MILESTONES

Oakland Starting Smart and Strong is made up of community groups, early childhood educators, school district and city leaders, all connected by our shared commitment to creating a strong foundation for Oakland’s youngest children.

We recognize that greater, more lasting progress is possible when we coordinate our efforts and work together across sectors on a clearly defined goal.

Our collective impact work is divided into four pillars:

Improving quality in formal early childhood education
Supporting informal caregivers (family, friends and neighbors)
Healthy development
Improving Oakland's early childhood system

We have committed to results-based accountability, and we’re developing indicators to clearly measure the impact of our work.

On these pages, we celebrate our successes on the path towards high-quality early care and learning for all.

October 2019

From improving quality in formal early childhood education to supporting family, friend, and neighbor caregivers; from increasing the number of developmental screenings to strengthening Oakland's early childhood system, there's a lot to celebrate!

Oakland Starting Smart and Strong recently released a report on accomplishments in these four areas. Read below for how we are making progress on our benchmarks of success.

May 2019

Coaching in Early Learning Classrooms

Great news! As part of Oakland Starting Smart and Strong, OUSD partnered with the New Teacher Center (NTC) to provide educators with site-based differential coaching on best practices to support early childhood development. Engage R+D, a research and evaluation firm, studied how this coaching in OUSD early learning classrooms contributed to improvements in classroom quality, teaching quality and child development. In a recent report “Key Findings: Oakland Retrospective Study,” Engage R+D concludes that coaching has contributed to statistically significant improved outcomes for children, teachers and the quality of the sites.

December 2018

Kindergarten Readiness Programs at OUSD

In the midst of winter, our thoughts turn to summer - summer PreK! Last year’s Oakland Unified summer PreK program took place at 7 sites and served a total of 135 children, the majority of whom were English Language Learners with minimal to no preschool experience. Refugee and newcomer children were prioritized.

The program, which has been recognized by EdSource, focuses on early literacy and social-emotional development. “It's exciting to work with children and families, preparing them for their journey into elementary school,” said Susan Mueller, a teacher who has taught summer PreK for three summers in a row. “We love making children and families feel secure when they are entrusting their precious babies to our care. It is one of the greatest honors that we hold as teachers.”

An important part of the program is building connections and the relationship between the school district and families. Said Maria Uribe, a SPK parent, “I see my child wanting to get up and go to school to learn. It made me feel excited that my child is able to open up and be more comfortable with other children.”

The program is led by Maria Sujo, Kindergarten Readiness Program Manager, and supported by First 5 Alameda and the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth. Maria can be reached at maria.sujo@ousd.org. For more information about summer preK, visit OUSD’s Summer Learning website.

August 2018

Family Resource Centers: Serving Families, Together

Oakland Starting Smart and Strong is working to ensure that every adult in a child’s life has the tools they need to support that child’s development every day.

One of the steps we’ve recently taken towards this goal is to develop a shared framework to strengthen our city’s early childhood community hubs, known as Family Resource Centers, that provide multiple services for families and informal caregivers in one location.

Starting in 2016, Lotus Bloom Family Resource Center convened a number of existing Family Resource Centers, including Lincoln, Prescott-Joseph Center, East Bay Agency for Children, Family Resource Navigators, Lotus Bloom, Safe Passages and Oakland Unified School District.
Working with Laurel Kloomok, former Executive Director of First 5 San Francisco and Angela Louie Howard from Lotus Bloom, the cohort met quarterly to map birth to 5 services, agree upon a definition of FRCs, and create a conceptual framework of shared values, mission, vision, and joint outcomes.

With this framework under our belt, possible next steps include strengthening and formalizing the FRC Initiative to create a learning community and a network of support, expanding membership to include other birth to 5 programs, encouraging funders to support core FRC operations as well as creating a grant-making program for materials and supplies that will beautify FRC spaces and provide rich learning materials.

For more information on how you can support the FRC Initiative, contact priya@oaklandsmartandstrong.org

March 2018

Urban Strategies has been working with OSSS to ground our work in equity - to ensure that ALL Oakland children have the opportunity to succeed and thrive. A workgroup convened by Urban Strategies recently issued a Call to Action for systems leaders to adopt a set of health and education indicators.

These indicators are building upon a report that found boys of color in Oakland are far more likely to experience an array of poor outcomes in the earliest years of their lives – from high rates of asthma to no preschool experience to lagging behind in the development of pre-literacy skills.

The workgroup convened by Urban Strategies included early health and education providers, practitioners, advocates, data analysts, and parent engagement practitioners, who developed a set of equity-focused early years health and education indicators that multiple systems working together can impact. Go here for more information about the Call to Action.

June 2017

Oakland Unified School District's 28 Early Childhood Education sites all receive 4-star quality rating. Read more here!