Cultivating Excellence

We can expect success from all students, even our lowest performers. We must also value them enough to listen to what this expectation means to them and provide them the help they need to succeed.”

Jumoke Hinton Hodge’s Plan At a Glance ::

- Clearly Identify Expectations
- Strengthen Youth Voice and Leadership Through Strong Student Support
- Cultivate Innovation and Excellence Among Students and Educators

The Challenge ::

Our students have been hindered by a culture of low expectations. Our research and our experience shows us that our students, both West Oakland students and students across OUSD, can reach further and achieve higher if we hold them to high expectations and provide them with the support they need to reach those heights.

Compounding the challenges facing our students are the pressures faced by our educators who are working in an increasingly complex environment faced by pressures of budget cuts and increasing mandates from the state and federal level. Our teachers find it difficult to be effective when faced with frequent classroom disruptions and behavioral issues. A first step toward improving student performance is providing our classroom teachers with the professional development and training they need and the support in the classroom to help teachers be teachers.

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing our students is lack of physical and emotional safety in some of our school sites. Student safety is an essential pre-condition to learning. We need to continue to work diligently toward student safety both on-campus and within our communities.

Jumoke Hinton Hodge’s Plan ::

We must create a Student Centered District that focuses on teaching and learning and puts the needs of our students first.

Professional Development: We, at OUSD, must invest in our educators, the teachers and principals that work tirelessly for our students each day, to ensure that they are provided with the necessary tools to support student achievement. OUSD must dedicate resources to provide our teachers with mentoring, coaching and opportunities to share best practices within their own school, and across the district and beyond. Professional development should be relevant to the issues facing teachers in today’s classrooms; it must address chronic issues of classroom management, provide strategies to ensure that learning is relevant, and orienting and retaining new teachers to ensure that our district retains talented professionals in our toughest classrooms.

Focus on Youth Development: I have worked closely with the Youth Development Unit of the Office of Family and Community Development to actively pursue a greater focus on active district and community partnerships to support our youth. The Youth Development Unit exposes youth to leadership opportunities, fosters opportunities for youth voice to be shared, encourages youth to take ownership of the success at their schools, and finally, encourages our youth to take responsibility for their educational path and ultimately their future. The Youth Development Unit works directly with the All City Council and advisory School Board members. These opportunities provide our students with exposure to training, workshops, and mentoring opportunities. We need to build on the successes of this innovative program. I plan to work to enhance this unit to ensure that their outcomes grow to impact every school site in the district.

Youth Resiliency and Youth Leadership: We must envision a district that sees the value in our young people first and foremost no matter their socio-economic status. We must first focus on resiliency so we can help our youth become leaders. We, the leaders of OUSD, must create learning environments that provide emotional support for students who have experienced trauma as a result of neighborhood violence. We need to enable our middle and high school students to explore their adolescent years and support them to make strong choices for their educational futures. This can only be accomplished by helping our students work through the trauma they have experienced.

OUSD should ensure that every student graduates with the basic competencies needed to excel in the 21st century. Some of the less traditional skills that we must provide our students include building meaningful relationships, establishing healthy relationships with adults, becoming good leaders, learning to think critically, and promoting civic responsibility. We in Oakland should focus on these skills as well as our students core academics.

Increased services to improve student achievement: We must ensure adequate preparation for the CAHSEE, and guarantee that an A-G curriculum is provided for all students, even the lowest performing. Despite pressures on teachers to “teach to test,” it is essential to provide teachers the support necessary to ensure that students are adequately prepared for test taking. We must have increased counseling on middle and high school campuses, with a student ratio that is responsive to student needs. The current counseling ratio is approximately 300 students to one counselor. We must work to bring this ratio down to a level that provides students with real individual counseling support. We must also modernize our school sites with technological resources that enable students to be more prepared for academic demands. And finally, we must take critical steps forward to ensure that after school programs and school based health clinics are available to students.