With Your Help, We Made Lemonade
Friends,
If you had told me one year ago that 2020 would test us with a global pandemic and massive racial unrest, shut down our city, AND close our schools, and, yet, The Oakland REACH would not only survive — but thrive — I would have told you that you were ridiculous.
Oh, and if you said our parents would create a solution that would be covered across the country and around the globe — from CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, LA Times, and the BBC — I don’t even know what kind of face I would have made!
But here we are, and that’s exactly what happened this year.
When COVID19 hit, we knew our families would be some of the very hardest hit. That’s why we moved within days of the city’s stay-at-home order to launch The REACH Relief Fund and raise money to help keep our families in their homes and with food on the table. And because of generous supporters, we were able to distribute over $400,000 to over 1,000 families. And we were just getting started…..
We then built a Citywide Virtual Hub over the summer to offer high-quality, live academic instruction through our Literacy Liberation Center, serving our K-2nd grade students, and the National Summer School Initiative, for our 3rd-8th grade students. We launched phase 2 of the Hub in the fall with nearly double the number of students, offering afternoon academic and social enrichments to mitigate learning loss and accelerate learning. Throughout both phases, we provided parents with access to evening workshops to support their leadership and grow as advocates for their children’s education.
And we still weren’t done. We then joined with other families and the Community Coalition of Los Angeles to file a lawsuit in Superior Court against the State of California demanding the system listen to parents, and scale up solutions like our Hub to reach more kids. This lawsuit is about demanding a system that does right by Black and Brown kids — whether that learning is in person or remote. This lawsuit is not about “Do something!” It’s about “Do this!”
With that, we have just about made it to 2021 — finally! Thank you for your constant support to help us keep turning some real sour lemons into some darn good lemonade this year. As we look ahead to the new year, we won’t be slowing down. We'll be pushing forward with our lawsuit, expanding and scaling our Hub — and we’ll be cultivating even more parent advocates to demand a seat at the table where plans are being made about schools reopening.
