A brief multi-speaker video discussion from Oakland Unified School District and Salesforce about tackling deep inequities (health, housing, food security, education) by creating community schools and using an Education Cloud for K-12. Speakers emphasize visualizing holistic student needs, coordinating multiple service providers, using data to identify hotspots and trends, and operationalizing equity so educators can spend more time relationship-building with students.
Chapters
It's hard to learn when you're hungry. It's hard as a parent to be that first teacher when you're worried about, am I going to be able to feed my child?
We recognize that there are some really deep inequities around health, around education, around housing, around food security.
We have some families that are starting so far behind for various reasons and through no fault of their own.
So our mission and vision in Oakland is really to create community schools. In most school systems, there are a plethora of individuals that touch student lives. How do you coordinate those relationships? Right, in a way to be able to visualize and illuminate who that child is?
Holistically, I would say that the education cloud for K12 really is that one place that you can go to as opposed to opening up three different places to get the information that you need and to see that holistic picture.
Everyone has a seat at the table. Our bed folks, our after school, our nurses, community school managers, leadership teachers.
Everyone instantaneously has access to that information to create better decision making around wraparound services and supports that that student needs. This technology has helped us to operationalize equity.
Equity is making sure that we know what the data says about our young people and that we're implementing strategies and programs and services that meet the needs of a variety of young people so we can all get to the same end game.
Looking at the data, you can really see what your hotspots are, right? It shows you where your areas of concerns are and as you continue to use it, you'll start to see trends.
It takes an unwavering commitment to make sure that no student falls through the cracks. I would hope that the efficiency by which we respond to them really translates into care. That's what it means to actually kind of humanize our systems, to kind of take what we often feel in our hearts and actually make it a lived reality around how we actually operate, how we treat each other.
The one thing that you can't make more of is time. You want any educator to spend the bulk of their time relationship building with students so that the student really in the end gets the right service that they need in order to thrive.
