This week, Andy and I are talking with Lakisha Young, the Founder and CEO of The Oakland REACH, and Heather Harding, Ed.D, the Executive Director of the Campaign for a Shared Future. Our conversation focuses on the difficult judgment calls parents and advocates are having to make as they attempt to retain focus on the learning needs of students amid proposed book bans and curriculum changes. A theme running through the discussion was the critical need for advocates to have “a home base” of policy priorities to anchor their efforts amid a political context that is becoming ever more mired in controversy and polarization.

And for those of you who would prefer a video recording, we provide a link to YouTube as well. 

This week some of the topics we discuss include the following:

• Introductions and the state of public education (00.03.00)
• Parent power, the work of The Oakland REACH, and shifting the narrative of the recent Oakland teachers' strike to focus on the harm done to students (00.06.25)
• Parent power, the work of the Campaign for Our Shared Future, and the 4 aspects of its national campaign (00.23.06)  
• The theory of action, power dynamics, and defining the wins, especially as they relate to urban education (00.29.24) 
• The influence of politics on curriculum, advocacy, and community-driven solutions (00.36.32)
• The Oakland REACHS’ Liberator Model (00.42.16)
• The real threats to public education, a definitional problem, confusion, and distractions (00.47.50)
• Book bans and the sensationalism of social and national media (00.53.40)
• Responding to divisive issues and staying grounded with a focus on a home base of teaching and learning (01.07.13)

You can use the following links to access 

• An Ipsos poll for ParentsTogether, “Most parents want classrooms to be places of learning, not political battlegrounds”: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/most-parents-want-classrooms-be-places-learning-not-political-battlegrounds
• The Oakland REACH’s Liberator Model: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQ0vHa9Nr-Tej6Pb0KhEijwwjXT9c-rv/view
• Reclaiming Math through our Liberator Model: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15pvOsW0b4yVv1eucw5P0WCDkoftdLCVt/view?ts=64ee73bb&pli=1
• Andrew Rotherham’s article, “A Definitional Problem: Please try to be a little more precise.” https://eduwonk.substack.com/p/a-definitional-problem

Hey Andy, how you doing?

Hey Jed, great to see you.

You too.

I'm really looking forward to today's conversation.

This is a a really great lineup we have here.

I know we survived one guest, Mackie went easy on us,

so we decided why not try two?

We've got two good ones.

We'll introduce them here in just a second, but we should probably

do a little bit of housekeeping.

First, because you're about to head off on just a fantastic journey.

Yeah.

So I'm going to take a month and a half to do the Camino in Spain.

And I may send a post or two when I'm just so bored and my shoes and my feet are too

sore, but as far as recording wonky folk, not really a possibility, but I hope Andy,

you might have a couple of good guests and can keep the thing going in my absence.

Yes.

I think we're going to do that.

We'll have a couple of guests.

And so keep an eye out for for a couple of wonky folks.

While Jed has gone having that great adventure and then he will be back.

And obviously the first segment back, the first part we'll be hearing

about this really amazing trip.

As I, the Bible, I think tells us not to be envious, but I am a little envious.

I have to say of this of this trip that you're taking, it sounds just amazing.

It's a promise we made to each other eight years ago when we did

the final third with our kids.

And we didn't even know if our life would work out such that we can

do it, but we're just so grateful that in fact it is the case.

So we're going to have a great time.

Yeah, I'm super happy.

We won't subject readers or listeners to another listening to us talk about

how sad it is to be empty nesters for another 25 minutes and weep about that.

But I'm super I'm super excited that you can that you can do that.

All right.

So why don't we then get on to our guests?

We have two fantastic people.

We've been talking a lot about sort of education politics and what's happening.

And so we've got two people literally on opposite sides of the coast.

Although one of them works nationally, one of them works particularly in Oakland

who I think are just going to be great.

So without belaboring it, our guests are Lakeisha Young from

Oakland reach and Heather Harding.

From campaign for shared future and Heather, you are in Washington D.

C.

Right today.

I am covered.

We got with both hosting.

Yes, we got east and west coast covered.

And we're so excited that you guys are here and y'all could make time.

Thank you so much.

Great to have you here.

Thank you.

Do you want you guys, I assume you guys each know yourselves better than je.

I know you.

So why don't you, on that theory, why don't you each quickly just

introduce yourselves, talk a little bit about your work and how

you got to doing this work now.

I guess I'll start . There we go.

Not too much.

I will start on that.

I will sound a theory.

Respectfully, Oakland is cooler than Washington, D.

C.

So you get to start.

I'll jump in.

I'll leave that for a different conversation.

Oakland is struggling right now.

So I love my city.

My name is Lakeisha Young.

I'm the founder and CEO of the Oakland Reach.

How I got to this work is really around this idea.

Like my family's from deep south Mississippi.

Jim Crow, Mississippi and my grandparents had, elementary.

My grandmother had a ninth grade education before she became a mom.

And but my family really grew on the dream of their sort of the

next generation, having, getting access to a better education.

And so I really got, I really had access to a great education coming up in San,

I was born and raised in San Francisco.

We lived in the housing projects for probably the first, eight

or nine years of my life.

And then we moved around the corner from the projects.

And I got to see, that contrast right between this like elite private school

that I was attending the friends I was making and living in the neighborhood

I lived in, but was able to learn early on that education truly is equalizer.

Doesn't matter where you start.

If you get a great education, you can pretty much choose, where you

finish and having that that pathway.

Has allowed me to one, do so much for my family.

As someone who's been quote unquote formally educated.

But it's also I'm a mom of three.

My daughter is going to be a junior in college.

I have a high school senior and an eighth grader.

So a big year for us, but it's definitely put them on a pathway

where education is important.

And I think finally, It's where my connection to the work comes from.

It's why I, do this work is because I know that no matter where you come from, if

you can get access to a good education, you can rewrite your family tree.

So that's a little bit about me.

Terrific.

And Heather, why don't you go and then we'll dig a little bit deeper

on, on both those stories and your stories and what you bring to the work.

But Heather, tell us about how you got here.

It's so wonderful to hear.

I've known and had the opportunity to work with Lakeisha a little bit,

but it's also lovely to hear like the resonant themes and stories.

I'm Heather Harding and I'm the executive director of this national campaign called

the campaign for our shared future.

I am a mother of two school age children, and I've spent the totality

of my career in K 12 education.

Some would call it education reform, but as Lakeisha was talking, I was

thinking one of the reasons that I've come to lead this campaign is

because watching the political theater unfold in school boards throughout the

pandemic and the closing of schools on now these so called culture wars.

I recall sitting on the floor in the back of a school board meeting.

My mother who was a single mom, very engaged in community decided to run

for school board and won a seat.

And so this access to public education is so much a part of how we become successful

adults and have careers and connect with our sense of our American identity.

That's what brings me to this work now.

One of the things I really like about those intros is you both went

to the why, not just the what, but the why, which is really powerful.

Let's just start with you.

I'm one of the things like I started.

Obviously, Oakland has just a fascinating history on education, a good

history in some ways with empowerment and a bad history in other ways.

And it's the only community that I'm aware of where a school superintendent

was assassinated politically.

And there's just a lot, it's a complicated place.

And so it's something if you follow education professionally,

it's a place you follow.

But a few years ago, I really started paying attention closely with, the

reading the you had like local groups work, you guys were doing the NAACP.

