1 CITY OF OAKLAND
CHILDREN’S INITIATIVE OVERSIGHT COMMISSION
SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA
Thursday, January 22, 2026
4:00 PM
1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA
Hearing Room #2
Oversight Commission Members:
Edgar Rodriguez-Ramirez, Emma Batten-Bowman (District 1), Kym Johnson (District 4), Lisa Truong (District 6), Marcy Whitebook (District 1), Maria Sujo (District 5), Michael-Sesen Perrilliat (District 3), Michelle NewRingeisen (District 1), Natalia Rios (District 5), Peter Haviland-Eduah (District 1), Priya Jagannathan, Rickey Jackson (District 3), Sam Davis (District 1)
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CITY OF OAKLAND
CHILDREN’S INITIATIVE OVERSIGHT COMMISSION
SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA
Thursday, January 22, 2026
4:00 PM
1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA
Hearing Room #2
2 PROVIDE PUBLIC COMMENT: Below are the ways in which to make public comment within the time allotted for public comment on an eligible Agenda item.
Comment in advance:
To send your comment directly to the Oakland Children’s Initiative Oversight Commission and staff BEFORE the meeting starts, please send your comment, along with your full name and agenda item number you are commenting on, to Jennifer Cabán at [email protected].
Please note that eComment submissions close one (1) hour before posted meeting time. All submitted public comment will be provided to the Oakland Children’s Initiative Oversight Commission prior to the meeting.
In-Person:
Each person wishing to speak on items must fill out and submit a speaker's card to staff prior to the meeting. Members of the public can address the Oakland Children’s Initiative Oversight Commission in-person only and shall state their name and the organization they are representing, if any.
If you have any questions about these protocols,
please e-mail Jennifer Cabán at [email protected].
CITY OF OAKLAND
CHILDREN’S INITIATIVE OVERSIGHT COMMISSION
SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA
Thursday, January 22, 2026
4:00 PM
1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA
Hearing Room #2
3 Persons addressing the Children’s Initiative Commission shall state their names and the organization they are representing, if any.
AGENDA ITEM SCHEDULE ACTION ATTACHMENTS
1 Welcome 04:00 PM AD
2 Roll Call 2 Minutes AD
3 Review of Agenda & Values 5 Minutes AD
4 Open Forum (Non-Agendized Items) 5 Minutes AD
5 Presentations
• Oakland Promise (Implementation
Partner): FY23/24 RBA Annual Report
& FY25/26 Investment Overview
70 Minutes I Attachment 1 &
Supplemental
6 Accountability Officer Update 30 Minutes AD Attachment 2 7 Wrap-Up & Next Steps 5 Minutes AD
A = Action Item I = Informational Item AD = Administrative Item A* = Action, if Needed
Do you need an ASL, Cantonese, Mandarin or Spanish interpreter or other assistance to participate? Please email [email protected] or call (510) 238-6840 or (510) 238-2007 for TDD/TTY five days in advance.
¿Necesita un intérprete en español, cantonés o mandarín, o otra ayuda para participar? Por favor envíe un correo electrónico a [email protected] o llame al (510) 238-6840 o al (510) 238-2007 para TDD/TTY por lo menos cinco días antes de la reunión. Gracias. 你需要手語,西班牙語,粵語或國語翻譯服務嗎?請在會議前五個工作天電郵
[email protected] 或 致電 (510) 238-6840 或 (510) 238-2007 TDD/TTY.
Our Community
Agreements
Respect, Integrity & Trust Accountability & Engagement
Curiosity & Accessibility Community Voice & Inclusivity Levity & Fun
aTTACHMENT 1
Oakland Promise
Results-Based
Accountability Metrics
Report FY 2025COLLEGE ACCESS IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER
FOR THE OAKLAND CHILDREN’S INITIATIVE
SUPPLEMENTAL
Oakland Promise Results-Based Accountability Metrics Report FY25 Key Insights from our Continuum of Early Learning, K-12, and College & Career
FY25: July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025
This report presents a synthesis of key insights from the Oakland Promise (OP) Results-Based Accountability (RBA) Framework used to track the impact of our work as the Oakland Children’s Initiative (OCI) College Access Implementation Partner. The RBA metrics are an annual evaluation framework to track how the OCI Implementation Partners are using OCI funds for collective impact to improve educational outcomes for Oakland Children.
This FY25 Metrics Report is exciting because it demonstrates a second year of expanded reach and impact as a result of OCI investment. Data from OP’s continuum of programs and data from our 35 OCI-funded partner organizations is represented.
We now have 3-point trends to share – FY23 data as “baseline” before OP started using OCI funds, FY24 data as Year 1, and FY25 as Year 2.
To delve deeper, data dashboards and supporting analyses can be found here:
Link to Oakland Promise FY25 RBA Metrics Data Dashboards. The RBAs-At-a-Glance tab includes details on how OCI funds have directly contributed to change over time for metrics where appropriate.
1 Executive Summary
Across the board, OP has continued scaling and deepening our reach to Oakland students and families with the support of Oakland Children’s Initiative (OCI) and our partners. This year, OP and our partners served more students and families than ever before.
