We’re Bringing the Community Together To Help Kids Succeed.
Imagine an Oakland community working together to encourage student and parent engagement with teachers and schools – improving attendance and consequently, providing opportunities for academic success for every child.
Now, we’re doing more than imagining our community working together for kids —a new citywide project that does just that! Community United for Educational Success (CUES) is a collaboration between the Ed Fund and community organizations to support Oakland Unified School District’s Everyone and Every Day Counts initiative. We’re partnering with local organizations for the next two years to help ensure that OUSD students attend school and engage in their learning every single day.
Student attendance has a profound impact on student learning. Students who attend school regularly generally achieve at higher levels and are more likely to finish high school and gain the skills necessary for success in college and careers.
When kids miss school, they lose opportunities to learn and be connected to their school community. We have seen this not just in Oakland but on a national level. When elementary and high school teachers from around the country were surveyed about student attendance, nearly half of them said they had at least one student in their classes who was registered for the 2020-21 school year but never attended. (U.S. Government Accountability Office, March 22, 2022)
CUES was created because we know firsthand that community partnerships work. For example, during the last three years, the #OaklandUndivided initiative brought together people and organizations from all sectors to ensure every Oakland public school student has the tools they need for online learning. Social service and health providers, education organizations, youth advocacy programs, local governments, activist organizations, corporations, and businesses responded to the #OaklandUndivided call.
As a result, by the end of the 2020-21 school year, through #OaklandUndivided we increased internet access from only 12 percent to 98 percent among our public school students from low-income families! We distributed more than 29,000 laptop computers and 10,000 hotspots!
Now, with CUES, we continue to bring our community together because here in Oakland, we do great things when we collaborate for a common goal. It’s an incredible testimony to our community’s tradition of building a bright future for Oakland by providing opportunities for every child to learn, grow, and succeed.
~ Ali Medina, Executive Director