Others were like, way before sort of the science of reading became

a thing we're getting serious on.

Okay.

Like reading instruction here is not working for kids.

They're not being prepared.

We need to change that.

And it was a parent led movement to do that.

So can you talk a little bit about the reading piece and then how

it got to what's going on today?

Obviously, with the strike that recently concluded and so forth.

Tell us tell us a little bit of the Oakland story the last decade or so.

We're seven years.

It's seven years for me, so we're not quite at a decade, but I'm glad you

asked about the literacy piece because even though the nation is having a

much larger conversation around the science of reading, we were doing

this five, almost five years ago, and it really came from families.

So families, as I've already known that the roof is on fire.

We had just come off of a campaign back in 2019 called the Opportunity

Ticket, which I think is an interesting policy right now.

because it's about low enrollment needing to consolidate our closed schools.

And our policy was essentially that if you do close schools, families from the closed

schools should get priority enrollment in any district school of their choosing.

right?

That policy was unanimously approved on March 5th.

And then probably a few weeks later, we started asking our

families what was keeping them up at night about their kids education.

And we went into that question with the pretty blank slate.

Not imposing any sort of responses.

And I think from probably close to 80% of our families, it

was something around literacy.

It was my kids not reading on grade level.

I have no idea what level my child's reading on.

and I'm not getting a lot of help from the school.

So we all looked at ourselves at the Oakland region saying,

Our parents care about literacy.

And I think it's interesting when you think about it because you know so much

of the like We have all these buzzwords in the quote unquote ed reform space

and like quality education is one but if you get down to the like the brass

tacks with families you're going to get to stuff like reading and math.

That's what it means for them It doesn't mean access to a high quality education.

It means I need my kid to read and do math and so When they said literacy,

they were putting a real specific like hook onto what they cared about.

And the rest is history to Andy's point.

This ended up leading into a citywide campaign with over 30 organizations with

ourselves in the NAACP taking the lead because obviously the outcomes amongst

African American kids were the worst.

And by.

February, I think it was February 12th, 2020, a month before the pandemic, we

had gotten our district to again, I think we're one of the few folks who

have unanimous policy approvals, even with board members who didn't like

us, which is funny in itself, but we.

We essentially got the board to unanimously approve a policy to

move to the science of reading.

And we have all of these activities planned after that.

We did not believe in just like policy for policy's sake.

We needed to make sure implementation of like best practices,

bringing everyone together.

We brought the charter folks, CMOs and the district together because we're

like, look, black and brown families are choosing both And folks are going

to work together like our families don't care about that kind of stuff.

Let's work together.

And then the pandemic hit.

And when the pandemic hit a month later, we were in a interesting place.

And that place was that even though we had these policy wins,

honestly, I was still feeling.

Some pain in my gut around like how much have we really gotten done?

Yeah.

People were like, Oh, this is great.

You guys have the opportunity ticket policy.

Now you have literacy for all, but honestly, y'all, I got in this work to be

able to count how many kids could read.

Like we got in this work and it's So I couldn't, I really couldn't escape the

feeling of are we really having an impact?

And so when the pandemic hit, we realized that although we were in the

middle of a health crisis, certain barriers had been removed as well.

So one of those barriers was the constant battle between our teachers

union and our district, right?

Kids being in brick and mortar buildings means that dynamic plays out.

With our kids every single day and with the kids at home with their

parents and with pretty much us having in some cases better access to

families than the school did, right?

Because our parents are the ones changing numbers the most.

They're not calling the school and saying, here's my updated cell number,

but we're bumping into them at the store or if they get their phone cut

on, they calling us because they know Transcription We got their back, right?

And so we were like let's use this as an opportunity to build the

model of excellence that we've been fighting the system to move towards.

And that's when we got to our virtual hub.

And that literally has changed the DNA of our organization.

Because whereas we have the advocacy and policy chops.

Being innovators and solutions builders have allowed us to bring both of these

together to really like increase impact.

And so obviously what we saw during the hub days of which we ran the hub

for about two years, but at the very beginning, in the midst of the beginning

of the pandemic, our kids in the first five weeks, 60% of the K through two

students went up two or more reading levels on the district wide assessment,

and 30% went up three or more.

And and this is all kids who are just getting families are

just getting internet access.

Less than 50% of our families had reliable internet access or like computers

versus iPads and, things like that.

And they killed it.

And it was just a reminder.

A couple big things came out of that one.

It was a minor.

That is not the kids.

It's the adults.

And we actually did all this work with paraprofessionals,

folks who had been tutors.

So we were like, wait a minute, we can actually close some gaps with our

kids, with folks who look like our kids and come from the communities.

Obviously I have more to, share later, but that's probably a good place to stop.

Yeah.

Let's pause there, but I want to stay with you for a

second and bring in Heather.

Then bring us up on, cause it wasn't all, everybody was working

together and it was all unanimous.

Then you had this strike, which has been

Interesting.

Yeah, this is yeah, this is more recent, right?

Yeah.

So

I talk about that because that I think the strike is a lot of people

in the sector paying attention.

It's surprisingly got almost no national attention, which given

the dynamics of it was fascinating.

So quickly talk about that.

And then I want to I think that's a good pivot to the work Heather

is trying to do in communities.

Yeah.

And

let me know if there's anything particular about the

strike that you want me to speak to.

Obviously, we are going along our merry way, building the solutions,

getting folks in the schools to teach kids to read and do math that's

what I wake up every day to do.

But, Oakland has a history around this striking stuff.

So that's why I'm not surprised why I didn't make national news,

because it's like the boy that cries wolf all the time, right?

It's we've had three strikes in a year.

So I can see people looking and be like, oh, there go Oakland again,

having another strike, right?

But what ended up happening.

with us.

As we were the outspoken voice.

I think it was very shocking for folks to see parents be so loud

and outspoken against the strike.

But see, that's what happens when you building stuff.

Stuff working.

You've actually activated families and parents from the

community who are stepping in.

We've got parents who are like raising their hands and like I'm coming in.

Put me in the game.

Coach, teach me the curriculum.

Teach me what I need to do.

I'm coming in and I'm working with these babies.

So we're doing that work every day.

Now you want to come and snap and shut down schools.

Oh no, we've got to act up.

And that's really where that anger came from, which is we are tired.

The union has a lot to, they say a lot about what's happening on

the backs of black and brown kids.

Nah nah.

What y'all doing is on the backs of black and brown kids.

Cause I promise you during that strike, white privileged families

got to choose what they wanted to do.

Okay, they either crossed the picket line or they ran these little separate

strike schools of which teachers attended.

We have a primarily Asian school where they maybe were out for a couple

of days and then they're quietly started going back into their schools.

But if you came down to the flatlands of Oakland, it was like a ghost town.

Families were just not showing up.

So who actually suffered on whose backs was this really on?

That really and then we lost eight days.

Nobody won.

I will tell you, though, and I'll say this last part of why us being so outspoken.

We weren't able to stop the strike, but what we were able

to do is shift the narrative.

around how harmful the strikes were.

And even though there's been this narrative that like we have to strike to

actually get fair pay, we were able to really bust through that narrative and

show that they actually had more money on the table three days before they Have

a strike than what they signed on to.

And it just, if you were in Oakland, I must've did 30 interviews, right?

And then parents were writing op eds.

It just became an energy.