In FY25, Oakland Promise…
● Awarded more 12th grade scholarships to graduating Oakland students than ever before, a 22.7% increase from the previous fiscal year. ● Awarded $5.84M of taxpayer funds directly back to 5,565 Oakland youth in the form of scholarships and college savings accounts ($5.03M in 12th grade scholarships and $810k in CSA and early college scholarships). ● Regranted $4M from Oakland Children’s Initiative to 35 local community-based organizations to expand college access support for Oakland public school students.
● In Deep East Oakland, OP is providing intentional support to students that have the most significant educational barriers through the East Oakland Promise Neighborhood Initiative. The Oakland Children’s Initiative's investment led to OP unlocking federal funding through the U.S. Department of Education, specifically a $2.5M Full-Service Community Schools Grant and a $1M Promise Neighborhoods Planning and Early Implementation Grant.
2 Oakland Promise OCI RBAs-At-A-Glance: FY25
Metric FY23 (Baseline) FY24 (Year 1) FY25 (Year 2; New Data) How Much? (Direct service activities)
1. Number of children (0-48 months) from low income families signed up for $500 college savings account scholarships (and % of eligible population)
445
(27.8% of eligible
population)
692
(43.25% of the eligible
population)
1007 ⬆
(42% of the eligible
population)
2. Number of Kindergarteners newly awarded up to $500 in K-9th grade scholarship annually, and total number of awards to date
638 1627 3449 ⬆
3. Number of Oakland 12th graders awarded scholarships and total amount of scholarship funds awarded
909
($3,648,300)
1,170
($4,582,000)
1,436 ⬆
($5,028,500)
4. Number of unique low-income newly enrolled caregivers receiving financial coaching (and % of total newly enrolled families receiving financial education)
387
(86.9% of eligible
families)
387
(67.3% of eligible
families)
423 ⬆
(49.5% of eligible families
enrolled)
5. Number of Oakland caregivers and students participating in Oakland Promise or partner college- and career- identity building programming
5,505 16,858 14,637
6. Number of Oakland Promise scholars receiving postsecondary education persistence support 1542 1981 2510 ⬆ How Well? (Impact of activities on children and families’ lives)
1. Percentage of enrolled low-income eligible caregivers (of 0-48 month olds) who report having a college-bound identity for their children
Not Applicable 83.69% 80.47%
2. Percentage of Oakland students participating in Oakland Promise or partner programming who demonstrate a college-bound identity
Not Applicable 69.55% 77.26% ⬆
3. Total annual scholarship funds distributed to Oakland scholars for their postsecondary education$2,155,633 $2,528,602 $2,755,665 ⬆
4. Qualitative impact of Oakland Promise scholarships on Oakland Promise scholars’ postsecondary success
Not Applicable Refer to FY24 RBA
report
Refer to the specific metric
tab for a summary of
qualitative data
3 Who’s Better Off? (long-term population level collective impact outcomes)
1. Postsecondary education enrollment rate for Oakland Promise scholarship awardees 84.46% (OP) 82.75% (OP) 85.48% (OP) ⬆
2. Year 1 to Year 2 persistence rate for Oakland Promise scholars 85.4% (OP) 87.3% (OP) 86.2% (OP)
3. Postsecondary completion rate for Oakland Promise scholars 48.6% (OP) 48.8% (OP) 46.5% (OP)
4. Postsecondary education completion rate for all Oakland public school graduates This data is not yet available.
This data is not yet
available.
This data is not yet available.
4 Early Learning Domain
Scaling through Trusted Partners
In the Early Learning domain, our Brilliant Baby (BB) program enrolls babies and their families into college savings accounts, financial coaching, and other early learning supports. Our Brilliant Baby program exceeded its goal and enrolled 1007 babies in FY25 – more than doubling enrollment in just two years. Since 2016, 3313 babies have been enrolled and awarded a $500 college savings account. These accounts grow over time; since FY23, the Brilliant Baby 529 College Savings Accounts have gained an average return of 13.65% per year. For example, the average market value of one account opened in January 2023 is now $734.39.
What has changed? Throughout this report, we will be calling out “what has changed,” or how OCI funding and OP’s efforts have brought about increases or improvements in certain metrics since the last report. For Brilliant Baby enrollment increases, OCI funded new and expanded community partnerships to enroll more eligible families faster. OCI also funded the hiring of parent leaders to reach language populations that were previously underrepresented in our program, including Mam 5 and Arabic speakers. In addition to our OCI-funded partners who conduct on our behalf, OCI supports OP staff to do on-site enrollment at several other partner organizations including Alameda Health Systems (BElovedBIRTH Black Centering and Spanish Centering), 4Cs of Alameda County, the Oakland Housing Authority, and WIC. In these ways, OCI funding has allowed the program to scale, expanding the eligibility criteria from low income eligible babies born in Oakland aged 0-23 months to 0-48 months, and 0-59 months in FY26.
Brilliant Baby has also made intentional efforts, since the launch of OCI, to increase outreach to babies and families who are Black or African American. With greater capacity to enroll because of OCI partner support, OP increased Black/African American enrollment by 127% from 2023 to now. The overall increase in enrollment from 445 babies in FY23 to 1007 in FY25 has also been driven by an increase in enrollment of Hispanic/Latinx babies (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1: Early Learning Enrollment
6 Partnerships
Our Early Learning team works closely with many community partners to enroll and provide programming to Brilliant Babies and their families across Oakland in at least five languages. This model allows us to outreach to families through trusted community voices. We could not do this work without our partners and parent leaders.
