By Sanam Jorjani, Commentary in EdSource
On Feb. 25, the Oakland Unified School District Board voted to eliminate more than 400 positions — including literacy tutors, coaches, counselors, attendance specialists and community school managers. The timeline left no room for community input, advocacy or adjustment.
The Oakland Unified board majority approved the cuts reluctantly — the $102 million deficit is real, and the threat of returning to state receivership is real.
But it leaves us asking, how are you going to ensure every child has the right to read and access to quality learning opportunities?
Only about 1 in 3 third-graders in Oakland read at grade level. In recent years, the district has made genuine progress, and that progress was built on systemwide investments: a new curriculum aligned to the science of reading; a tiered intervention model that matches support to student need; programs that keep kids engaged in reading; and the coaches, specialists and professional development that make all of it work.
Last December, the Oakland Literacy Coalition hosted a learning walk at Acorn Woodland Elementary that showed what’s possible when that infrastructure is intact. Students moved through phonics lessons with focus and engagement. Teachers used explicit modeling and real-time feedback. What made it possible wasn’t magic — it was 200 minutes of weekly prep time, regular coaching, and a literacy coach, Tala Kauzer, meeting with every teacher weekly to review data and adjust instruction. “If you’re not ever looking at data, you’re waiting until it’s too late,” she said. “That’s a huge disservice.”
That’s exactly the kind of support now being cut. Literacy reform doesn’t succeed school-by-school; it requires system-level support. Eliminating the staff driving this work at both the district and school level jeopardizes any progress we’re seeing.
And the cuts won’t land equally. Some Oakland schools have PTAs that can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to backfill what’s being cut. One parent at Glenview Elementary said her school’s PTA would need to raise an additional $305,000 to fund reading intervention, counselors, enrichment and music. Others won’t have that option. As she put it: “They create a two-tiered system: schools that can privately subsidize programs and schools that cannot.” When coaches and tutors disappear from district budgets, they disappear first from the schools serving the children who need them most.
This is not just an Oakland problem. Districts across California are facing the same structural crisis. But Oakland is at a particular inflection point, and the stakes are high.
We cannot say we are committed to improving literacy outcomes and closing opportunity gaps while simultaneously dismantling the infrastructure that makes those goals possible. If Oakland believes literacy is fundamental, then we must invest in a strong system that supports quality instruction and ensures every student has access to the literacy support they need.
Oakland Unified made a commitment to prioritize literacy in its strategic plan. There will be countless difficult choices and short-term fixes to stabilize the district’s finances. But teaching kids to read is not negotiable.
We at the Oakland Literacy Coalition are committed to this work for the long haul, as are the coalition partners and educators who have consistently shown up to make literacy a priority. We hope our leaders will show up too, with a clear vision and a plan to realize the district’s literacy goals as they were laid out.
Sanam Jorjani is the executive director of the Oakland Literacy Coalition, a nonprofit that connects and equips educators, families and community organizations with the tools, knowledge and resources they need to support literacy.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors.
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