Oakland public schools celebrated on Monday after Salesforce announced another $6.5M investment into the Oakland Unified School District and the Oakland Public Education Fund for the 2022-23 school year.
A celebration of Salesforce’s commitment to investing in the communities where their employees live and work brought Mayors, District staff, and principals from both sides of the Bay to Presidio Middle School where they gathered to highlight their continued partnership. Now in its 7th year, Salesforce has invested over $40M and thousands of hours of volunteer time in Oakland’s district schools. The partnership aims to catalyze the transformation of the middle school experience through deep investment and powerful programming. Focus areas include computer science, mathematics, whole child support, and an innovative program called the Principal’s Innovation Fund which provides at least $100,000 to all middle school principals to implement 21st-century solutions to their school’s unique challenges. Last year alone, Salesforce impacted nearly 7000 middle school students and over 400 educators in Oakland.
Big Impacts on Teaching and Learning
Because of Salesforce’s investment, all Oakland middle schools can offer a computer science course, bringing the total number of students who have taken computer science since the start of the Salesforce-Oakland partnership to 7,730. That’s a 942 percent increase since the start of the partnership. The structure of the computer science program at OUSD encourages students to continue to pursue computer science in high school and prepares them for college and a career in STEM.
In the last three years, a new strand of support has been added to provide educator professional development and credentialing support. This is especially welcome during the era of COVID when districts across the country face a deep teacher shortage. Since the 2019-2020 school year, Oakland’s three-year middle school teacher retention rate increased from 36 percent to 45 percent and the year-over-year teacher retention rate increased from 67 percent to 73 percent.
The Oakland School Volunteers (OSV) program engages volunteers to provide in-person and virtual support to teachers, reinforce student learning, and support school culture and student success. Of the 950 community members registered as in-person volunteers, 89 percent participated in at least one of OSV’s volunteering events during the Back-to-School season, the annual Heritage Read-In Series, or Computer Science Education Week. A staggering 665 parents and guardians signed up to become volunteers during the 2021-22 school year.
The Newcomer Wellness Initiative supports immigrant and refugee students new to Oakland with both direct support and an infrastructure of services and partnerships to ensure they can continue to come to school ready to learn. Newcomer Social Workers provide critical support to all newcomer students across all middle and high schools in the District thanks to Salesforce’s investment. Last school year, one Re-Engagement Specialist was able to re-enroll over 70 newcomers back into school after they had previously been dropped during distance learning for lack of engagement with a school.
With this renewed investment, Oakland will continue to build on its successes and scale the dynamic initiatives that support OUSD students to learn, grow, and thrive.
Learn More and Get Involved
More information about the history and successes of OUSD’s partnership with Salesforce is highlighted on our website.
If you work for an organization that is ready to get involved in Oakland schools by providing a grant, adopting a school, or volunteering at an upcoming event like the eighth annual Latine/x Literature Read-In Week, email email@example.com for next steps.