In FY25, ten community partners enrolled 487 babies in FY25 (see Figure 2 below).
Figure 2: Community Partnership Impact
Gold-Standard Research Evidence: Effectiveness of our Model Longitudinal randomized control trial (RCT) studies are the best research evidence available for the effectiveness of community programs like Brilliant Baby. OP’s commitment to rigorous evaluation – sustained by OCI’s investment - sets us apart from similar initiatives nationwide.
OP is in its ninth year of a collaboration with NORC at University of Chicago to conduct a longitudinal RCT of the Brilliant Baby program. Previously released results showed positive outcomes for Brilliant Baby families on health and well-being for both parents 7 and their children after 18 months in the program (compared to a control group of similar families not enrolled in Brilliant Baby).
During FY25, we received the latest wave of results in this ongoing study. Results show that:
➔ Parents who received a Brilliant Baby college savings account or parents who received the Brilliant Baby college savings account and financial coaching reported greater hope 36 months after enrollment, compared to a control group of similar parents who did not receive Brilliant Baby services and were followed over the same period of time.
➔ Parents who received the Brilliant Baby college savings account and financial coaching also reported greater college-bound identity for their children after 36 months, meaning they expected their children to achieve more education than parents in the control group.
We are enrolling more families than ever and have growing evidence that the Brilliant Baby model has positive and lasting impacts on Oakland families’ lives.
K-12 Domain
12th Grade Scholarship Awards
OP awarded more 12th grade scholarships than ever before in FY25 (see Figure 3) – 1436 scholarships for a total of $5,028,500 to low-income graduating Oakland public school students for their postsecondary education. 66.8% of these awards went to OUSD students and the rest from public charter students, 83% of students awarded were first-generation college students, and 96% identified as people of color. 8 Figure 3: Growth in 12th Grade Scholarships
As illustrated in the chart below (see Figure 4), the median household income for our FY25 scholarship awardees was at or below the Medi-Cal income thresholds for every household size – meaning, our scholarships are reaching graduating students in Oakland with the greatest financial need.
What has changed? We’ve scaled our scholarships significantly since the launch of OCI, with a 58% increase in the number of scholarships compared to FY23. OCI funds these direct payments to scholars. With more funding, we are able to award more scholarships – plus increase outreach and community education to encourage students to apply for the scholarship. OCI funding allowed us to get closer to "scale" in FY25, defined as awarding every income-eligible 12th grader who is interested in going to college.
9 Figure 4: Median Household Income Compared to Medi-Cal Thresholds
Reach of Programming: Building collective impact
OP K-12 programming served 10,637 Oakland public school students in FY25. 59% of these were middle and high school students. OP partners increased our reach; our partners served 4,000 K-12 students with support from OCI funds. Together, we report direct service with 14,637 students in FY25. This programming is also having an impact; nearly 8 in 10 students surveyed report college-bound identity (CBI) in post-tests.
What has changed? The number of unique people served per year is elusive because it requires tracking and reporting of identifiable data by OP and its partners. OP has spent the past two years developing this data infrastructure, including establishing data sharing agreements with OUSD and charter schools, building and maintaining internal data systems, and setting expectations and providing support for partners to track and report their data. This metric represents our best estimate each year, knowing that this number likely includes duplicated data. Each year, we get closer to what is likely our "true" unique number of participants served, which is why the number appears to decrease in FY25. Our recent OCI-supported data infrastructure improvements include:
10 ● New in FY26: Launched biannual reporting from 14 K-12 partners (listed below) for easier reporting of students and families served, including identifiable data.
● New in FY26: Close collaboration with OUSD resulted in a new parent/guardian consent system and student survey process that allow us to gather participation and satisfaction data from more students and track students’ participation in multiple services over time. We worked closely with teachers this year to administer surveys and take attendance at events.
● New in FY26: Standardized questions measuring similar outcomes across all student surveys, with survey language adapted for each grade level. Survey data will be available in the FY26 RBA report on the following outcomes from pre- and post- program surveys: 1) Knowledge gained from programming, 2) Satisfaction with programming, and 3) College-bound identity. ● In Development: Parent/guardian consent forms will be integrated into OUSD school enrollment, streamlining the consent process and increasing the reach of program surveys.
Table 1: FY25 K-12 partners and respective school communities K-12 Partners Schools Served
East Bay Consortium of
Educational Institutions
Oakland Technical High School, Skyline High School, Oakland High School, Castlemont High School
East Oakland Youth
Development Center
East Oakland Pride Elementary, Elmhurst United Middle School, Castlemont High School
Erika Wei OP-partner schools
Junior Achievement of
Northern California
Maynard Academy, Greenleaf Elementary School, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, Carl B. Munck Elementary School, Madison Park Academy Primary, Aspire Triumph Technology Academy, Fruitvale Elementary School
Kingmakers of Oakland East Oakland Pride Elementary
MISSSEY Elmhurst United Middle School, Frick United Academy, Castlemont High School
MOCHA Castlemont High School, East Oakland Pride Elementary 11 Oakland Kids First Castlemont High School
Oakland Leaf Foundation ASCEND, Cleveland Elementary School, Learning Without Limits, EnCompass Academy, International Community School, Think College Now
Oakland Natives Give Back
Fund Inc.
