League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Alameda County, CA June 3, 2008 Election
	Olugbemiga "Olu" Oluwole, Sr. Answers Questions Candidate for School Director; Oakland Unified School District; District 3

The questions were prepared by the the League of Women Voters of Oakland and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. How do you assess truancy in the School District; what changes would you advocate?

Statistics show that of 40,000 students registered in Oakland Public Schools, 10% are truant on any given day. Truancy arises from so many underlying factors, e.g. traumatic experiences arising from abuse, dysfunctional home environment, low income, poverty, parental incarceration, low self esteem, lack of reading and writing skills, peer pressure, crime ridden neighborhoods and school grounds, etc. Lack of engaging curricular and activities in the schools have also turned the students off in large part. We have seen children between the ages of 10-17 on the streets prostituting, selling drugs, and committing crime. This is a travesty to our educational system and society.

I would advocate for:

• Review of the present funding system through Average Daily Attendance (ADA) to the use of simple financial cost analysis of operating each school, i.e. site based funding. This will ensure that all schools are sufficiently funded.
• Equitable distribution of resources to ensure that each school is adequately supplied with supplies, materials and maintenance staff.
• The training of principals, teachers and involved parents in parent-teacher home visits, and the encouragement of teacher, parent, and community involvement in our schools to foster confidence of support for the students.
• Establishment of health centers on campuses to include trauma assessment and wrap-around services for families.
• Site-based staff members to address truancy issues on each campus to work in conjunction with the on-campus health centers for the purpose of addressing the causes of truancy.
• Reinstatement of vocational, entrepreneurial, and internship education, such as wood shop, auto mechanics, culinary arts, home economics, electronics, metal shop, etc., and reinstatement of arts and crafts, music, physical education and ROTC to provide a balanced, optional, challenging curricula, for a more interesting learning experience thereby reducing truancy.
• After school programs for continued engagement of students' time in a more relaxed atmosphere to forestall idleness.
• Teacher quality and diversity that reflects the demographics on the school campuses, for better instructions and student understanding, coupled with adequate teaching resources, materials, and strong teacher/parent collaboration.
• Review of teacher salaries and logistic support for retention.
• Encouragement of collaboration between the city, businesses, faith-based and community-based organizations in developing the sense of ownership that shows the adoption of students in the Oakland Unified School District as the City of Oakland's children.
• Administrative accountability starting from the Board of Directors and on down to the line staff; and responsible fiscal accountability from all administrators.
• The beginning of all of the above processes to start from the Kindergarten level throughout 12th grade.

I believe all of the above will help to foster confidence in students, thereby helping to reduce truancy.

2. What is your opinion of the District's School Success program?

The District's School Success program is a laudable and progressive initiative that sets a standard for success. Expecting success of every student, every classroom, every day is what should be expected and achieved in every school in the world! However, the underlying factors of students' low academic performance and achievement in some district schools, such as, lack of resources, dilapidated school environment, crime on and around school grounds, big class sizes, teacher/demographic disparity, and low parent involvement makes this initiative a daunting task.

I support the central office reform called Expect Success that includes options, Family and Community Office/Chief of Community Accountability, New School Development Group (Incubator), Tiered intervention, Curricular Flexibility and other alternatives such as hiring.

However, to really realize the expectations of the District's School Success program, the following initiatives of Expect Success has to be seriously maintained and adhered to as enumerated by the School District:

• Increased emphasis on personalized learning environments
• Increased access to professional development for all staff
• Increased student assessment and more review of data about student performance
• Increased parent control over where their children attend school
• Increased school site control over how resources are used
• Increased accountability for results and transparency with performance data
• Investment in technology to improve performance and efficiency

All of these efforts are very important for the success of Oakland schools, and with proper means of measuring the success of the initiative through quarterly assessments and audits of the schools, and continued training for professional development of staff directly involved with implementing Expect Success's strategies, it is of my opinion that initiative of Expect Success will truly be achieved.

3. How might the School District work more effectively with the City?

Understanding the fact that children in any city's school district are also children of the City, even though school districts are under the state education system, should help to foster a strong collaboration between the School District and the City.

The impact of a poor educational system that results in truancy, low school attendance, high drop-out rates, teacher flight, high student delinquencies and crime rates, is a scourge on a city. As such, it is very necessary that there is a partnership whereby the city assists the school district in subsidized funding outside the state's funding, teacher recruitment and retention as being initiated by recent efforts of the City of Oakland by encouraging qualified teachers to teach in Oakland, after school programs and facilities, such as extension of library open hours, establishment of teen and recreational centers in all neighborhoods, and negotiation between the school district and the state and the unions. The city should develop the sense of ownership by realizing that the children of the school district are the City's future workforce, taxpayers, and leaders. There is a need for the City of Oakland to embrace all of its residents and provide necessary support to foster healing of deep seated divisions among its people.

It is also in the power of the City to help educate parents and the business sector to get involved in the education of the city's children.

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Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' answers are presented as submitted.

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: May 31, 2008 21:07
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