At the end of May this year, on Memorial Day, Bitwise Industries, a tech startup that “promised to uplift marginalized communities and change the narratives of underestimated places” furloughed its workers and soon shut down. Among those who lost their jobs were Kennan Scott, the former OUSD Director of Computer Science, a longtime educator and winner of one of the first State of Black Education Oakland (SoBEO) Impact Awards. Kennan’s wife, Karen, also worked for Bitwise Industries Oakland. In this guest piece, Kennan shares a message he sent to the Bitwise team shortly before the layoffs:
Digital Divide
#ACCESSLIT’S NEXT EPISODE Unlocking Accessibility with #OAKLANDUNDIVIDED is this Friday, May 20 at 12PM PST
Join us again as we start our regularly scheduled live broadcast THIS Friday, May 20th as Kennan invites David Silver and Patrick Messac of the Mayor’s Office and #OaklandUndivided as they unpack new developments in providing access to even more Oakland residents. #OaklandUndivided, a citywide effort to ensure every Oakland public school student has the tools necessary to support digital access in their home has delivered 29,000 computers and 10,000 hotspots, increasing home tech connectivity for students from low-income backgrounds from 12% to 98% pre-pandemic to now.
More Families Have Broadband Access But the Internet Isn’t Desegregated Yet
Last year, Great School Voices leader Dirk Tillotson urged the nation on his Citizen Ed show Access Denied to pursue an #InternetForAll agenda to get all kids connected to the internet regardless of their families’ ability to pay for internet service provider bills. In times of lockdown, after all, how else are students supposed to…
Access Denied Ep. 5: How We Make #InternetForAll a Real Thing (ft. Chris Lewis of Public Knowledge)
As a country, we were able to bring phone lines, electricity, and running water to households across America no matter how rural, far apart, or congested homes may be. We did it once, and we must do it again for internet connectivity. In our modern times, the internet is necessary for basic living. We rely…
How Oakland Charters Kept Serving Students During Distance Learning: Community School for Creative Education
The unprecedented interruption of the 2020 school year has laid bare inequities in our system, with one in five California students (over 1 million) lacking either connectivity or a device, a staggering need. The pandemic has forced schools and school districts to make on-the-fly decisions about how to continue instruction and care of students. Some…