We had Dan Borenstein, who's one of the editors for the East Bay times.

He did a couple of really damning narratives.

You didn't see that in 2019.

In 2019, everybody was getting along to get along.

And I promise you, as long as I'm doing this work, we

will never again, go back to.

Any other narrative around striking than harm and the fact that we're

able to show that the negotiations are not yielding any better results

as a result of striking, right?

I think people are gonna be ready to go.

If this happens again,

talk about that.

yielding That's from the cheap seats back here in the east.

Two things looked really weird about the strike in Oakland.

One, yeah.

Was we have across the country, parents who are trying everything they

can to get away from public schools.

And that's a metaphysical crisis for the public schools.

And yet in Oakland, you have these parents who basically they like

the direction things were going.

They wanted their kids in school.

So it was essentially the parents were like pro public education

they the demands the district was basically willing to meet.

There was an agreement on the table and I'm gonna seem like a performative strike.

And the final offer wasn't much difference.

So the kids lost a lot.

The teachers didn't get a lot.

And it tore up the community.

At least that's what it looked like from the east.

And correct me if those things aren't right.

And then also, Gavin Newsom is obviously itching to run for president.

That it's at least again from the cheap seats.

It looks like every time that guy looks in the mirror, he sees the president

United States staring back at him.

And what was his, it was a moment for some leadership.

Because again, Oakland kids are out of school.

What was his role in this whole thing?

Let me make some, a couple of corrections or cause

you've hit on three points.

So the first point was who's running to and from public schools, right?

So I do want to correct that, right?

Because it's just really not that game for our communities.

Like parents want convenience and quality.

When you got money, you get to buy a house in a neighborhood.

Where the school's close and if it's a district school, then you get to

say I'm a public school parent, right?

If you live in our neighborhoods, you're doing the exact same thing.

You're trying to get convenience You're hoping to get quality and you tend to

not get either you get convenience but not quality And that's the game like we

don't have parents who are necessarily running away from public schools But we

have most of our parents really don't They want the convenience of getting

their kid to a school that's nearby.

And that often means they're district schools.

Our geography has been built up to be close to district schools

versus charter and others.

So I just want to share that, like for black and brown families, that's

not what they waking up every day.

thinking about.

But when parents no more or have had a terrible education background

in Oakland, you will start to see them exploring other options like

charters, like even private schools or honestly, better district schools.

Most of our parents try to go after better district schools because they

remember when those schools were inaccessible to them way back when.

So I just want to correct there.

And then the second one, when there was a second point you

made, Andy, before you got to.

And it seems like at the end of the day, the teachers

the point you were making, they ended up with roughly the same.

It didn't seem like a strike, like yielded substantial gains for the teachers.

In the end of the day, it's losses of time for the kids, but it didn't transform.

What was on the

table?

Yeah.

And I think with that, yeah.

And I think with that highlight was like, this has probably always been the case.

So in 2019, nobody was looking under the hood and saying what is on the table

the minute that, it's this monolith like group think that like to support

teachers, you need to support a strike.

And so no one was looking under the hood and saying what is the offer on the table?

But because families are so exhausted, upset, scared, frustrated about how much

school their kids have missed, especially if your child was in kindergarten during

the pandemic, that's forcing people.

So we had our reasons for pushing back against the strike.

But we were also talking to parents, privileged parents in the heels who

were like, wait a minute, my baby was in this kindergarten first grade

when the pandemic hit, like they have barely had a normal school year.

That starts to get people looking under the hood.

And when we looked under the hood, we start to realize that right.

What the district did was pretty much fair.

And I'm gonna tell you guys this.

It's probably been like this every single book negotiation that what the

district is offering ends up being better or are really close to what the

teachers union is putting on the table.

But then we still are subjected to a one week strike.

And guess what?

You guys, the damages we have.

We haven't even done the reckoning, right?

So we are about to face.

We missed instructional days.

Sacramento City Unified received, I think, a 50 something million dollar strike.

Like bill for not making their instructional days.

Our chronic absenteeism went up or ADA went down by 4%, besides the loss.

So it was just really bad.

And then if you're asking about Newsome.

Yes.

With all this going on, where was the, where was it?

It was

nowhere to be found.

It was his, it was Tony Thurman.

Who's also really backed by the union.

He was like.

coming to the negotiation.

So there was a lot of news about him trying to help him negotiate.

You don't bring the guy in who's been completely endorsed by the

unions to come and endorse the mediate a union and district thing.

So you can tell how successful that was.

Newsome was pretty quiet.

But to your earlier point, Andy, he's got bigger aspirations

and those bigger aspirations.

We're going to see how those aspirations play out.

In a little bit, we're going to start to get into this parent power

thing and how different it looks on one side of the country or another.

And I always wonder how is Newsome going to align himself to parents as

he begins to take on a bigger stage?

Because in other states, parents are not playing.

They are showing up and impacting politics in a, in an extreme sort of way.

So it'll be interesting to see how he evolves around unions and parent

power in the coming, year or so.

We'll come back.

We'll come back to that.

I think that's a great pivot over to Heather.

Heather, talk about, because the whole, parent power plays in the background

of some of the work you're doing, so talk about you're working around the

country, talk about what the campaign's doing and how it fits into some of the

issues that we pointed out with Lakeisha talking about what's happening in Oakland.

Yeah.

So first I want to say we have good polling on this now that K 12 public

education is in the hot media cycle, the majority of parents want access

to a high quality at public education, just as Lakeisha named, like this

convenience and access to quality.

They need to be synonymous.

And we know that systems have really struggled to do this forever and ever.

And for historically marginalized groups, even worse.

So that's not really an issue, but that doesn't mean we don't all deserve

access to a public education that we can get to with relative convenience.

And so I think that's the 1st thing, and I don't think that

there's any poll that would say.

Parents, families don't want that across whatever geography.

So I think that's important to know.

I was also just listening.

I think Lakeisha said, it doesn't.

Why should you have to support a strike or an intervention in getting your

schooling in order to support teachers?

And I think that's a really important and profound point because, as I

said, I've been in K 12 my entire career, so 25 plus years, almost 30.

I know I look young, but the truth is it's always been a dream of

mine that we have engaged families and parents working together to

support educators and vice versa.

And here we have it in the worst way, because it's focused

on Political aspirations to animate a base of extremists.

It's not like it's it seems so problematic because if we were focused

on helping Children read and learn how to compute, it feels like we might

be able to work some more things out.

So I am concerned.

Like, why do we care what Gavin Newsome is doing as a politician to

bolster his career or any politician?

In the mix, as opposed to really thinking about what are the teaching and

learning concerns that families have?

And how do we work together to solve those?

So our campaign is about our shared future.

How do we dial down the political rhetoric or the ideologically divides that, of

course, exist in a multiracial country?

And democracy.

And how do we bring people to the table to have that conversation?

In our campaign, we focused at least in 2023 on local school board,

because almost 30, 000 school board race seats get decided in 2023.

Everybody was all rah about the midterms of 2022.

And we'll be back in full force in politics for the presidential in 2024,

but I venture to ask like Lakeisha, doesn't it matter who sits in those

local school board seats in terms of both negotiating on contracts, but also

what the curriculum offers to kids.

So I think those issues are really important.

And as a campaign, we're trying to help people bring

those issues back to the fore.

And how are you doing that?