Castlemont High School, Elmhurst United Middle School, East Oakland Pride Elementary
OneGoal Castlemont High School, Skyline High School, MetWest High School, McClymonds High School, Lighthouse Community Charter School, Lodestar: A Lighthouse Community Public School, Aspire Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy, East Bay Innovation Academy
PeerForward Fremont High School, Castlemont High School, Envision Academy of Arts & Technology, Lighthouse Community Charter School, Lodestar: A Lighthouse Community Public School, Madison Park Academy, Oakland Technical High School
The Hidden Genius Project *no data available
Trybe, Inc. Roosevelt Middle School, Oakland High School, Fremont High School, Franklin Elementary School, Bella Vista Elementary School, Garfield Elementary School
Unity Council United for Success Academy, Roosevelt Middle School, Bret Harte Middle School, Skyline High School, Fremont High School, Aspire Golden State College Preparatory Academy
uAspire Aspire Golden State Preparatory Academy
Youth Beat *no data available
East Oakland Promise Neighborhood
OCI’s investment in our East Oakland Promise Neighborhood (EOPN) work led to the awarding of U.S. Department of Education funding, specifically a $2.5M Full-Service Community Schools Grant and a $1M Promise Neighborhoods Planning and Early Implementation Grant. See below for high-level information on the EOPN work and the outcomes we are tracking annually for the Promise Neighborhoods grant.
In 2025, OP received a 2-year Promise Neighborhood planning and early implementation grant to serve as the backbone organization for the East Oakland Promise Neighborhood (EOPN). 12 EOPN includes 4 school partners: East Oakland Pride Elementary, Elmhurst United Middle School, Frick United Academy of Language Middle School, and Castlemont High School. OP will coordinate with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) to report 10 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) metrics. The chart below shows each GPRA's baseline and performance target for improvement in 2026.
Table 2: EOPN GPRA Metrics: Baseline Data and Performance Targets (2025-2027) GPRAs 2025
(Baseline)
2026
(T arget)
OUSD-wide
1 - Kindergarten readiness (5 yrs, K) (F) X X X
2a - Math proficiency (3rd - 8th, 11th) (S) 6.76% 7.0% - 7.2% 26.98% 2b - English proficiency (3rd - 8th, 11th) (S) 12.23% 12.93% -
13.1%
33.73%
3a - Attendance (6th-9th) (S) 88.3% 89.7% 90.7%
3b - Chronic absenteeism (6th-9th) (S) 39.6% 37.7% 29.1% 4 - HS Graduation rates (12th) (F) 68.1% * 70.9% 79.5%* 5a - College enrollment (HS grads) (F) P P P
5b - Six-year college graduation (HS grads) (F) 5.80% 5.80% 28.87% 6 - Fruit/veg consumption daily (S)
Data is district-wide with school-level data not currently available.
14.16% (F)
13.60% (V)
14.82% (F)
14.0% (V)
14.16% (F)
13.60% (V)
7 - School/Community Safety (S)1 X X X
8 - Student mobility (K-12TH)(F)(S) 24.31%* 24.3% 13.9%* 9a - Parent support for reading (0-5 yrs) (S) X X X
9b - Parent report child reading (K-8th) (S) 50% 52% 58.98% 9c - Parent support for college and career
(9th-12th) (S)
X X X
10 - Access to internet (K-12th) (F) P P P
X = No Data; P = Pending; F = Collected in fall; S = Collected in spring; * = Baseline is from most recent historical data (i.e, 2024) and will be updated once 2025 data is available. 1 While X indicates the data does not exist for the given year, data collection for GPRAs 7, 9a, and 9c, will begin in Spring 2026 as part of a collaborative effort with OUSD’s Research, Assessment, and Data team. 13 College and Career Domain
Persistence Support
In FY25, OP supported 2510 scholars during their postsecondary journey, a 63% increase in the number of scholars supported since the launch of OCI. Since 2016 and including FY25, OP has supported 4809 scholars. OP disseminated $2,755,565 in scholarship payments to these scholars in direct payments this year.
Figure 5: Growth in Persistence Support
In FY25, about 76% of scholars received advising support directly from OP staff and the remaining 24% received coaching from Beyond 12. 191 scholars participated in CREWS as a mentee or peer leader, a high-touch peer mentoring program for first-year scholars. 278 OP scholars were also paired with a mentor, a professional from the community who volunteers to provide personalized 1:1 guidance to a scholar. Over 55% of scholars (1,385) participated in 30 additional events held by OP staff in FY25 to provide education and support to help scholars succeed in college.
