GO Public School's Questionnaire Responses

By William "Bo" Ghirardelli, IV

1.There is broad consensus that teachers need and deserve an increase in pay. Aside from pay, what are the top two issues facing Oakland's teachers? What specific policies or actions will you support to make the district a more supportive place for teachers and help ensure that students have access to quality teaching?

I believe the most pressing issues facing our teachers to be massive and rapid teacher turnover, and its root causes, as well as the lack of direct classroom funding. First, too many of our Oakland teachers are leaving the classroom because they don't have enough administrative support, professional development, or clear career ladders towards leadership roles. As a board member, I would partner with teachers directly to hear what tools and training they need to be their best for our students. I will then work with school site administrators to determine a system by which our schools' leadership teams can be held accountable to provide that training. By providing professional development and advancement opportunities designed by and for teachers, we can create a cultural shift and keep our teachers working together with our community over the long term. Second, it is unacceptable that budgets consistently fail to maintain the state-mandated direct classroom spending threshold. As a teacher, I saw that each school and classroom has unique needs and cookie-cutter solutions will not provide the quality of education our students deserve at scale. The school board must meet the direct classroom expenditure mandate, ensure that teachers are equipped with the budgets they need to build great classrooms, and empowered to make the decisions toward that end.

2. OUSD's middle and high schools have faced some serious and sustained academic and social challenges in the past years. What are the three most important steps that a Board member can take to improve the quality of Oakland's middle and high schools? Would you endorse an Oakland parcel tax to support Linked Learning?

As a former middle school teacher, I firmly believe that we must make our middle and high school experiences relevant to all students. By leveraging community partners, we can expose students to the wealth of opportunity that exists for them in our community. We can prepare them for college and careers by prioritizing building career and 21st Century skills: problem solving, critical thinking, etc. Next, we need to shift the board focus to innovation. I would work to implement a designated program in which teachers with creative ideas have the flexibility and the funding to bring them to reality. Finally, students must feel empowered to chart their own courses in school, so that they can confidently do so after graduation. In my role as the leader of a non-profit, I work with young adults in Oakland to build the skills and confidence to become business owners. I'd bring that experience to the board and bring students into school and district conversations about their educations. Fundamentally, our students want to learn and be successful. We need to deliver on our promise to give them the skills and confidence they require, building lifelong learners who go on to be Oakland's next leaders. As Linked Learning promotes 21st Century skills and career pathways, I promote the Linked Learning parcel tax in District 2.

3.Equity: Equitable access to a great education is of paramount importance for the Oakland's highest needs students, particularly for African-American and Latino males, whose graduation rates remain under 50%. What specific policies or actions will you take increase access for historically underserved populations in Oakland public schools?

As a student in Oakland, I was privileged to receive excellent education, one that opened the door to opportunities for me. However, across Oakland, not all kids are getting that same fair shot. During my time in the classroom, I saw firsthand how underserved my students of color were and continue to be. To address this same issue here in OUSD, I would work together with other board members to create an Equity Task Force with the mandate and the resources to develop, test, evaluate and recommend various strategies for addressing the dropout crisis among African-American and Latino males. This task force would lift up the diverse voices of parents, teachers, administrators, community stakeholders, and students themselves to ensure that our solutions are truly responsive to the community. We have discussed this crisis for years, and our students deserve strong, decisive, and creative solutions now. Finally, we need to make sure our budget reflects the level of priority this crisis deserves. The policies this task force proposes should be fully supported in our budget, whether that means investing heavily in Linked Learning to make curriculum more relevant to students, or strengthening restorative justice programs to address the school to prison pipeline. By ensuring that teachers and school site administrators have the budgets to reach all students, we can begin to support all students.

4.Early Childhood: Research confirms that early childhood supports are critical for the long-term student success. What policies and actions can the OUSD Board of Education take to improve its own early childhood services and better coordinate services with other local service providers?

Ensuring students receive high quality early childhood education is critical to the success of our schools and our community. To that end, the board should take several actions: First, I'm encouraged by the success we've started to see with our Transitional Kindergarten efforts. If we double our efforts, particularly in our elementary schools with the highest need, we will begin to see more kindergarten students who enter ready to learn. Elementary school leaders and teachers must be empowered to design and implement an ECE program that meets the needs of their community. Furthermore, I would support putting more resources towards connecting students with the local service providers that best fit students' needs. This coordinator role would also include helping OUSD best allocate philanthropy dollars and available early childhood funding to ensure that we are best reaching and best serving our entire district. Finally, early childhood, like all levels of education, must rely on listening to the needs of individual communities and students. We need to create scheduling and location options that encourage parents to enroll students. Furthermore, we need to ensure that our students' experiences in early childhood centers are culturally relevant.