Give us, I was like the user experience, if you will.

Yeah, we're a national campaign and we do four things.

We focus on policy tracking and analysis so that we know when there's a bad policy

adopted either mostly at the state level.

We saw this, sweep the nation.

That does a couple of things.

Just punishes educators for doing their job.

Makes.

It decreases access to a fair and accurate, inclusive

curriculum or telling of U.

S.

History.

And 3 has finds and limits access just to come to school.

And so we're tracking that kind of stuff.

1, we can help elected leadership devise policies that don't do those things,

but that get at the issue that may be families or other people are raising.

Secondly, we think that it's important to speak directly to the public about what

it is that we're doing not in jargon.

So we do polling and messaging so that we can better understand the concerns of

families across the divide all inclusive.

So are we talking about jargon, or are we talking about something

that is actually harmful for kids?

So the co opting of critical race theory is something that parents

need to be worried about or social emotional learning is indoctrination.

Maybe it's the jargon that people don't understand and political

operatives have hijacked that language.

So we do some polling and messaging work.

We work with field and organizing groups.

in local and state communities that are already engaged in supporting

parents and families and what they said they need to be an authentic

representation to speak to leaders.

And we do that both by raising dollars but also providing training and support

and connecting them across the issues.

Because the political theater ramped up so quickly and because there was a lot of

misinformation, We really want families and parents to have access to what their

schools are actually doing to weigh in and to solve problems at the local level.

So that's what the campaign is up to.

We're time bound.

So we're not an organization that needs to have a long term legacy or exist forever.

We hope this problem will recede.

We're working to do that.

And then we're also nonpartisan.

So we don't care if you're a Republican or a Libertarian or a Democrat.

We care about is if you are concerned about supporting young

people in meeting the dreams of their families and that public

education should help them get there.

So we didn't see another type of entity like that in the face of

these threats to public education.

So that's what we're up to.

So let me chime in here on just theory of action and

power dynamics, especially as it relates to urban education.

I'm in California, I'm in Sacramento.

Heather, if you didn't know that close watcher of the Oakland races close

watch of the financial dysfunction within the school district that in

some of these small schools, literally the district is on record spending.

40, 000 per student because there are so many, so few students, at these campuses

and people don't think about how that's siphoning money away from absolutely

every other student in the district.

People not really thinking about his.

What's great about Washington, D.

C.

And Oakland being on the line at the same time is very

comparable, unique circumstances.

Oakland has the hills and it has the planes.

It has affluent people in the same school district, and Washington, D.

C.

Has Ward seven and eight and also has Georgetown.

And we have a history of these school districts choosing to put

more resources into Georgetown into the Oakland Hills, right?

We've had these a history of these districts using redlining attendance

boundaries to protect the areas in the hills and in Georgetown, right?

And so the question is.

And yet the power dynamics are such that the teacher union has so much power

They're the idea that we're going to win school board races in sacramento

right now Or we're going to win in oakland right now Or we're going to win

in los angeles in 10 years of working in the charter school association It

was come on guys over and over again.

Come on, let's do it There is a base large enough within the charter school world.

We can be a counterweight blah blah blah, right?

And there's just a feeling I think in some that you may be able to sustain that for

a while, but ultimately the underlying dynamics are so skewed toward the union's

point of view and they're going to win the school board elections over and over again

that it becomes very difficult to again.

That on parent power being something that can be the game changer.

So what's your latest thinking on all of this as the next, chapters of

political dynamics are playing out?

I would love to say she has her hand jump in.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I gotta push on this a bit.

First, what I want to push on is you got to decide what you're trying to win.

And I find that when I sit at the table with ed reform folks, they're so focused

on moving systems that they forget about the people in the systems, right?

We're right here sitting in Oakland, which is one of the most challenging cities,

but we're getting some of the most.

Like growth and results and folks who don't even have to deal with this.

So then you have to ask yourself, how do we get there?

One is you got to decide what you're trying to win.

So for us, the school board is like a non factor.

Really?

They don't make decisions on curriculum.

They don't make decisions and decide like how our kids get to read and do math.

And if anything, they're in the way.

So we don't deal with the school board, right?

We deal with the superintendent and her team.

But the reason why we get to do that is because we actually built a solution

that's allowing us to be at the table.

And then we've actually brought our parents to the table.

I want to be clear.

We cannot let white moms form of parent power be parent power.

Okay, when a mom or where a parent and a caregiver from Oakland

Becomes a math and literacy tutor.

That's parent power in our communities because that's the issue we're battling.

So this whole comparison about what Virginia moms do and how they

overturn governor seats, and that feels like, oh my God, we had a

whole different battle out here.

And so you cannot compare the steps we take.

So people may not feel that empowering parents to be able to teach and read,

reading and doing math, building assets, self reliance and agency in our

communities that can never be taken.

That's power.

So I just want to challenge us a little bit about figure

out what you're trying to win.

Because I feel like with the charter movement and some of these other ed

reform pieces, it's so focused We have the toughest teachers union.

Do you understand that these folks are really not a problem most of the time?

Do you know why?

Because they don't care about teaching and learning.

So anything that we're doing around teaching and learning, we don't

ever have issues with the union.

We only have issues with the union when they try to get in the way

of teaching and learning, which typically happens around negotiations.

So when you say they have so much power, you're giving them more power, right?

They don't have that much power in the day to day of art Of

what we're doing when it comes.

They don't put anything in the contracts around curriculum like none

of the contract stuff has anything to do with educating our kids, right?

So I just want to really push us a little bit.

I was thinking about this before the call is figure out what you're actually

trying to win for our communities.

Because I think that like what we're trying to win for our own communities has

us positioning ourselves very differently around what feels like these like big

boulders like school board elections.

I would never encourage a parent to join a school board.

And I'm going to repeat this again.

I would never encourage a parent to join the school board.

Why?

Because why would I put that kind of burden on a mama who's already got

a ton on her plate in the hopes that by her taking up one of seven seats

On a board that she's going to be.

I'm moving her further away from her power, then closer to her

power because the power is the privilege to have the system working

without you being burdened, right?

That's the flex.

That's the win.

So every day that I wake up, I'm like, how do I make sure?

We turn in poverty into privilege.

It's not a privilege for you to be on the board.

They've given you 800 a month so that you can stay on board meetings till midnight.

Having people email you.

Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun.

That sounds like a lot of power.

It is not.

That's not what our parents signed up for.

So I just want to put that out there as we start thinking about how we're

training parents to be on school boards.

White mamas in Virginia have a different kind of privilege to

make those choices than black and brown mamas in our communities.

And my responsibility is to make sure they are burdened as little as possible.

And when I asked him to do something, it's something where they keep an asset.

They get to see the fruits of their labors when they are born

into our schools as paid tutors.

They are building skills.

They're teaching kids immediately seeing that immediate playback.

And now we're building assets in the community that can never be taken.

So I appreciate you letting me speak on this because I feel some kind of way

about the ways in which When white moms in Virginia do one thing, we start to

try to replicate it on the other side.

And that's just not the same battle that we have in our communities.

We have some deficits and some barriers where we have to be real strategic

around how we exercise our power, or we won't actually exercise any power.

So that points up, that's fascinating.

And that, Lakeisha, this points up a question, The interesting thing about, I

will use Virginia, you brought it up as an example, like people tend to reduce

Virginia to what's going on is white moms.