What has changed? As we award more 12th grade scholarships each year, the number of scholars who are eligible for postsecondary support also increases. The capacity to support a growing number of scholars is made possible by OCI, which supports our partner Beyond 12 to provide coaching to a significant number of our scholars each year. OP also made improvements to data tracking of scholar support; standardizing question wording across events, utilizing methods for survey dissemination that allow for easier connection of data to specific scholars. Survey data will be available in the FY26 RBA report on the following outcomes from pre- and 14 post- program surveys: 1) Knowledge gained from programming, 2) Satisfaction with programming, and 3) Likelihood to persist in school.
Impact of Scholarship Funds: What Scholars Tell Us
Each semester, scholars send in a statement about the impact their scholarship funds are having on their postsecondary education journey. We gathered 2,466 unique statements during FY25. 98% of these statements were positive about the impact of the scholarship, 67% of statements included multiple benefits of the scholarship (e.g., naming material things purchased and the mental health benefit of less financial worry), and 52% report significant to transformational impact (using language like “without this,” “wouldn’t be possible,” and “life-changing). For more examples of themes, see our Data Dashboard for the metric labeled How Well #4.
Students don't just receive money – they join a community. 76% of scholars value our organizational support and ongoing connection alongside the financial assistance itself.
Financial relief provided by scholarship funds serves as the foundation that triggers multiple benefits (see Figure 6).
Figure 6: Impact of Scholarship
Below are testimonials from our scholars, organized by common themes:
● Community & Support (76% of Total Responses) → "Even after graduation, Oakland Promise still sends emails with great information on life. They've taken such good care of me."
15 ● Financial Relief (67%) → "This scholarship lifted weight off my shoulders—I don't need to work to maintain a solid quality of life." ● Educational Access (64%) → "I bought medical scrubs and necessary textbooks for my program. It was one less thing to worry about."
● Mental Well-being (36%) → Students report significant anxiety reduction, allowing focus on studies rather than survival. "This scholarship has allowed me to fully focus on my studies and explore new opportunities without stress." Postsecondary Outcomes: Trends Over Three Years Remain Steady We are pleased to see that enrollment, persistence, and graduation rates for our scholars have remained stable over the past three years, and consistently higher than national rates for students coming from low-income high schools.
We track postsecondary outcomes for OP-supported scholars annually using our internal tracking, OUSD data, and National Student Clearinghouse data. Enrollment in the semester after high school, persistence from Year 1 to Year 2, and graduation within six years are standard markers of postsecondary success. These outcomes are impacted by numerous factors in a scholar’s life, their environment, and historical factors like the economy and COVID-19. Improving these outcomes over time is a long-term investment in our cradle-to-career direct service and systems-change work and the rates are best understood as trends over time rather than year-to-year comparisons.
16 High School Class of 2024 (FY25) OP Awardees College Enrollment Rate: 85.5% Figure 7: Postsecondary Enrollment Trends
Data from OUSD is not available for FY2025.
17 High School Class of 2023 (FY25) Year 1 to Year 2 Persistence Rate: 86.2% Figure 8: Postsecondary Persistence Trends
Data from OUSD is not available for persistence rates.
18 High School Class of 2018 (FY25) Six-year College Graduation Rate: 46.5% Figure 9: Postsecondary Six-Year College Completion Trends
20.3% of Class of 2018 scholars are still enrolled in a postsecondary degree as of Spring 2024. Therefore, 66.76% of OP Class of 2018 scholars either graduated or are still enrolled in a postsecondary program as of Spring 2024.
A six-year completion rate reflects systemic and population-level changes that take time to materialize – neither happening overnight nor within a single year. While OP completion rates are fairly steady which aligns with steady local and national 3- year trends, OP-supported scholars are completing degrees at a higher rate than the general OUSD graduate population and national rates for low-income schools. We are not directly comparing these populations (for example, there is obvious overlap between OP scholars and OUSD graduates), but these trends give helpful context.
OUSD provides essential college readiness support for their students. The promising postsecondary outcomes for OP-supported scholars shows the positive cumulative impact OP and schools can have together. Postsecondary outcomes also differ by demographic group. Mirroring national trends, we see the lowest graduation rates among boys who are Black and Latino, followed by girls who are Black.
Please see our Data Dashboards for more details, and contact Dr. Lauren Reed <[email protected]>, Director of Impact & Evaluation, with any questions. 19 FY25 Reporting Narrative
College Access Implementation Partner (3-5 page limit)
High-Level Overview
Introduction
Instructions: Answer the following prompts using narrative. What will be different in the upcoming year for IPs? What will be different for subcontractors / partners? What changes should be anticipated? Sparingly, feel free to use graphics and/or charts to support the narrative.
In fiscal year 2025-2026 (FY26), Oakland Promise (OP) is focused on scaling across its cradle-to-career continuum and in its partnership work, bringing more impactful direct services effectively to more students and families. Now in our 10th year of operation, OP’s increased reach this fiscal year rests on a proven track record of building the necessary infrastructure in programs, partnerships, and evaluation to support this scale of impactful services.
In OP’s Early Learning domain, which houses our Brilliant Baby program, we are working towards increasing our enrollment to at least 1,200 families–a ~19% increase from FY24-25 of 1,007 enrollments. As a result, we anticipate serving a greater number of parents and caregivers who will attend orientation sessions, financial literacy courses, and early learning programming.
