for the state of black education in Oakland?
Sam Davis: Well, I mean, so specifically on literacy, we have adopted a new curriculum and it’s There’s a woman who is a network superintendent at the elementary level, and I just love her to tears, Dr. Bree Moore. And she was talking about, you know, it’s not enough to just hand over the curriculum and say to teachers, hey, we adopted this curriculum, go use it. It’s actually, you know, giving teachers the tools to understand why. It’s just like we have to do with our students. You have to walk them through things, not just hand them the textbook and say, go learn this. Right? You have to go step by step. And so they’ve been doing the hard work of working with principals, working with teachers to educate them around. Why is phonemic awareness so important at the early grades?
Why are we shifting our strategies and focusing more on phonics? And it’s because it has been effective. I think one of the things that I saw in the visits to classrooms, you know, people I think have this association with phonics. Oh, it’s boring. It’s drill and kill. It’s not creative, it’s not joyful. But I saw students really experiencing joy with playing with the sounds, playing with the letters, using invented spelling, when they were writing their stories about their dreams. But they’re sounding things out. They’re learning the rules of English. I saw a student, she was copying over a sentence and she changed the word exclude to disinclude, which is not a word, but it’s the kind of mistake that shows you she actually understood what she was copying. She wasn’t just blindly copying something.
And so a student’s really engaging with and wrestling with meaning. And I think in a context where as a district, we talk about being anti racist district and questioning the assumptions that we see in history, questioning why are things the way they are. We have ethnic studies in all of our ninth grade classrooms. And so teaching students to be proud of their heritage, whether it’s African American, whether it’s Maya mom, whether it’s Mexican American, that all of our students, whether it’s Samoan American, you know, all of our students are learning to be proud of their heritage and how their people have been significant in history because it’s. It’s not just learning because, you know, that’s what we have to do. It’s learning for empowerment.
Keonnis Taylor: Beautiful. Thank you for that. Now, we surveyed members of the Oakland community and they shared some of the challenges and solutions that they feel exist regarding the state of black education in Oakland. So we want to share some of those with you. As far as the challenges they said resources, racism Poverty, poor leadership, lack of political will to make hard funding decisions, wasted money, teacher quality and lack of diversity, as well as adult special interests. Do you have comments in terms of how you would address those concerns?
Sam Davis: I mean, you know, it’s painful to see that list because I think all of those are challenges that we do have in Oakland. I was just at a national conference for urban school districts, large urban school districts, and it’s really somewhat healing to go to those spaces and talk to school board members who are facing those same challenges. You know, it’s. It’s not. Oakland isn’t unusual. I think there’s been times in the past where we’ve unusual faced these challenges to an unusual degree. I think now it’s something you would probably see in a lot of urban school districts. A lot of districts, know, got really significant resources during the pandemic and those have dried up and they’re facing very intense deficits.
A lot of districts are, you know, they’re in cities where the population is being hit really hard with displacement, gentrification, lower birth rates, declining enrollment. And that’s hard. That’s hard stuff. And until, you know, so we did this little field trip down to Apple park yesterday to meet with some of the leaders at Apple, trying to get some resources from Apple for Oakland. I don’t know if it’s going to work out, but it was just. It’s kind of crazy to see the resources that they have. As a trillion dollar corporation that is right in our backyard in Cupertino, we don’t have those resources. And that’s not fair. And until the very wealthy in this country pay their fair share, and our state as a state has made huge strides through local control funding formula to more adequately funding urban education.
But there’s so much further to go. I mean, until we have the kind of resources that Apple Computer has. I was joking with somebody because one of our district staff said, maybe you at Apple can have some engineers who can help us to figure out how to do more with less. I was like, it doesn’t look like they’re doing more with less at Apple. It looks like they’re doing more with.
Keonnis Taylor: More, a lot more.
Sam Davis: We need some of that more here in Oakland because it would go such a long way to addressing some of those issues. But I think until that happens, we need to figure out how to work together and how to address some of those issues you listed, like, make the hard decisions. We need to recognize there’s no, you know, God willing. And Kamala Harris is elected on Tuesday, but she’s not going to swoop in. Even being from Oakland. She’s not going to swoop in and give us a billion dollars and fix, you know, fix things magically. We are going to have to make some hard decisions here because we are in the capitalist structure that we’re in and we face the lack of resources that we face.
