What We're Working On

During our strategic planning process in Spring 2021, our working group identified four focus areas. Each focus area includes a list of Year 1 actions and deliverables, listed below. Status updates are reported quarterly.

For more information about how we’re tracking our progress and impact, please visit our Progress Monitoring page. →

Focus Area 1: Center and Listen to Youth and Families

Authentically engaging and involving youth as leaders in their education experience, building authentic relationships with families with two-way communication in primary languages, centering the experiences and voices of Black and Brown youth and families to define joy, beauty, and inclusion while building community consensus.

Student standing at the microphone at a podium

Year One Actions	Deliverables	Status
Schedule additional ongoing engagement sessions that honor primary languages, cultures, and modes of collaboration to gather additional feedback from youth and families.	Empathy interviews with students and families about their definitions of joy, beauty, and inclusion.	in progress
Expand home visits to build and strengthen relationships to ensure students and families feel welcomed and engaged as they return to school. Incorporate opportunities for students and families to share their visions for joy and beauty.	Parent Teacher Home Visit Project expanded to additional schools with high absence rates.	in progress
Leverage all educators including community partners to conduct one-to-one outreach for students with higher absences to ensure all students have a relationship with at least one caring adult.	Students with high absences identified and provided with at least one of the following: one-to-one outreach and/or home visits to welcome back to school; a mentor/case manager; a plan for one-to-one student support for future years.	in progress

Focus Area 2: Invest in Restorative Practices

Ensuring restorative practices are truly integrated into the fabric of our schools, with monitoring of implementation.

student watching teacher at Oakland International show something

Year One Actions	Deliverables	Status
Create Intentional Healing and Restorative Community Spaces for students, staff, and community to rebuild community and process the time away.	Students will participate in community circles throughout the school year.	in progress
Increase educator capacity to create restorative learning environments.	Restorative justice professional learning series for educators in multiple roles.	in progress
Develop and implement peer leadership structures to increase student capacity to facilitate restorative practices with peers.	Secondary students will participate in Restorative Peer leadership.	in progress

Focus Area 3: Practice Culturally Responsive and Linguistically Sustaining Practices

Creating welcoming practices and intentional work around bias and racism.

Year One Actions	Deliverables	Status
Develop and implement a professional learning series to increase educator capacity to implement culturally responsive and linguistically sustaining practices.	Learning series designed, with advisory as potential structure.	in progress
Launch foundational anti-racist, healing and culture building learning series for all Educators.	All educators will participate in initial foundational professional learning and reflect on their anti-racist practices.	in progress
Assess opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning in new and creative ways.	Pilot a shared set of final projects for grade spans developed by community partners and educators.	not yet started
Develop and implement opportunities to celebrate the joy and beauty of our students, families, and school communities.	Districtwide “Town Joy Week” that celebrates schools and honors specific groups planned by youth, staff, and partners.	in progress
Assess the current strategies, programs and curricula for culturally responsive and linguistically sustaining practices with a focus on Black and Brown students.	Develop initial recommendations for programmatic or curricular shifts to ethnic studies offerings for K-12; Launch Ethnic Studies Learning cohort.	in progress

Focus Area 4: Ensure Inspiring Learning Environments

Facilitating joyful learning spaces from home to school; designing classrooms, learning spaces, and opportunities that value joy and multiple ways of thinking and being; providing spaces for the community to gather and celebrate each other; and expanding outdoor spaces for youth.

group of students standing around a gardening pot watering plants

Year One Actions	Deliverables	Status
Develop structures for schools to reflect on their current learning environments, and areas for improvement.	Schools will engage with community to conduct asset mapping and have an initial assessment of their progress towards implementing inspiring learning environments; district will develop a school support structure to address areas identified for improvement.	in progress
Lead schools through an intentional process of re-imagining the school experience, centering on the needs of the most marginalized students and best practices required to support their learning.	Schools develop a framework for high quality teaching and learning, steeped in community values and vision; district provides training and support on improvement process and framework development.	not yet started
Create joyful learning environments through arts integration.	Increase in the number of students participating in rich, relevant work-based learning opportunities and transitioning successfully to post-secondary opportunities.	in progress
Increase opportunities for community to access school facilities for engagement and celebration.	Assess interest or opportunities for community to engage with the school facilities and programs.	not yet started

Ongoing Work

Built into this Strategic Plan are concrete action plans, deliverables, and metrics by which to measure our success. The Plan also includes an ongoing dialogue with the community so we can continue to engage in meaningful partnership. From now until June 2024, OUSD will:

Convene working groups to monitor year 1 actions and establish future actions and deliverables. (For more information about our working groups, please see our FAQ page.)
Organize quarterly co-chair engagements with the Superintendent for progress updates and guidance.
Provide additional opportunities for community engagement.
Share the strategic plan with the broader community.

We invite you to stay connected by keeping an eye on our Get Involved page → for opportunities to raise your voice and share your vision for change in OUSD.

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