In the K-12 domain, we expect to award the 12th-grade Oakland Promise Scholarship to every eligible applicant, which we estimate to be approximately 1,600 in the class of 2026. Similar to Early Learning, we anticipate increased student participation from K-12 in our college-bound identity programming, honing in on enhanced offerings around navigating educational transitions, financial aid, and career exploration.
Finally, in our College & Career domain, we are committed to advising and engaging all of our scholars at scale. We are enhancing our programming via student feedback and putting a special emphasis on directing students to our career development resources, both from OP and those provided through expanded partnerships. The partnership with Beyond 12, for example, demonstrates how OP is maximizing the reach of college coaching for students. Beyond 12, which offers AI-powered coaching to college students, has enabled us to scale while still meeting students' individual needs, thereby allowing OP to direct specialized attention to higher need students.
In regards to our partnerships, OP is awarding approximately $4M to over 30 organizations and individuals that work in the college access space through our request for proposals (RFP) process. OP is awarding more partners with larger awards than previous years to expand reach to serve ~15,000 students and families. In order to maintain high quality partnerships and a clear collective vision with partners, OP has built a strong infrastructure that focuses on partner compliance, engagement, and evaluation, with improvements to partner onboarding and training (such as offering regular office hours and webinars), rollout of a partner evaluation framework, and launch of a Salesforce external portal and data management system (Partnership Management Module) to manage partner contracts and reporting. With a strong infrastructure and partnership foundation, OP is able to create powerful collaborative spaces with partners to create sustainable change to improve outcomes for students in Oakland.
SUPPLEMENTAL
Reflecting on 2024-251
2024-25 OCI Implementation: Successes
Instructions: Answer the following prompts using narrative. Reflecting on last year, what worked well and why? Sparingly, feel free to use graphics and/or charts to support the narrative.
OP is pleased to have met or exceeded its service delivery targets across all programs in fiscal year 2024-2025 (FY25), representing an increase from the previous fiscal year.
In FY25, OP…
● Awarded more 12th grade scholarships to graduating Oakland students than ever before, a
22.7% increase from the previous fiscal year.
● Awarded $5.84M of taxpayer funds directly back to 5,565 Oakland youth in the form of scholarships and college savings accounts ($5.03M in 12th grade scholarships and $810k in CSA and early college scholarships).
● Regranted $4M from Oakland Children’s Initiative to 35 local community-based organizations to expand college access support for Oakland public school students. ● In Deep East Oakland, OP is providing intentional support to students that have the most significant educational barriers through the East Oakland Promise Neighborhood Initiative. The Oakland Children’s Initiative's investment led to OP unlocking federal funding through the U.S. Department of Education, specifically a $2.5M Full-Service Community Schools Grant and a $1M Promise Neighborhoods Planning and Early Implementation Grant.
More specifically, within our Early Learning domain, 1,007 new families enrolled in the Brilliant Baby program, representing 42% of the eligible population. Within our K-12 domain, 3,449 kindergarteners were awarded a K-9th scholarship for $100, and 1,436 graduating Oakland public high school 12th graders were awarded just over $5 million in multi-year scholarships for 2-year, 4-year, and Career Technical Education degree programs.
Across our cradle-to-career continuum and in collaboration with our Initiative partner organizations, 14,637 caregivers and public school students participated in our college- and career identity-building programming. Within our College & Career domain, 2,510 Oakland Promise Scholars were supported with advising, mentoring, scholarships, internships, career development workshops, and financial education workshops.
In addition to our service delivery successes, OP deepened its commitment to systems change leadership in Oakland by investing further in our data infrastructure. To expand our grantmaking functions, we built a partnership-specific Salesforce module to manage our OCI subcontracting activities. We also built a Partnership Portal that subcontractors can use for a more user-friendly reporting experience. To improve partner data collection, we launched biannual subcontractor surveys in which partners, particularly our K-12 partners, were asked to submit unique counts of participants served and identifiable data wherever possible. We spent the year building partner expectations for providing this data and supporting them in delivering on those expectations.
Another data infrastructure goal has been to develop our OP data management system to collect survey data on individual students, connect survey responses to each student, and follow students over time. Towards this goal, we worked closely with OUSD to launch a new parent/guardian 1 Represents the fiscal year spanning from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. consent system to ensure more parents are reached, and a new student surveying system that sends unique links to students that pre-fills their identifying and demographic information for more accurate tracking. These successes, while often behind the scenes, are essential for learning who we and our partners serve, identify service gaps, and evaluate impact on students over time. 2024-25 OCI Implementation: Challenges
Instructions: Answer the following prompts using narrative. What challenges did the IP and its subcontractors experience and why? Sparingly, feel free to use graphics and/or charts to support the narrative.
The main challenges OP experienced in FY25 were: 1) how best to scale our programming without compromising impact, 2) managing a larger number of community-based organization partners and ensuring a smooth and efficient experience for partners, and 3) external factors from outside systems that created barriers for communities to access resources and opportunities.
As we scale, OP is considering decisions about where we are best positioned to serve our community through our OP programs and where we can work together with partners to expand our reach. We are approaching these decisions using data-informed decision-making and drawing from our practice wisdom, best practices in the field, and our strong relationships with subcontractors and systems partners like OUSD. To inform these decisions, our Program leaders are collaborating to share expertise and our Impact & Evaluation team is improving our data infrastructure so that more and better data is available to guide our scaling efforts.