It's actually the politics are like far more complicated.

We're seeing similarly complicated politics next door in Maryland.

And so my question, is and I think some of this stuff for example, like the Moms

for Liberty group in Tennessee that was going after some of the curriculum makes

actually harder to teach reading because they were going after good knowledge,

rich curriculums, curricula, excuse me.

So it can make it harder.

But some of this stuff isn't necessarily it's not the teach.

It's the teaching and learning agenda.

Is more straightforward overall in terms of getting people on it.

Some of this other stuff is more complicated.

So the question how there's if people aren't on the side of right, then,

we're going to work against them.

How do we decide in a when you get away from these teaching drill court

teaching and learning issues like science or reading and so forth?

How do you decide on some of this other stuff?

What is right and who's right?

And in a really pluralistic, politically otherwise diverse

America, how do you, how do

we decide?

So I think it's really, just to double click on Lakeisha's points,

which is that as a parent in Oakland, understanding them historically and what

they need is where we want to lean in.

To having educators work with families and vice versa.

Oakland reach has a set of demands that reflect the needs of their most

underserved community over time.

They are very clear and in every place, public education intersects

with the economic and the cultural norms of that place, right?

And so the focus on solutions here is really important.

I think to say now, yeah.

I'm looking at it nationally and I'm thinking about common ground so to

be as inclusive because I want every American have access to public education.

So what that means is that in some communities, the school board

might operate differently than our unique individual experiences

of Oakland, Washington, D.

C.

I hear what you were saying.

Jed makes total sense.

I'm in Washington, D.

C.

My Children have been at charter schools.

We have, how hard would we all know this problem?

Actually, how hard is it to get parent representatives on

your local charter school board when you've got half of the L.

E.

A.

Is in town needing a board?

Yeah.

And representation and you put that burden on families that are already struggling.

That doesn't make any sense.

But in a state or in a locale where the school board is making decisions

about whether or not my little children are going to see literature on the

shelf that represents their personal experience, I want a representative that

can talk to me and make teaching and learning decisions that really matter.

So I think this is more complicated than just one way or the other.

The fact is that it's a public education.

It's a public good.

And what that means is that the public has to be engaged, but

not in conflict in collaboration.

And yes, we are going to grapple with things, but I'm always reminded

of the story out of Ohio last electoral cycle where, they were

having the debate over sports.

And I think, are we going to solve this by politicians debating or

creating sweeping legislative answers?

No, we're going to solve it when the local mom and or dad sit down with the school

and figure out what the right solution is.

And what I see in so much of this political activity is it's theater.

It's really not about teaching and learning.

So how do we help prepare all of the parents and families across the country

to engage with their local school district to ensure that they get what

they need for their young people?

Here's your look that you were about to say something.

Yeah.

I'm really trying to figure out what is that you guys are talking about.

And how is it?

We are local, but we're talking to folks all over the country.

And so I'm waiting to hear.

What is that thing?

That is so different or how Oakland is so unique because everybody we talked

to, whether they're in rural North Carolina or in sort of urban districts

are fighting to do the same thing.

The politics around it is different.

right?

And those conversations come up.

But the North Star tends to be pretty similar.

We have a national reading and math crisis in our country

that's not unique to Oakland.

So the question is that how are we tackling that?

And what we've seen is that our local solution is having

a lot of national impact.

We're actually about to bring 15 Organizations, which includes charters

and districts and funders to Oakland, who are really looking to learn how to cut

through some of that performative theater, which has been there since I've been.

And it's never going away because that's just what it is.

Folks still realize that they have a responsibility.

to our communities.

Our families want to be brought in the most impactful way.

So I'm like, I'm trying to take it all in and understand what is that?

What of what you guys are talking about in terms of what you want to

give parents and particularly parents.

who are black and brown across different communities in our country.

So I think, Lakeisha, I'd be curious just what your thoughts are about the

degree to which there is reason for hope that Oakland Unified can finally evolve

into something that would provide the kind of instruction in math and reading that

you're, that parents desperately want.

I think that there is from my perspective, just there's just generations now of

experience to the contrary, and the hole is so deep that they're in right

now, it becomes a challenge to have a vision for the future that holds

together because maybe we can get some better reading practices going on.

But if next year, the district is in complete financial collapse because

state revenues have decreased.

enrollment decline has happened.

The wanton, fiscal mismanagement of the school district has made

it impossible for them to, they're continuing to reject state bailouts.

At some point, that dysfunction within the school district is going to have a

degrading effect on whatever good practice we get in around science of reading or

math instruction or something like that.

Is there so I guess what I told you, go

ahead, please.

Yeah.

So I love that question, Jed.

I love it.

Okay.

So it goes back to what I said.

Originally, we're not focused on Oakland Unified.

We're focused on the liberation of our communities when you are focused on

the liberation of your communities.

you go in multiple directions, right?

So the reason why we've built the liberator model is because most families,

especially black and brown families.

And then you think about some of our most vulnerable kids,

foster students and all of that.

They pick district schools, right?

So we have a model and a solution for that.

But we're actually about to launch it.

something else, which is a community driven technology platform.

And Andy, we talked about this before, which is going to have a part of that

platform be around school choice.

And that school choice is going to give parents learning and understanding

around other school options.

right?

So whether it's homeschooling, whether it's charter district private, right?

What we recognize is when we focus on communities, we build solutions

to liberate our communities.

Our parents need the full gamut of options in front of them.

But we're also pragmatic to understand that most of our

families choose district schools.

So when you bring up this very daunting issue around the district

Understand that I wake up every day.

I'm not trying to serve the district.

See the district changes because the people change the district.

You don't change it from here.

You change it from the people in there.

And so by equipping the mamas and the grandmamas to be these tutors.

You now have a more educated student body, right?

And now you have a better district.

That's where we go.

But with that being said, like change takes quote unquote I take this back.

They say change takes time.

It takes as much time as you want it to take.

Some families are like, I don't have time to waste.

I have given my whole multiple generations of my family to

a system that doesn't work.

So the reason why we're building this solution that will actually launch in

the winter is because liberation is about having access to all of your options,

like We saw across the country almost an 18 20% increase of homeschooling amongst

black families, many, we live in a state where kindergarten is not even required.

So we have kids who are going into kindergarten who are not

even like sounding out letters and things of that nature.

What if their families knew that there was some out of box homeschooling option

that they could be using that then either they'd Stay homeschooling their kids or

bring them into the public school system.

So that's where Reach is working from.

We're working so deep deeply from the place of liberation that it pushes

us to build multiple solutions.

That's why we have literacy and math, because unfortunately our country is

just catching up with literacy while math keeps getting further behind.

And there's a lot of research that says that like long-term life

success for black kids is actually determined around their proficiency

in math than it is in literacy.

So when you say that, Jed, I really welcome that question

because it is about both and.

Yes, we have this model that we're moving and building at scale,

because so many of our folks in our communities are in our district schools.

But, we don't like that our families don't have the options.

And those options, honestly, in a place like California, have to

extend even beyond charter schools.

They cannot just be district in charge school because in Oakland, the charter

schools are only doing a little bit better than the district schools

may not be the case in other cities, but that's how it is in Oakland.

So we really want our families to have access to all their learning options

that are both within the district and without outside the district.

So Jim, my best response is that we don't focus to charter schools.