5.Approximately 25 percent of students in Oakland's public schools attend charter schools. What are the two to three best things about having charter schools in Oakland and what are the two to three biggest challenges associated with charters in Oakland? (200 word maximum)

I see several advantages in our charter schools. Charters provide choice for students and families. When a current school is not working for their students, families can find an environment that offers an appropriate solution. Charters also foster innovation by allowing schools to make decisions on a local level rather than relying on a centralized decision-making model. Across our district, we see that charters are leading the way in terms of integrating technology, employing creative approaches to learning, and building cultures of ambition and success among students. Finally, charters have the freedom to create highly specialized classrooms to address the highly specialized needs and challenges that children in Oakland face. While OUSD has often looked for overarching solutions to district challenges, charters have flipped the paradigm and started problem-solving on a student-by-student basis. We, too, need to flip our paradigm. Charters also raise interesting challenges. Real tensions exist between district and charter schools when it comes to funding, facilities and student population. All too often, our dialogue is focused on a false dichotomy of district versus charter, instead of on what we can learn and achieve for all Oakland students. We must facilitate dialogue that is student-focused and solutions-oriented. Next, charters require a significant shift in the way we budget our district, and the board has yet to find ways to effectively navigate that shift. Finally, while charters have created highly specialized environments for some students, they, like OUSD schools, have not found ways to ensure that every student has the access they need and deserve. While charters present some substantial challenges for our community, the also add enormous value and should be regarded as positive additions to our educational ecosystem.

6.As a board member, one of your important responsibilities will be to engage with parents and other members of the Oakland education community. What specific actions do you plan to take to fulfill those responsibilities? Do you believe that OUSD was successful in engaging the community in this year's Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) process? (200 word maximum) I believe that the LCAP process is an excellent medium to give voice to the different constituents who have an impact on a student's education. Anyone, from a student's parents to their coaches to local business leaders to the Central Office, who can play a role in improving student outcomes should be brought the table. I believe we can continue to grow the voices at that table, engaging community organizing groups to educational philanthropy to educational technology firms. Community banks and major corporations could become financial supporters of public education and provide our teachers with another resource in making education career-relevant. After speaking with numerous stakeholders engaged in the LCAP process, I heard that the LCAP process reached out to as many different groups as possible and tried to give each a voice in the creation of the LCAP. I especially believe in teachers' and students' ability to inform the LCAP - to tell the board, staff, the community what they need and what we could be doing to better serve them. I think that teachers and students should have had a bigger voice in the process.

Part II. Candidacy Questions
1. Have you engaged in advocacy work to improve public education in Oakland? If so, what did you do and what was the impact? (100 word maximum)

Through my leadership Greenside Development Foundation, I advocate for young entrepreneurs in the Oakland community who have the motivation and talent to start their own small business. I've brought together numerous stakeholders to present these young adults with more opportunities and resources to realize those dreams. This work has further demonstrated to me the urgent need to equip students with the skills and tools they need to have good options beyond high school. As a middle school teacher, I saw just how much we need the community + parents, teachers, and students + to work together. Advocacy for public education has become my life's work, and every day I work to get more community members actively engaging on this issue.

2. What will your ballot designation be, and what are the top three arguments you will make for why you are the best candidate? (100 word maximum) I'm not a politician. I'm running for school board because of what I've seen and experienced as a teacher and in my education non-profit. As the only classroom teacher in this race, I understand the challenges teachers face, and have seen what's possible for students when parents and teachers work together towards high expectations. As an Education Non-Profit CEO (my ballot designation), I have a proven history of demanding and delivering results. Finally, as a social entrepreneur, I've listened to a diverse community and driven towards shared vision. I firmly believe the Oakland school board needs leaders who will listen FIRST and together drive to the best results for all our students. How can we leap to solutions without fully understanding the issue from the perspective of those closest to it?

3. What/who are the key endorsements or community support you have for your candidacy? (100 word maximum) I have the support of many parents, teachers, students, nonprofit, business and community leaders from the Crocker Highlands district as well as the endorsement of Bob Spencer, former District 2 OUSD School Board Director. I've knocked on hundreds of doors; I've listened to both charter and district leaders. I am seeking the endorsement of numerous other community organizations that have students' best interests in mind.

4. What experiences do you have that will help you be a successful candidate for the board? (100 word maximum) As a former teacher, I have a unique understanding of how to listen to and advocate for the needs of students, families, and teachers. As a leader with executive and fundraising experience, I can effectively manage a campaign organization and work with a vast network to build support. Finally, my approach is one of collaboration, for which I believe the community is hungry. By listening to the community and leveraging my experience and network, I believe I can be a successful candidate.

