A message from Equal Start’s Jason Harper
URGENT: UPDATE ON OAK RIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN OAK PARK
WE NEED YOUR VOICE OF INFLUENCE
Consider the inner-city child as your child. This injustice can’t be ignored. Recently, the Department of Education released a list of the lowest performing schools in California. None were surprised that Oak Ridge was on that list.
In 2005, “Low Performing” was the barometer that led former Sacramento City Board Member Rick Jennings to recommend Oak Ridge Elementary as a campus that needed additional community support. His confidence in selecting Oak Ridge Elementary was based, in part, on the new principal at the time, Steve Lewis.
For more than five years, we addressed the cause of systemic poverty and offered proactive and practical solutions for each of those hurdles. Though under-performing, each year scores began to rise gradually. There have been set backs and many hurdles. But in such a volatile community, such set backs have been teaching points for the community that resilience and tenacity are keys to a great education for their children.
Jonathan Raymond, the new Superintendent of Sacramento Unified School District, arrived in Sacramento for his new post at the beginning of this school year. Immediately, he began to see problems and strive for change. For that, we were encouraged. Today, we are concerned with the projected steps the Supt has arrived at.
Rather than identifying how a district has underperformed and under-served inner-city communities, five months into his tenure, his solution has two options for reform at Oak Ridge Elementary School. Both require Principal Steve Lewis to be fired.
This move will cause a social implosion in Oak Park, erode years of trust, and could possibly end the community partner’s ability to meet the continued needs of the Oak Ridge child and their families. We have come to far to not speak against this direction and pending decision.
Multiple community partners and organizations have merged efforts creating a unified collective. For more than five years, individuals and community partners made Oak Ridge Elementary the single priority of their efforts. More than 1.2 million dollars in valued resource, financial investments, services, tutoring, and student and family aid has been vested by these partners. Supt Raymond is calling for the drastic removal of Principal Steve Lewis’ influence, leadership, compassion and academic vision that brought these partners to the table.
The Superintendent does not think the approach at Oak Ridge Elementary is working and therefore is planning to take drastic steps to “reform the school.” Though we understand the Supt’s predicament, his steps are deemed by some, a knee-jerk reaction that deflects attention away from the heart of the real issue, a broken education system.
His district is enslaved by the power of a teacher’s union that shields low performing teachers. Principals are held bound through words like “tenure” and are unable to address crucial personnel circumstances. Though the majority of the Oak Ridge faculty is phenomenal, if only a few classes have suspect teachers who are low performing or in effective, the API scores that measure academic gain can dip enough to keep pulling the school backward instead of forward. Each year, 20-30 more students are infected by the un-removable teacher(s).
Though it is easy to wield power and demand better “test results” from a district office, it is not the most effective place to get a comprehensive look and a complete and accurate picture of each child’s plight through the inner-city and the hurdles they face in the pursuit of education. Community partners and Oak Ridge volunteers have locked arms with parents and are the ones walking the streets corralling students to tutoring clubs; in their homes supplying life’s basic staples, and are serving as mentors to them and their family everyday. Our perspective is accurate and in touch with the real time needs of the environment. Its impossible to see clearly from the confines of a district office and an annual five-minute campus walk. The problems, the prescription, and the possibilities will never be found looking through line items on an Excel spreadsheet.
PROOF IT IS WORKING
“Raymond said that Oak Ridge Elementary has an API score of 649 – an increase from 629 in 2007. The school has increased its test scores over the last two years, but they are still in need of improvement.” http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/09/2592841/sacramento-area-schoolsfared.html#ixzz0ib8QY2Sk
Does the Superintendent know in just six months in Sacramento what efforts it took to get those increased scores?
• Since 2005, vandalism and crime on the campus has plummeted allowing dollars to be spent on academic advancements rather than campus repair.
• Because of aggressive health care enrollment education beginning in 2008, access to health care for children jumped from 12% to 82% in a single year.
• On campus parent meetings that were once empty, now bustle with multi- culture representation.
• Because of community partnerships, Oak Ridge’s principal Steve Lewis and faculty were awarded the prestigious California Golden Bell Award. (Like an Oscar in Hollywood, most principals would dream to just be nominated)
• The Be Change Running Club, in it’s second full year, has morphed into a key relationship building tool and matrix to measure and increase student’s fitness and nutritional health.
• The California International Marathon and Fleet Feet Sacramento became influential leaders offering volunteers, resource, and fitness/nutritional programming with vision for a five school track league for Title-1 schools.