As much as how do we move this big bureaucratic clunky thing?

We focus on how do we move the people most impacted around through under

and in between this big clunky thing.

And then how do we help them not deal with the clunky thing

if they need something else?

And that's how the change is going to come from the people, not from a savior place

up here where we're trying to move things that's never going to happen, right?

And I'm sorry.

It's like when we actually try to move from this place, we do more harm to

the communities that we serve because we don't give them actually any

power to move things where they sit.

Heather, how

would you respond to Lakeisha's question, because I feel like this

is like a really fascinating part of the conversation, because it's

these two different theories of action, like Lakeisha, said what is

this national stuff actually doing?

And what is it talking about?

And so as you are digging in on these big, political issues, like, how would

you respond to the exact question that she put forward a second ago?

I think you'll need to restate the question.

But I think, as Lakeisha said earlier, too, this is not So we're a campaign

that's responding to what we perceive as an attack on public education.

We're not a local organization to come up with solutions.

And part of what I'm trying to say here is that the Oakland reach is a great example

of when you have a local solution that is encouraging both demand on the system,

but also collaboration to come up with solutions for the families that need it.

If we have State and national political theater actions that can't get in

the way of being able to build a functioning local system to engage.

And for me, the question is, what are the real threats?

Are the real threats that public schools have the resources and designs to

indoctrinate and undermine family values?

Is that a concern that we've had all 4 of us in the last

30 years of trying to improve?

The opportunity for kids to learn to read and compute.

And so I'm simply laying out that as a a real issue to me when I talk to

people across the country about getting kids back to school about ensuring that

we can override what are increasing.

Actually, enduring teacher shortages in important areas, not

everywhere, but also to make up for the lost time of schools closing.

Is it this culture war frame work?

Or is it a focus on the three hours?

So no 22 year old wakes up tomorrow and says, I just saw people screaming

at the superintendents and teachers.

I think I want to go be a teacher.

We are going to box ourselves into this environment where we're not

going to be able to recruit folks into the into the profession.

We're not going to have the kind of literature that encourages

young people to persist, to learn how to read, which is very hard.

We're not going to have places where folks can show up and think that they

have the opportunity to collaborate.

In fact, they're going to think they're supposed to come and

scream and yell at each other if we believe the media narrative.

So for me, it's like, Where should these problems get solved at what

level and who should be at the table?

And I think what we're seeing nationally is again, an act or the

perspective of a pretty extreme minority that we don't need.

In they've always

been there.

I guess I see it a little differently.

Since I've been doing this work, there's always been the attack on

public education, quote unquote.

And that's there.

But even today, most school board meetings are sleepy affairs

where nobody pays attention.

There's nothing going on, right?

The media.

It's it's like when a hurricane hits, they don't pay attention.

Show footage of all the houses that weren't touched.

They find the one that's got a tree through it.

It's the same.

It's the exact same thing happens with coverage of school boards.

Most of them, even through the midst of all this.

When you look at these reports, it's like it's actually this is happening.

It's much less frequent and prevalent than people think.

And social media screws us up.

So I guess I see it a little differently in that I will say I think public

education, some of this rather than an attack over the last five to 10 years,

like a lot of self harm, if you will, and self inflicted wounds like public

education is it is lost in some ways the confidence of parents in different ways.

And I think that's why you have this vacuum politically that really

like I don't know, 10, 15% of people on either side have rushed

into to have all these fights.

And if you look at the polling, I know you look at the polling, Heather, like

70% of people, they agree on this stuff.

They just they're not, and we're all getting dragged along for a ride.

By like the 30%, some of whom have managed in different cases, in

different ways to exert a lot of leverage on the public education

establishment and throw them off course.

So I guess I see, I don't know you're, I can't tell if you're pointing at me,

Lakeisha, cause you're upset or you agree.

No.

I'm just saying you just hit on something that if I think I'm hearing you right

before you said it, I was thinking, why can't, why are we so scatterbrained?

Like, why don't we just focus a little bit, right?

So the reason why I'm putting what I'm putting in the chat is that we

may be local and we and I'm good with being local and come up with a local

solution, but it has a demand nationally.

And the demand nationally is because it's not just the local.

Problem.

And it's not necessarily the ability or responsibility for

national organizations to come up with solutions for local things.

It can be local.

And all of a sudden, next thing you know, a million students are

impacted because these folks are coming to the table learning.

So I just want to put that in.

But Andy, the other thing I wanted to bring up around this is that

what I've seen even on the past six months is like a lack of focus.

We are smart people.

And what we focus on expands and we've expanded confusion, right?

We won't focus on literacy and math.

You guys are smart people.

I can't speak for me and Jed.

I think you guys are smart people.

That's why we have you so with the book bands, I'm of course against book

bands, but when you're here on the ground, you realize that our biggest

issue right now is not book bands.

It's the fact that our kids can't read right.

And like we're not focusing.

We get everything gets our attention when they had the parents Bill of Rights.

Then it was like a whole thing.

And what I share with folks is that if you took the parents Bill of Rights that

McCarthy put a stamp on and you put it in front of our parents without saying

what it was, they would agree with it.

They would agree with it in a different context than moms in another state.

But they would be like, yes, I have the right to know about the curriculum.

Yes, I have the right to be notified about this context, different.

But foundation the same, but there'll be something else that

we didn't jump to and focus on.

And I'm sorry, you guys, but that means we have less warriors, less brains and less

focus on the basics that our families.

I'm just telling you that, like we may be doing a local thing, but there are

many folks across the country trying to do that local thing to and wake up every

day feeling dang, I gotta figure out how Alabama just passed a law, right?

That if you can't read by third grade, you're going to get held back.

We've got Birmingham folks coming.

This is what's happening and it's not a local thing.

It's a national thing that local people are trying to solve for.

So I think part of just what I'm pushing on.

It's like it feels like a lack of focus or maybe people being to

80, 000 ft in the air or whatever.

But if we could get everyone to focus on these core things, just imagine the movie.

Yeah,

also just really tribal, right?

Like I like that.

Text messaging calls Andy all the time.

I know because we're going head on.

both building our model and trying to expose folks to it.

And every time I turn around, I'm somebody's trying to distract me

with the new education problem.

And I've got to put it in its place and be like, okay, this

thing matters, but what really is hurting our communities right now?

Is it really this thing or is it the thing that's pissing us off?

And we're turning it to a bigger thing.

I would love your.

focus over here.

The distractive nature of it is a problem.

And while I think, Andy, this we can find lots of areas of common ground.

You referenced the 70%.

That is true.

And exactly what the Keisha is voicing that these local solutions, of

course, they find demand everywhere.

That's why we're so excited about connecting with people.

But I do find it problematic if we don't answer the call to an

extreme that's distracting us.

So if we care about learning to read, yeah, again, if we don't, if we care

about kids learning to read, we cannot have the majority of folks who are

engaged focused on banning books.

Makes no sense.

So you've got to

if you work with them?

When you dig down under these book bans, it is happening.

There are places that are certainly doing it, but it's so much

less prevalent.

I could give you 20.

Emails that I got just in the last two weeks.

Sure.

There's 13, 000 school districts in this country.

This is the problem.

Like this stuff does distract, like the book banning.

I started, I got curious about this and you started looking at they said they

were banning the Amanda Gorman poem and book in Florida and you dug under it.

It wasn't.

