Our Plan

All Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) students will find joy in their academic experience while graduating with the skills to ensure they are caring, competent, fully-informed, critical thinkers who are prepared for college, career, and community success.

The Oakland student is one who is a resilient learner, a collaborative teammate, a community leader, a critical thinker, and a creative problem solver. This profile for the OUSD graduate is critically important if our students are to be fully prepared for college, career, and community success. 

As our society and workplace continue to rapidly evolve — being reshaped by innovation, globalization, and automation — so must the education of our students. Thus, it is incumbent upon us to provide opportunities for all students to develop all the higher cognitive skills, social-emotional skills, and technological skills necessary for the workplace of the future.

A thriving student is one who has been equipped with the knowledge, skills, and disposition to make things better for themselves and their communities. A key to opening this door is advanced literacy. Our students are advanced at reading, writing, speaking, and listening, able to communicate in increasingly diverse ways and to understand and use text for a variety of purposes. Advanced literacy enables students to master core academic content, critically think and solve complex problems, and collaborate with others. 

OUSD will build a Full Service Community District focused on high academic achievement while serving the whole child, eliminating inequity, and providing each child with excellent teachers, every day.

As historical and geographic divisions are increasingly irrelevant in the global economy, Oakland is poised to be a leader because we are home to a culturally and linguistically diverse community. Our diversity is our primary asset and it serves as a source of innovation for us. That is why our graduate profile is so intertwined with our work to build a full service community district.

And for us to reach our vision, our mission must be to forcibly eliminate inequities by ensuring those who we have historically most marginalized are provided expanded and enhanced real-world learning opportunities, addressing barriers to learning by creating safe, healthy and welcoming schools, and partnering with families and communities to create the education our students deserve. The future of our city depends on our schools and the future of our schools depends on our city. 

This plan represents a continuation of our work as a model of Full Service Community Schools, still the only full service community district in the country. The community schools approach will continue to be our theory of change for how we address equity, whole child education, and preparing powerful graduates for college, career, and community success. It drives how we engage in collective continuous improvement to improve student outcomes. It is a model in which students, families, staff, and community partners work together toward our vision and mission with the entire community as a part of the education system for our students. Community schools are about operationalizing equity, not just talking about it.

Students First: We support students by providing multiple learning opportunities to ensure students feel respected and heard.

Equity: We provide everyone access to what they need to be successful.

Excellence: We hold ourselves to uncompromising standards to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

Integrity: We are honest, trustworthy and accountable.

Cultural Responsiveness: We resist assumptions and biases and see the gift of every student and adult.

Joy: We seek and celebrate moments of laughter and wonder.