• United Advocates for Children and Families supplied grant funding and “train-the-trainer” development programming for on-campus parents and volunteers trained in early mental condition detection for children at-risk.
• Be Change was hailed a program needed on every campus by Mayor Kevin Johnson.
• Students who met marked academic gains and after-school goals were invited on a summer trip to University of Oregon to learn how academic and athletic focus can be tools to break the cycle of poverty.
• Equipped and empowered parents volunteer on campus in numerous rolls from campus monitors, librarian assistants, Site-Council volunteers, and community activist for better urban education options.
• To combat childhood hunger, every Oak Ridge student gets a bag of food every Friday to sustain them until Monday when they receive their next school meal.
• Despite budget cuts, teacher’s lay-offs, and access to less discretionary budget spending, Oak Ridge established itself as “the place to be.” Teacher turnover fell from 50% annually to only one teacher leaving in two years. Her family had to move out of state!
• Oak Ridge’s Equal Start program was distinguished as a leader among Sacramento area community activist and honored by Sacramento Unified in 2008 and 2009. It’s support for student, teachers, and families is at ZERO cost to the district and maintains it’s commit to have ZERO impact on instructional minutes.
• Excel Reading Tutors, early AM mentoring, and weekend student home visits, set unprecedented testing improvements in 2010 mid-year bench marks.
• Every child was given access to acute-care dental needs through Dr. John Bertsch DDS and Giving Smiles philanthropic organization.
• Every child was given access to vision screening and optometry care through Lens Crafter’s Gift of Sight.
• Student Leaders were selected and trained in business strategy, entrepreneurship, culinary skills, and promotional marketing in the restaurant creation program, Five-Star Dining with the Miracles and Milestones program.
• Parents are being taught job skills, resume building, and interview excellence in program addressing inner-city unemployment. These parents showed a marked increase in their child’s education process.
These socio-emotional, physical, and nutritional steps are a key component in making long-term academic strides. The whole child, not just their test scores must be considered in to the education equation. A child with an abscessed tooth, and incarcerated parent, and a home lacking basic sanitation or electricity create “conditions for learning” and have a direct impact on learning.
Oak Ridge continues to work hard and strive for increased academic progress, yet with a myopic perspective, DRASTIC changes have been set in motion.
THE SUPERINTENDENT’S two options both include, but are not limited to, firing Principal Steve Lewis who has been the conduit for all change at Oak Ridge and in Oak Park.
A Community Town Hall Meeting was called by Superintendent Raymond for Monday, March 22, at 6 PM at Oak Ridge Elementary School. This is a civil forum where Oak Ridge teachers, parents, and community partners can express their opposition to these two illogical options.
Your attendance and support will speak volumes that the children of Oak Ridge cannot be overlooked and the staff can’t be the escape goat. Oak Ridge’s children have been forgotten and overlooked when making this decision. Though it has been painted that such change is on behalf of Oak Ridge parents, a single parent cannot be found who has been consulted or called. Communication from the Supt’s media release stated that the vested partners will be part of the process, yet not a single response has been afforded to any of the Oak Ridge community partners numerous emails. Requests for meetings or even a simple call to clarify has been unanswered. Are we to think the only format for civility is a Community Town Hall Meeting?
Parents, community partners, and those who can attend must stand in and be the voice to the voiceless.
Many have desired to help Equal Start and Be Change but have not known how to help. With only a few days notice from the district of the date of the meeting, I am devastated to be contractually bound at an East Coast event. Yet despite my inability to be there, Equal Start directors, UACF, Orrick, Miracles and Milestones, and so many other community partners and parents will lock arms in solidarity and be a voice for a child on Monday night.
You can help us by helping them. Be in this meeting!
Your voice, your attendance, and your continued support is valued in the days ahead.
COMMUNITY TOWN HALL MEETING: 6:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2010
OAK RIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
4501 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95817
Thank you for your on-going influence in my life. Each of you are change-agents who have always shown an ability to bring bleak situations to a “tipping point” of hope. We will tip the culture in order to leave in better than we found it. We are committed to pressing on and moving forward. Though many of you are hundreds of miles away from Sacramento, remember us Monday.
Peace,
Jason Harper
jimae 
December 7th, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Hi,
I worked for a year at Oak Ridge with Steve…I’ve been trying to find him, and my search led me to your blog. I know this is an older post, but I’m hoping that you will check to see that I’ve written. I was wanting to find out where Steve went?
Thank you so much!
Deb Daniels