Presence is power.“
Jumoke Hinton Hodge’s Plan At a Glance ::
- Investment in Our Children
- Accountability & Responsibility
- Open Communication & Collaboration
- Solutions for Truancy
The Challenge ::
For community-wide engagement to actually mean something real, is going to take complete investment, accountability, responsibility, open-communication, expectations and collaboration. We can only achieve progress through full participation.
For example, truancy in Oakland Unified School District hurts our school district monetarily. Truancy in Oakland Unified School District also hurts our most precious resource in Oakland; our youth and families. Truancy is a symptom of many social issues we have in communities: destabilized families with high unemployment, poverty, parental incarceration, inadequate childcare, and environmental concerns. Truancy can be remedied by increasing the rigor of school curriculum, strengthening the relevance of education as a social and cultural experience, and improving the relationships between students, families, educators, and administrators.
The challenge becomes investing more time and energy into our children’s education. This is our challenge, and it is to hold ourselves and each other more accountable to participating the process that will inevitable provide us with the ability to engage in our children’s lives. The challenge becomes a matter of active participation. We can overcome these challenges by raising our expectations, collaborating with each other more strategically, and making a full commitment to cultivating excellence.
Jumoke Hinton Hodge’s Plan ::
Promote Meaningful Community and Family Engagement Within OUSD
Overcoming the Challenges
Our solution requires new ways of seeing, new ways of thinking, and new ways of being. It begins by being present in our children’s lives. Presence is power. Your presence in their lives makes them feel valuable. We can begin to solve these challenges simply by sharing more of our time with our children.
A child shouldn’t be forced to cultivate excellence alone. He or she needs the wisdom, energy, and love of all our community stakeholders (parents, educators, school administrators, civic leaders, police officers, social workers, family members, friends, and other community members). It requires a complete, community wide engagement, so that our kids not only feel valued, but also so that they can recognize and utilize their capacity to achieve excellence.
We can perform better as a community. We can engage in our children’s education with more energy. We can commit more time. We can instill more discipline. We can hold ourselves and each other more accountable. We can be more responsible. We can communicate more openly and effectively. We can collaborate more strategically. We can invest more of ourselves into our children, so that they may grow into outstanding students and community members.
Collaboration
Community-based and/or City departments must be in tune with the entire family’s needs. Therefore it is imperative that there be stronger partnerships with such departments that provide health care, employment, and support services. Are health care providers even aware that students missing several days of school due to respiratory problems? How do families and schools communicate about the issues that might impact truancy?
First, there needs to be a positive shift in attitude and culture about delivering services to our children and their families. Young people going to school in District 3 are victims of constant violence and are coping with forms of Post Traumatic stress, which clearly impacts their educational experience. We talk about school based health clinics that can be instrumental in helping young people to emotionally and physical safe in school. Students are much more likely to perform at higher standards if these social services are adequately provided.
Increasing academic rigor and strengthening educational, social and cultural relevance is critical to ensuring that students participate. At an early age, parents must cultivate a family culture that orients their children towards going to college. In middle school, they must be provided a curriculum and training that will prepare them to be college or career-ready. Schools that have incorporated real world experiences into the curriculum have seen student attendance increase. Schools that set high standards for learning have excellent attendance. We’ve been asking the same questions for years, yet we’re very aware of the answers to those questions. We need a stronger commitment at the community-wide level, to put these ideas into practice, because if its truly important to us, we can get it done!
I would propose that we DO something; that we each take responsibility for impacting this change. It begins by engaging with our children, so that they develop a more valuable self-perception. When we sacrifice our time, energy, and emotion to our children, they will see themselves as WORTH our time. High performance requires discipline, a habit we must cultivate through our teaching. It will require people and institutional representatives to talk with one another i.e., foster care, juvenile justice and educators. It will take great investment by all sectors to raise the expectations for learning – believing every child can learn, mandatory outreach to families, listening to young people’s needs and engaging them in more meaningful ways.
I would also advocate that each citizen of Oakland take a very simple action as it concerns Oakland students who are at risk of dropping out and being chronically truant. Talk with them and encourage them to invest in their education and not give up.
Expect Success
OUSD “Expect Success” Initiative is an appropriate strategy to align the mission of our schools to place students first and at the center of reform in Oakland. Every Student. Every Classroom. Every Day. This slogan suggests the rigor and attention that must be provided for All students.
“Expect Success” is a strategy to address the administration and management of the District. This strategy has developed at least three strands of work: Community Accountability, Academic Instruction and Business/Customer Services within OUSD. These strategies are meant to create great efficiency and accountability internal to the district.
As a parent organizer, I have supported the development of the Office of Community Accountability and its efforts to create a viable infrastructure to engage parents, provide efficient services, and address student achievement. This office must develop a sound communication and engagement strategy. They have positively developed a model that sees itself housed beyond central office. This office has a presence on school sites in four out the seven school districts and is currently investing in parent leaders and advocates in some of the most distressed schools within our district.
Overall my opinion is that this new structure must now be evaluated after three years of development and implementation. In general there still seems to be a lack of understand of the initiative and the direct impact it has on students, families and school sites. Greater board leadership and support is needed for “Expect Success”. I think the investment by the private sector is valuable and I would expect our public sectors, city, county and state would leverage this investment to ensure sustainability and place value on a healthy efficient academically and fiscally sound school system within Oakland. This is especially critical as we move towards local governance. How well we govern is an important question? I believe “Expect Success” speaks directly to the spirit in which we must operate our school district on behalf of students and families.
With the investment of our time, energy, wisdom, and love, we ensure the return of their success. Your pledge gives them promise for a more successful future!