In the area of partner management, we needed to provide more clarity and technical assistance to our partners to ensure that their reporting deliverables met expectations. We responded to this challenge by offering new avenues for information and support for our partners. For example, we held all-day onboarding sessions for all the Initiative’s subcontractors, ensuring all grantees received the same information and had detailed instructions about reporting, metrics, and the overall goals of the Initiative's collective impact. OP launched a biannual survey for partner organizations to complete to help understand both the impact of their work and their experience as an OP and Initiative partner organization.
Finally, the challenges faced by the community OP serves have also affected our work and demanded that we respond and adapt to changing community needs. Many new challenges facing the OP community stem from changing federal policies regarding funding, financial aid, and social policies around immigration and diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, we are still navigating the new version of the FAFSA and the balance of helping students access financial aid while addressing fear and lack of trust around sharing personal information with government agencies. Federal policies have also caused funding instability, with some grants and social services being cut altogether. This also seeps into the philanthropic world, causing funders to provide fewer dollars than before. This has created a challenging and uncertain environment both for OP’s ability to plan and implement services, with the greatest impact being on the students and families that are losing investments and a sense of safety in their communities.
Major Learnings: Continue, Start, and Stop
Instructions: Answer the following prompts using narrative. What were major learnings from the prior year that informed changes in this year’s program plan and budget? What will continue, start, and/or stop? Sparingly, feel free to use graphics and/or charts to support the narrative.
Oakland Promise’s approach to continuous improvement requires a collective effort from stakeholders across sectors to inform how to leverage investments to create city-wide system change. OP utilizes proven cradle-to-career outcomes and national models applied to our local context to inform ultimately what is best for the children and families in Oakland. We prioritize our partnerships with external stakeholders, especially with Oakland Unified School District to inform high-level strategy for programming to complement OUSD initiatives and goals. This partnership improves the educational landscape by working in close collaboration to improve outcomes for Oakland students across the city.
Within our programs, a key learning from the prior year was the critical role of partner organizations and other collaborations in reaching our service delivery goals, both in regard to the number of students and families served and to the quality of services they receive. In fiscal year 2024-2025, partner organizations enrolled roughly half (487) of our new Brilliant Baby families, and Parent Leaders–who make referrals and serve as ambassadors–helped the program to reach underrepresented populations, such as Mam and Arabic speakers. In K-12, partners reported serving 4,000 students in FY25 across 28 Oakland schools. In the College & Career domain, our partner Beyond 12 has stepped up to provide individualized coaching to a growing number of our postsecondary scholars.
Beyond partnerships, our programs have also made adaptations to our service delivery model to meet the needs of the community. For example, the K-12 domain assessed the time and resources we were spending on pushing K-9th scholarship “sign-ups” and recognized that a broader awareness strategy that the scholarships exist was better to execute the strategy of promoting early college-bound identity for all Oakland students by jumpstarting their savings for college. This learning led to a new Kindergarten awareness-raising mailer strategy, sending information on the K-9th scholarship to approximately 3,000 kindergartners’ households. This method reached more students and families than our former high-touch sign-up strategy. We will be implementing the mailer to kindergarteners again in fiscal year 2025-2026, with the addition of 5th and 8th graders, to expand awareness further.
In the Early Learning domain, we had learned that as our Brilliant Baby enrollment increased we could not meet the demand for our 1:1 financial coaching for Brilliant Baby parents – a key feature of our intervention. Therefore, we pivoted to pilot financial literacy group classes to reach more families faster.
We are finding these group classes just as or more effective than our previous model.
Another learning was that we needed to tackle the challenge of identifying who is being served and which services people are receiving (from OP or partner programming). Unique counts of participants and tracking individuals over time is becoming increasingly important for evaluation of our collective impact. Tracking individuals, particularly K-12 students, over time is difficult. Following students over time requires close collaboration with schools and parent/guardian permission to collect students’ information. Although we have been surveying students for years, we knew there was room to grow to gather more complete and identifiable information about our program participants. Therefore, our Impact & Evaluation team focused on data infrastructure improvements including 1) creating a new parent/guardian consent system and student survey process, 2) standardizing questions across all student surveys to be able to measure similar outcomes across grade levels, and 3) starting the process to integrate parent/guardian consent forms into OUSD enrollment to increase the reach and ease of our student surveys.
OP strongly believes ‘it takes a village’. Therefore OP has been evolving our approach to collective impact by learning more about how to coordinate partner organizations and schools to avoid duplicating services while still reaching as many students and families as we can. We see this effort as critical to our responsible stewardship of public dollars and resources. Through this, we have also learned the importance of communication and transparency about our work. As a result, OP is making a greater effort to highlight the work and impact of OP and our partners through our public communication channels, site visits from OP to see partner activities in action, sponsorships for community events, and increased accessibility of the OP office space for partner use will also serve to make our partnership relationships and reach more robust in 2025-2026.