And even like the fact checkers like, yeah, that's not actually happening.

But by that point it had gone around and Twitter had its two

days of, everybody freaking out.

I think, some of this stuff is certainly happening, but I think our social media

has completely skewed our sense of prevalence of how much it's happening.

And so to, it makes it harder to marginalize and be like, yeah,

there are people who are like trying to ban a book about Ruby Bridges.

That is a thing that is happening.

It is also not thankfully super common.

And I worry we're making it appear more common than no, there are

some people want to do that.

It's 2023.

That's ridiculous.

Let's move on and let's focus on these other issues.

I worry that we like and I'm my own theory on this as part of it is post S a like at

least during like common cores as awful as some of the politics were there and stuff.

We're at least arguing about teaching and learning.

No child behind.

We're arguing about teaching and learning, and we really had

a vacuum for about a decade.

I'm telling you, And it's getting filled with this stuff because we're

not having in a lot of states and certainly not nationally like a real

debate about teaching and learning or expanding school choice and charters

are like, just the kinds of things that people aren't going to agree on either.

But at least it's not shadowboxing.

And

I think it could get us really onto what, Lakeisha, you were talking about

before because you're talking about, you're really talking about parent agency.

There are so many different places they want to do.

They want to do micro schools.

They want to do home schools.

They want to get charter schools.

They want to have all their other forms of choice.

Maybe they want to be able to transfer into a different attendance zone.

Maybe they want to be able to transfer into a different

school district all together.

Piedmont, saying that they're going to be accepting kids from Oakland.

These are next week.

These are vexing issues, right?

These are vexing issues.

And what specifically are we going to propose on them so that parents

end up with a whole basket of new powers and agencies that they haven't

had before such that they can do?

Because we can talk about these things.

But if parents don't have any money to do homeschooling, if they don't have any

money to get the micro school going or whatever the heck it is, it's just not

going to happen for them in the way that's happening for all sorts of other parents.

But you know

what?

There's plenty of money out there.

And so when I talked to you about this marketplace of this community

driven tech solution, when all is said is done and again, this is an

ambitious, necessary move on our part in Oakland and hopefully again, it

becomes another solution that grows.

But for the first time in Oakland, we will know What families want and need

across a variety of things, right?

What is the driver, right?

And so if you go back to the homeschooling piece I've been on panels with like

Odyssey and other folks like that.

I'm talking to a bunch of providers about how do you become a direct to

service direct to families model.

When we were running our hub back in 2020, we helped.

We went from four providers to 44 providers in our hub over a 2.

5 year period, and that was the freest most liberated when our

community saw the most gains with their kids was during that time.

But unfortunately, there's all of these solutions being built, right?

But they're all trying to move this through a district that

is clunky and bureaucratic.

And so part of building the marketplace is when the demand is there.

If the demand is there, Jed, for homeschooling, how are you then connecting

with those partners and saying, Look, I've got 2000 families that want this.

What are you willing to do?

How are you willing to make this affordable?

Because remember, I told you kindergarten is not required here

in California, which puts black and brown kids at a huge disadvantage

when they start at school age.

So it even makes our model.

So once again, right?

How do you move different levers to get to the same point?

How do you give access to educational opportunities earlier on where the

public school system doesn't allow it?

But Jed, our parents are not waking up unfortunately every

day with the hunger around.

Give me all the learning options, right?

We're actually saying here are all the learning options and

whether or not you decide to pick your school down the street.

These things are possible for you.

Oh, and if you're going to keep your kindergarten kid home, let's

figure out a way that you can keep them home and they're actually

learning and ready for first grade.

So I'm just saying that like to Andy's point, Heather, I totally

hear what you're saying as well.

It's like we've got a built shit.

Okay, like at the end of the day, like we have this, we have a four step formula

that we call ask, listen, build, liberate.

And I tell folks, we don't ask and we don't ask anymore, we keep surveying

and asking our families so they can tell us the exact same things.

We got to start building the solution.

So we have four solutions we're building at the same time, which lets you know

that we're not attached to a thing.

We're attached to liberation.

We're attached to freedom.

Freedom and we're building the solutions that get our communities

to the highest point of freedom.

So I'll give this last example and pass it back to Heather.

You asked a question earlier, Jen, around like, how do we move these systems?

What do we do with OUSD?

So this liberator model, one of the things we did is we brought Serpy in.

Yeah.

This little local, Oh, Oakland reach group.

We brought in our partner Serpy.

To do, they're doing a whole research study.

The report's going to come out in October, but what this research study

is already doing from the ground up is pushing the district around efficacy of

tutoring that they were not even focused on until we brought the research in.

And now we're going to double down on it because we're going to use that

research to talk about codification from recruitment to results, but see

how it's coming from the ground up.

And now our superintendent's wait a minute.

Yeah.

How are we thinking about our data tracking or monitoring evaluation?

Now, why that wasn't like, I'm not saying people weren't thinking

about that before, but this stuff is coming from the ground up, right?

Like I was even telling Serbia, I'm like, we brought you here.

Oh, he was, he didn't bring you here.

We brought you here.

And why we brought them there is because We are solutions builders and we

don't fall in love with our solutions.

We fall in love with the results of our solutions and that's a different

y'all fall in love with the thing you build in and forget to focus.

And I'm not saying you guys in particular, it's a general statement

because we're having to, I said, but we too often fall in love with the

solution and we don't fall in love with the results of the solution.

I don't care about a liberator model if it's not going to get kids to read.

So all I do is tweak and turn and tweak and turn to make

sure we're getting to results.

So that's the thing I'm saying.

It's like I'm asking y'all on a national level, what are we falling in love with?

What is the prize we're trying to win?

Because it feels very disconnected to what's happening with the families

that we're supposed to be serving.

They're just not getting up every day talking about this kind of stuff.

They're really not because you guys already know Department of Justice

came out with this 70% of folks who are not reading by fourth grade.

They're going to be on welfare in jail.

So why are we talking about book bands?

I'm not saying book bands don't matter, but we've elevated it to a

level that is just not even normal for what we really need to do.

And I'm just telling you what it does to folks like me.

It means that I've got to have another interview with folks

to try to tell them I get it.

Thank you.

But guess what?

Our kids can't read and do math.

Can we focus on that right?

We're giving our like our SIPs curriculum.

It's not super focused on like culturally affirming literature.

It will get there, right?

Or when we were working with reconstruction, Kaya Henderson's

platform was amazing because it did both.

It focused on kids reading, but it was able to do so focusing

on the African heritage.

diaspora, but it didn't substitute one for the other.

And that's what we find.

It's like we can't get the rigor and the focus and the culturally,

cultural affirmation at the same time.

And I'm like why not?

We have to.

So I'll stop there.

But, that's

that.

I do want to say I think it's a mistake to underplay how much this political theater

and cultural war stuff undermines people's ability to focus on the right solutions.

And while you say it's 20 emails a week, but it's not a thousand districts.

This is a growing concern and threat.

So we talk about it in terms of there's legislation and policy moving, but

there's a chilling effect and the more time it takes up and you cannot

discount social media or the national media people are influenced by that.

And so real educators, folks who have credibility on the ground for having

impact should be standing up and saying, we're not worried about that.

We're worried about helping the babies read.

Of course we should have a book about Rosa Parks.

Stop bringing that to the table.

Of course we should not be denying the Holocaust.

