Four years ago, the Oakland Unified School District decided to disband its school police department. The decision—called the George Floyd Resolution—was in response to historic, nationwide protests against police violence that led to calls for other kinds of investments in community safety. Since OUSD closed its police department, school leaders have had to revamp their safety strategies on campuses. Now, police are used only as a last resort, or for only the most serious incidents. At the same time, the city has committed more than $5 million over three years through the Department of Violence Prevention to address violence in schools.
On Monday, several Oakland school board directors and several city councilmembers heard long-awaited reports from city and district officials on how violence prevention efforts on OUSD campuses are going.
The presentations were during a meeting of the Education Partnership Committee, a joint committee of four OUSD school board members and four city councilmembers that facilitates collaboration between the city and public schools. The committee typically meets once per year.
In attendance were school board directors Sam Davis, Mike Hutchinson, Jennifer Brouhard, and VanCedric Williams, and city councilmembers Dan Kalb, Rebecca Kaplan, and Treva Reid. Councilmember Noel Gallo was absent and excused.
City support for violence interrupters on Oakland school campuses
In the two-year budget the city adopted in June 2021, Oakland invested $2.4 million in school safety. That funding paid for violence interruption and prevention teams at seven Oakland continuation and high schools during the 2022-2023 school year: Castlemont, Dewey, Fremont, McClymonds, Oakland, Ralph Bunche, and Rudsdale.
In the beginning, each team included a life coach at each school whose job it is to support students who have been impacted by violence as a victim or perpetrator. An additional five violence interrupters and four gender-based violence specialists were shared by the seven schools.
After these violence interruption teams were introduced, OUSD saw a 10% reduction in suspensions for physical violence, said Jenny Romero, the program’s planner for the city.
But even with a 10% reduction, there’s still a significant amount of violence at Oakland schools. During the 2022-2023 school year, OUSD high school students were suspended more than 600 times for violence. “In 2022, 67 shootings with injury, 56 incidents of intimate partner violence, and 46 rapes involving victims ages 14 to 18 were reported to the Oakland Police Department,” according to the city’s report.
The Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, is conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the program and is expected to have a report ready in August.
“We can’t say that the 10% reduction is due to our VIP program specifically, but the preliminary data looks good and we’ll have detailed evaluations later this summer,” Romero said.
For the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years, Oakland has allocated $2.7 million each year to school violence prevention programs so that each of the seven schools can have its own gender-based violence specialist, and a three-year, $1 million grant from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will fund three new violence interrupters. The city funding comes from Measure Z.
Waiting on more data, considering each school’s particular needs
School board directors said they think there’s a need to have violence interruption teams at all OUSD schools, particularly Oakland Technical High School and Skyline High School, OUSD’s two biggest high schools. The Skyline community was impacted by a shooting and stabbing in 2022 and 2023.
“Because they attract students from all over the city and have students from different neighborhoods that might have friction due to their coming from different parts of town, that tends to create really severe issues,” said Director Sam Davis, who represents District 1, which includes Oakland Tech.
Director Mike Hutchinson, who represents District 4, suggested expanding the violence prevention efforts to middle schools.
Holly Joshi, the Department of Violence Prevention’s chief, said that before the program expands, they’re waiting on the evaluation from the Urban Institute.
“We’re still looking at this as a pilot because it hasn’t been evaluated fully,” Joshi told the committee. “Once we see the Measure Z evaluation, I think we’ll be in a better position to really think through how the program might need to pivot—or maybe it doesn’t need to pivot and we’re doing all the things right.”
The dissolution of the school police department meant that principals and other school staff needed to find alternatives to constantly calling the police, said Misha Karigaca, a former OUSD principal and currently the director for student support and safety. OUSD has been focused on training its staff about how to handle this new reality.
The safety plan implemented following the George Floyd Resolution included the establishment of culture and climate ambassadors to replace security guards. The ambassadors use their familiar relationships with students to try to keep campuses calmer. OUSD has also created “village response teams” of individuals on every campus to de-escalate tense situations. These teams can include the culture and climate ambassadors, school leadership, mental health professionals, restorative justice facilitators, teachers, school psychologists, community school managers, or any adult on campus who has a trusting relationship with students and families.
“The idea being that multiple individuals in the school community can respond to an incident, and it’s not just resting on one individual,” said Emily Zanoli, a program manager for violence prevention within OUSD. “Safety is really a community effort where you wrap your arms around the incident and find support in a holistic sense.”