Keonnis Taylor: That is a harrowing description of what is. What’s happening in Oakland. Thank you for sharing that. Now, we talked about the challenges.
Sam Davis: Let me say one thing, because I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. Let me just say one more thing, which, you know, I think one of the assets that Oakland has is I was looking around that room yesterday and I was like, I would take any of our people over any of those, you know, seven figure making people over at Apple, because I know that the people we have in Oakland, in our schools, whether in our classrooms, in our. In our. Our school secretaries, you know, and not everybody’s perfect. There’s plenty of people who, you know, need to be doing a better job. But there are some amazing people on the ground in our schools, leading our schools, leading our district, who are brilliant.
And so we do so much with elbow grease and like, just the passion that individual educators have that, you know, I am just so moved. This is not the Oakland that I came to, Oakland Unified, that I came to 20 years ago, where there was dysfunction, there was corruption at the highest levels. You couldn’t trust people to make the right decisions. I see people doing brilliant work at every level of the organization, and that’s what we depend on. But sometimes one of the issues is because we depend on people’s passion to fuel the work, we have to let a thousand flowers bloom. And like, everyone’s doing their own passionate thing. And that’s where we lack sometimes coherence of how do we get everybody to agree to do the same thing together.
Everyone’s doing their own, like, magical dance, but we need to figure out how to dance together and do the same dance so that we can be more coherent and more structured in Oakland. But there’s some beauty in the individual dances, too.
Keonnis Taylor: Thank you. Thank you for that silver lining. I think that’s very important. Now, I want to share with you some of the solutions in that vein. So some of those are more political will, more school collaboration, which you mentioned, more funding, which you also mentioned, better teacher pay, better teachers, more experienced teachers, more teachers of color, and support for families. Our question is, how would you address these concerns?
Sam Davis: Well, and to get a little political on you. Oh, sorry, finish your thought.
Keonnis Taylor: That those are solutions. And so we really want to ask you what solutions you feel are viable to implement and what would be your advice as you are ending your tenure for steps to ensure that these things happen?
Sam Davis: Well, and yeah, so to get a little political on you, I have endorsed, you know, a few candidates for School Board. Dr. Clifford Thompson has just been, you know, and he and I disagree often on charter school issues, but on all the really important issues that face us, I just find him to be a tremendous ally and colleague on the board. He’s been just so consistent around how can we talk about student outcomes more often and more in depth at our board meetings? And then aside from him, I’ve endorsed two moms. I feel like we need some more mom energy. There’s a lot of dudes on our school board right now, and I would love to see some. These two mothers, Rachel Latta and Patrice Berry.
I think when you have your own kids in the schools, it’s a different place that you come to the conversation. And I’ve always been about parent empowerment, the district, that’s been my work my whole time in ousd. And so it’s really moving to me to see these two moms step up and be willing to run for school board. My student graduated class of 2024, Rochester Institute of Technology, freshman right now. So, you know, my time in OUSD I feel like, is completed and we don’t have any other current parents of school age children on our board. We have folks, you know, retired. Maybe they have grandkids in the schools. But I think it’s a different vibe a little bit when you’re actually dropping off your student every day at the school that you’re making decisions about. So I’m excited to see their leadership.
I think they’re both deeply committed to equity and, you know, have spoke really passionately around the racism that is endemic in our society and that our schools are trying to address. And so I think that the two of them will make, you know, the right decisions. They might disagree sometimes. I don’t doubt they will have different approaches, but I think they will be collaborative and they will help bring the board together to make those decisions.
Keonnis Taylor: Wonderful. Well, Mr. Davis, thank you so much for your thoughtful reflections and for all you do and for all you’ve done to improve education, not just for the black students in Oakland, but for all students in Oakland. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we conclude?
Sam Davis: I just want to appreciate you for stepping into this space. I think journalism that’s about our schools is, you know, there’s not enough of it, and people are hungry for it. And so I really appreciate you. You had excellent questions, and it’s a really important resource to us to have people like you and Ashley McBride educating the public about what’s going on.
Keonnis Taylor: Thank you so much, and enjoy your Halloween.
Sam Davis: Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Happy Halloween. Trick or treat.
Keonnis Taylor: Thank you so much. Peace.