We're not going to talk about that.

What I want to make sure is that the kids understand how to decode,

understand, analyze the text, etc.

I'm not afraid of dissent.

And I think part of what we, having this stuff go unanswered is a real problem.

That does not mean that it's going to lead to the solutions that folks

on the ground are trying to address.

But one, we have to ensure that we do respond to crazy and that we to bring

the take responsibility for bringing that conversation back around to what's

important that's happening in schools.

And I don't care whether it's one side or the other, because we all have kids

and we all have dreams for our kids.

Each one of us, you all said your parents, we're all parents.

We had dreams.

We chose schools, public education, as well as other options to make

sure our kids could get there.

The vast majority of Americans rely on their public school.

And so if we see undermining public confidence in that, we are

going to be in trouble long term.

So I do wanna, I wanna, I

we have, but why do we have,

I'll give an example.

I'll give an example.

In Virginia, like what?

Under the previous administration there was a push to.

They floated the idea we were going to limit the courses people could take

in high school and limit your ability to take advanced courses for equity.

That was like, that's an example, Heather, if you want to erode confidence

in public schools, parents went bananas.

That was a factor in the election.

That's what I just think.

I think the through line as I see it is it goes back a little bit

to location was talking about.

If you just showed parents some of this stuff, it didn't say it's Providence.

They'd be like, Oh, yeah, I agree with that.

I think if you do the blind taste test a lot, both sides, like you

tell you, you tell Republican stuff.

And then you're like, Oh, yeah, this is something that Joe Biden supports.

And there's the support drops.

And likewise, you'd Take charter schools are a good example.

You tell Democrats that's like the Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos support and there

and the support drops the same idea, which I think part of the problem is we've

become so partisan, and everybody has to have their sort of team and it goes to

this idea of I forget how one of one of you said it, but this idea that people

aren't like engaging on the specifics of any of this that's becoming signaling.

I think that is what is killing us.

And what's alarming to me is a number of these things like you

talked about Holocaust denial.

Thankfully, it is so rare.

Yes, there was like that guy in Louisiana legislature that was like, there's a

lot of politicians and you're going to find some, they talk a lot and you're

going to find ones who say crazy stuff, but I remember that whole thing in

Texas where you're like, they're going to teach both sides of the holocaust.

It was absolute nonsense, but that didn't stop everybody from getting it all high

dodging in the media, like so many of these book things, there are 13, 000

school districts in this country, and I just think we are losing our sense.

And I agree with you.

You can't let crazy take over.

But you also, there's a fine line between not doing that and just fueling crazy.

And I do worry, like we, we are all a little addicted to crazy right now.

And all this stuff that's happening again, both sides.

And it's we're indoctrinating or we're, it's a genocide and as leaders,

I do think there's a role just to get everybody to calm down a little

bit and focus on what matters, which is what's actually going on.

What's the teaching and learning agenda?

And I do think one one place just location.

I was struck.

You said, like the union doesn't I do think.

Often that's the case, but in some places, some of the conditions in

these bargaining agreements really do matter to teaching and learning

and you've got the opposite problem.

Nobody's paying attention to any of that, right?

And everybody's like upset about common core and no one's like reading.

Here's this document that actually me.

Completely prescribed what's going to happen in your schools

every day for five days a week.

You should probably pay attention to.

So I feel like we're, it runs all ways.

And as leaders, I think people just getting people to focus on, the

main thing, and keep the main thing.

The main thing is not taking the bait unnecessarily is really important.

Exactly why we invited you guys on for this discussion.

This is terrific.

We can't resolve at all.

No, a lot of people rowing in the same direction.

Also, it's that's why we wanted to have you guys.

It's a tough judgment calls.

What is a moment when we're just being played?

And what is a moment where it's a substantive thing and if we don't stand

up and do the right thing here, it's it's another missing of our responsibility.

So

yeah, I just add one last piece and then we have to jump.

You said something just really important right now that I had

to say something to which is how do we make those judgment calls?

I would say that, like an example of that is exactly what we did in Oakland.

We made a judgment call around stepping away from our work for a

second or not really, but to respond to the teacher strike because we

saw that as a huge issue getting in the way of like student learning.

And it was getting in the way of what we had really told our parents and

caregivers about the type of influence that they were going to have on the

education of their own Children.

But once it was done, how We went back and we went back and focus

everybody still came and was like, Oh, we haven't seen parents do that.

Can you guys do this?

Can you now do this?

And I'm like, no, if it is not like directly.

So you see how it was already going to start to so that's

what I was just saying about.

It's not easy work, but when you have a clear focus, you know what to swat

away, you know when to step forward.

So it's not We're not responding.

We were the only people in Oakland to actually respond to the teacher strike.

But when it was done, we went back to business and got back to the focus of

like our kids can't read and do math.

And we did not let other people pull us into this performative to Heather's

point of Oh, how cool does it look to see black and brown parents get

upset around the teachers union?

It's cool for about two weeks, but it ain't really cool at all because at the

end of the day, Our kids are not reading.

So I just want to share that is an example of being able to be nimble,

to both stay focused on the grounded solution you never walk away from, but

sometimes you got to stop and get with folks, but then you got to get back.

And I just, I don't see us getting back.

I see us because we don't have anything grounding us.

So I will push for everybody to think about what is grounding you

in this work so that even if you have to respond to things popping

up, you come back to home base.

What is your home base?

And if your home base is just responding to everything,

nobody's going to survive that.

It's

just not fun.

I I like that LaKeisha.

I also think, and this is a hobby horse of mine, Jed knows we also, we

have to be very clear defining terms of what are we actually talking about?

These broad terms get so like Heather, not to beat on the dead book horse,

but like the group that tracked us, they've expanded their definition

of what constitutes a book ban.

So it includes even like a book getting moved from an elementary school shelf

in a school library to a middle school shelf, like that book's being banned.

And it's in a way, that's strangely, and this seems like a weird thing to

say, it's actually like good news.

This is this is not a problem in the extent that a standard definition of book

ban will allow you to raise money and media attention, so you have to expand it.

We've seen that on other things, where we're actually seeing measures of progress

we would want to see, and so people like, Make the definition more expansive,

because that's what advocacy groups do.

And I think we have to be very careful the home based thing I totally agree with

and being like laser like focused, and then also just, what's the definition?

What are we actually talking about on these specific things?

And I think that for public education is a big risk, because that's how

a word like equity suddenly becomes Completely under pressure and people

and you're like, wait a minute.

Like we, you and I used to work together on fiscal equity.

And now you're like I'm against equity.

It's it's a real risk.

And so I think it behooves all of us to be very clear.

What are we talking about with these various things?

And then that face point, I don't know.

The last few years have been pretty frenetic and I just don't know the

sector is doing a great job at that.

Listen guys, it was a sour note.

Jen, leave us on a happy note.

Heather, Lakeith, someone leave us on a happy note.

There's a lot of support for public education.

Families are paying attention.

Politicians.

Take your hands off and put your money where your mouth is.

I'll take that one.

But I do believe strongly that, we can have a thriving system.

We can have a multiracial democracy that has a public education system

with lots of options moving forward.

But we need to make sure that we're defending the stuff that

actually helps kids learn.

Terrific.

Thank you both for taking time out of your day and out of your work to to join us.

Thanks so much.

Thank you so much for having us.

This was

great.