Deepening Connections with the School Board

High quality early learning and care opportunities lay the foundation for school readiness. Therefore, connections between school districts and early childhood programs are critical to successful community partnerships that support positive child and family outcomes. 

---

That’s why, in our strategic plan, OSSS stakeholders named elevating early childhood education as a priority in city government and the school district as a key strategy for systems change. A previous blog post detailed how we have been engaging Oakland City Council members. More recently, OSSS began meeting with OUSD School Board Directors to introduce our collaborative, share an overview of the Oakland early childhood education (ECE) landscape and highlight ECE priorities and programming in their districts.

Our School Board Directors have been open and responsive to meeting with OSSS, and expressed their commitment to supporting early learning, connections between community and OUSD, and to learning more about the early childhood mixed delivery system. While OUSD has a robust early learning department, OSSS wanted to make sure that Directors were also aware of the different types of early learning sites that are serving children 0-5, many of whom transition into OUSD.

After meeting with OSSS collaborative members over zoom, several Directors have made site visits to OSSS partner early learning sites and events to learn more. Director VanCedric Williams visited Charlotte Guinn’s FCC site, Rose’s Day Care; Director Jennifer Brouhard visited Lotus Bloom Family Resource Center; and  Directors Sam Davis and Williams attended the OSSS Early Learning Symposium’s Book, Bags and Breakfast event. After visiting Rose’s Day Care, Director Williams said "I envision OUSD Early Ed creating relationships with our neighborhood daycare providers and exchanging best practices, and learning from each to establish a bond between the two programs for the success of our babies."

OSSS is proud to help foster these connections in Oakland, towards our vision that all children, families and early educators flourish in Oakland.