5. What have you done, to this point, to lay a foundation for a successful candidacy? (100 word maximum) My decision to enter this race has not come lightly. As I considered this possibility, I engaged a local network to build a team of support. I also attended an Oakland workshop on community organizing to build skills and tools to better work for community-based change. Beyond that, I continuously engage parents, teachers, students, policy experts, administrators, and local business leaders in the community in which I was born and raised to understand the various perspectives among OUSD stakeholders. I plan to recruit seven to ten volunteers to speak to over 7,000 households in District 2 in person and on the phone, as well as raise over $15,000 to distribute mail, postcards, door hangers, signs and campaign literature. Finally, I appreciate the responsibility a board member has to be well-versed on education policy, and have begun to research and educate myself on the most pressing education policy issues.

  Part III: Candidate Exercise

The attached Quality School Development Policy was recently presented to the Board of Education along with the accompanying memo. This policy was introduced to address a number of issues impacting Oakland students and schools particularly regarding providing additional supports at the school level.

As a Board member, you will be faced with addressing policy issues such as the ones presented here. In reference to the attached policy, please address the following questions:

1. Prior to the hearing about this policy:

a. What information would you need to know in order to understand and evaluate whether to support this policy?
1. What do teachers think about this policy?
2. What does a diverse stakeholder group think about how this policy will affect students, parents and families?
3. How does this policy impact teachers' and school site administrators' time that they could use on student learning? Additionally, I would consider the following values criteria in assessing this and any other policy:
-Is this the best use of our time and resources for students? Does this policy particularly address our highest need students?
-Is there community buy-in around this policy? If not, why not?
-Is implementation of this policy feasible? If yes, what accountability structures can we put in place to make sure that the policy is implemented reliably and to scale?

b. How would you obtain that information?
1. Meet with a representative sample of school-site governance teams to discuss what impact this policy would have on the quality of education for students and whether or not the policy is feasible.
2. Meet with Superintendent to discuss his/her views.
3. Meet with Oakland education experts to discuss whether or not this is an appropriate use of resources, as well as review second and third order effects of this policy on student outcomes.
4. Meet with PTAs, nonprofit and business leaders to hear their views on the policy.
2. At the hearing:

a. What would your top 3-5 key questions to staff be and why?
1. Do you support this? Why or why not?
2. Do you have the bandwidth to implement this policy? What will you likely spend less time on in order to implement this policy?
3. What kind of existing or additional support would you need to make this policy effective?
4. What do you expect student outcomes to be in light of this policy? Why?

b. Assume you vote to adopt the policy. What is your role in helping to ensure the successful implementation of this policy? My role as a board member after the passing of this policy would be to set benchmarks for the implementation of the policy, including regular meetings to discuss progress to-date. I would also ensure that the Superintendent has the resources necessary to meet these benchmarks. Then, I would hold the Superintendent accountable to meeting these benchmarks.
3. Assume you are preparing to speak with a colleague about this issue:

a. What do you think are the top three arguments supporting this policy and the top three arguments against this argument? For:
1. We need a common vision for school improvement, one that includes all stakeholders and creates transparency around the process.
2. Without clear ownership of and accountability for our school site issues, there will not be substantial progress toward a solution.
3. We might be able to attract additional funding for our classrooms if we had a clear and actionable vision for school improvement. Against:
1. This allows for inequality because there will be different levels of effectiveness in implementation.
2. Our schools might not have the resources and bandwidth to effectively create and own this process - thus, this policy could contribute to even higher turnover among teachers and administrators.
3. This process could take attention away from working on more immediate, student-centered priorities, so the policy should be assessed in light of the district's other initiatives and priorities.
4. At a board update by district staff six months after the passage of the policy:

a. What information would you want to have presented in order to understand whether the district is being successful in implementing the policy? I would want the Superintendent to present reports from each of the School Site Governance Teams on what goals they established and the progress they have made towards those goals. This should include a discussion from each SGT about their progress, including any lessons learned or best practices that could be disseminated to other district schools. I would also want to get a sense for how much time and money is being allocated towards each goal to make sure the gains merited the costs. b. Assume you are unsatisfied with the progress. What is your role at this point?

My role at this point is to meet with the Superintendent and identify what is the context of the unsatisfactory progress and what are the key obstacles to the successful implementation of the policy. Once these obstacles are identified, I would ask the Superintendent to share with the board how he planned to address them. Then, I would identify what additional resources are required to implement the Superintendent's plan and evaluate the cost to the district to get the policy back on track.