Faith in Action East Bay builds on the powerful education organizing of PICO California federations throughout the East Bay. For more than 40 years, youth and adult leaders have successfully organized for classrooms and schools that are well resourced, where educators are supported, and where students and families are partners in creating and advancing a shared vision of student and school success.
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Our leaders have confronted deep racial inequities by advancing local and state-level policies to create opportunity and remove barriers for students, such as through the opening of new small schools, including—most recently—Oakland School of Language (Oakland SOL), a Spanish-language immersion school in Oakland Unified. And they have led and won local and statewide ballot fights that have generated the critical funds our schools need to prepare all students for college, career, and life.
Faith in Action East Bay has partnered with other PICO CA federations to form Education for Liberation, a campaign focused on addressing the consequences of systemic racism in our schools. Our work includes local and state-level organizing to increase opportunities, especially for Black and Brown students. This work includes advancing such strategies as authentic family engagement, an end to the criminalization of Black and Brown students, support for English language learners, and shared decision-making.
We have also joined with the Advancement Project California, Californians for Justice, and Public Advocates to lead the Partnership for the Future of Learning, a statewide alliance of community organizing and advocacy groups advancing a shared vision of a transformational, racially just education system built for us all.
Education for Liberation Highlights
- In partnership with Californians for Justice, we organized an action with over 100 families, students, and community members to protect school communities from an additional $450,000 in planned budget cuts.
- Participated in the statewide Defend and Mend Coalition to win $13 million dollars for the Community Engagement Initiative to support expanding best practices in shared decision-making between families, students and educators in schools and at the district levels to create transformative change for low-income students of color.
- Collaborated with allies to win Local Control & Accountability Plan (LCAP) that includes $4 million additional funds sent directly to schools based on need, 10 new positions to engage families and students in shared decision-making and significant resources for positive school climate and culture.
- Conducted Listening Campaigns with Leaders at CUES and Hoover Elementary schools that involved hundreds of conversations with families and educators, and led to community-wide training to respond to community priorities around creating more positive school culture and climate.
- Supported the Oakland SOL design team in organizing hundreds of families and community members from across East Oakland to open the first stand-alone Spanish/English dual language middle school in OUSD. Oakland SOL was the first new school to open in the district in 10 years. The organizing involved hundreds of families, students and educators participating in community meetings, school board meetings, actions with board members and district leaders, marches and prayer vigils.
- A core partner in the coalition that drafted and organized the campaign to win Measure N – an Oakland parcel tax that will generate over $120 million dollars over ten years for Oakland public high schools.
- Coordinated the “All Kids, All Schools, Our Decisions” coalition campaign. Thousands of families, students, community members and faith leaders organized to win a School Governance Policy in OUSD that states “those closest to students at a school ‐ employees, parents, students, community members ‐ are generally in the best position to know the specific academic, social, and emotional needs of their students, and how best to address those needs.”
- Turned out 10,000 infrequent voters to the polls, including young folks, low-income people of color, immigrants and formerly incarcerated neighbors. Through this effort, we helped win Proposition 30, which provides $9 billion per year in funding for education and social services. Locally, we won Measure J – a facilities bond that brought $475 million dollars to OUSD.
- We continue to be deeply committed to transformation at Fremont High School, with leadership from staff, students, community and families from Fremont, and families from the feeder schools and the broader community.