With the number of Oakland children living below the poverty line now one out of every
three children, City has stepped up its collaboration with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), institutions of higher learning, the business and faith community and the
community at large to strengthen support and enhance services to help Oakland’s youth
thrive and give them hope for their future.
Mentors from Writers Connection meet regularly with high school students to help them improve their essay writing.
- We launched the Mayor’s Mentoring Initiative, with a vision of finding caring adults to work with Foster youth, formerly incarcerated youth and chronically absent youth. We surveyed 46 different organizations already working with Oakland youth in some mentoring capacity and helped initiate the Mentoring Forum, a working group of these agencies who hope to leverage their resources to better serve Oakland’s youth. By promoting the need for mentors, the City, in partnership with OUSD and these mentoring providers, has placed 425 mentors and volunteers in the past year.
After 8 weeks of competition, the winners of Oakland's Late Night Live competition share the limelight. Top winners played at Art & Soul in August.
- We held the first joint cabinet meeting with City and School District Department Heads in January to find opportunities to collaborate on supporting our youth. When OUSD presented data that showed most of the homicides and shootings that involved Oakland students during the past 10 years occurred late on Friday or Saturday nights, the City and School District created the summer Late Night Live program. More than 500 young people in East and West Oakland came to Rainbow Recreation Center in East Oakland and McClymonds High School in West Oakland for recreational activities in a safe place on Friday and Saturday nights. The City partnered with the Police Activities League and other community partners, including Youth Movement Records that hosted an 8-week talent search during these Late Night Live sessions which resulted in five winners performing at Art & Soul in August.
- We established the Oakland Education Cabinet, (OEC) a working group of key leaders from local colleges and universities, the community colleges, business, the Oakland Education Association and parents led by the Mayor, the OUSD Superintendent and the Chair of the Department of Education at Mills College. OEC Committees are focusing on communication, early childhood education and development, high school completion, college readiness, higher education, and workforce development. Participants include knowledgeable, influential and independent citizens. Together they will find the resources necessary to sustain the work through future years.
- Despite elimination of the 40-year-old Mayors Summer Jobs Program from the Federal Budget we hired 586 youth thanks to donations from the business community. Alameda County provided an equal number of internships to Foster Youth using grant funds. Our goal is to increase funding through grants and donations to provide more first workplace experience to Oakland youth, especially those living in the 100-block neighborhoods.
- Oakland’s Fund for Children and Youth (OFCY) after school programs served 14,600 youth during the school year and 1,335 youth during the summer. With an investment of $5.3 million, 67 afterschool programs were funded and matched with OUSD/State ASES funding to provide high quality after school programs for 60% of OUSD youth. Another 2,304 high risk OUSD students were supported in their transitions to middle and high school through programs that provide a mix of leadership training, academic support, peer mentoring and parent engagement.
- The City’s Head Start Programs served 1,778 children/families for Oakland youth between 0-3 and 3-5 years of age. Working closely with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, we lobbied hard to ensure that Federal cuts earlier in the year did not decimate these very important early childhood education programs.