Looking forward to 2025-262
Major Themes: 2025-26 Program Plan and Budget
Instructions: Answer the following prompts using narrative. As we look to 2025-26, what are your aims and goals as the Implementation Partner (IP)? How are you adjusting activities to meet the 5-year guidelines? How have the RBA measures informed these changes? Sparingly, feel free to use graphics and/or charts to support the narrative.
Moving through fiscal year 2025-2026, OP is focused on the following cradle-to-career outcomes in alignment with the 5-year guidelines: 1) Strengthening financial literacy and asset building, 2) Expanding access to high-quality educational and workforce development pathways, and 3) Deepening student and family navigational support for postsecondary success. Advancing this work requires us to thoughtfully scale to reach more of the Oakland community– so that more students and families receive financial coaching, scholarships, and college-bound identity and postsecondary persistence programming. OCI funding is key to this growth; allowing us to expand eligibility for Brilliant Baby to 0-5, reach “at scale” for our 12th-grade Oakland Promise Scholarship, fund over 30 partners, further develop data infrastructure, and pilot new strategies to improve our service delivery. Because of our expanded network of partners, OP has more capacity to serve as a convener and systems-change leader to strengthen the cradle-to-career ecosystem in Oakland. In fiscal year 2025-2026, all of OP’s Directors play active roles in collaboratives to advance systems change including the Oakland Postsecondary and Workforce Development Collaborative, CA Cradle-to-Career Data System, and StriveTogether (a national consortium), among others.
Closing
Instructions: Answer the following prompts using narrative to identify 3-5 high-level takeaways from the 2025-26 program plan and budget that communicate important investments for the coming year. Sparingly, feel free to use graphics and/or charts to support the narrative.
The FY26 Program Plan & Budget reflects a significant scaling of OCI’s impact across scholarship support, early childhood investments, and college access initiatives. The program plan and budget strategically aligns increased spending with programmatic growth while maintaining a lean administrative structure, optimizing economies of scale as scholarship investments expand.
OP investments include the following:
● Payments to Students, Families, & Schools: With scaling of our programs and services, OP significantly increased wealth building opportunities through CSAs and scholarships to students and families as we continue to scale to serve more of the community. ● Financial Coaching for Families: With the increased number of families served, we have adapted the financial coaching to match the growing rate. ● College Access (OUSD College Support Staff): In collaboration with OUSD, we have seen the need for high impact college access supports embedded into school sites as students navigate the college application process.
● Coaching for Postsecondary Students - OP is serving over 3,000+ students with a wide range of services to ensure they persist and complete their postsecondary education. This investment enables OP to extend reach for quality and individualized support for each student as they work 2 Represents the fiscal year spanning from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. to reach completion.
● Partnerships Support - OP is increasing our investments in our partnerships work to ensure Oakland students and families have targeted college access supports by regranting funds to organizations along the continuum, creating compliance and accountability structures, and the technical assistance for every partner to accomplish outcomes.
MEMORANDUM
TO: Children’s Initiative Oversight
Commission
FROM: Jennifer Cabán
Accountability Officer
SUBJECT: Accountability Officer Report DATE: January 22, 2026 CIOC January 2026 Meeting
This i nformational memo for January 2026 provides the Oakland Children’s Initiative Oversight Commission (CIOC) with pertinent, real-time information.
OAKLAND CHILDREN’S INITIATIVE – ADMINISTRATIVE OVERVIEW OAKLAND CHILDREN’S INITIATIVE – ADMINISTRATIVE OVERVIEW Calendar Year Update | January 2026
The Oakland Children’s Initiative (OCI) is now in its third full year of implementation (FY25–26).
Over the past several years, tremendous effort has gone into standing up the Initiative’s operations and ensuring that funds reach community partners, families, and programmatic work as intended.
With this ongoing diligence, we remain steadfast and intentional in strengthening the infrastructure required to advance this innovative, long-term investment.
Focus Areas for Calendar Year 2026 include:
• Developing an Operating Principles Manual
• Establishing a shared Collective North Star
• Beginning the next iteration of the 5-Year Guidelines • Expanding Strategy and Communications planning
• Building out full OCI staffing capacity
• Developing an Equity Rubric in partnership with the Department of Race & Equity The AO Memo is designed to provide insight into the day-to-day work of the Office. Below is your first formal update of the year. We welcome your feedback on how best to continue shaping these updates moving forward.
Attachment 2
Children’s Initiative Oversight Commission
Subject: Accountability Officer Status Update
Date: January 22, 2026 Page 2
GENERAL UPDATES
CIOC
As outlined in the bylaws, the Commission will need to select its Co-Chairs in the near future.
Commissioners who are interested or have questions about the role are encouraged to reach out directly to the Accountability Officer.
While retreats are typically held in the summer, given the pace of onboarding and the work ahead, we may benefit from scheduling this earlier. Additional discussion and alignment will be needed to determine the best timing.
OCI Staffing
The OCI Office is currently interviewing for the Program Analyst II and Management Assistant positions. We anticipate onboarding new staff within the next one to two months, strengthening our operational and analytical capacity.
FY25–26 Program Plans & Budgets
All FY25–26 Program Plans and Budgets have been reviewed and approved. Two major expansion proposals within the Early Education Fund are currently under review with the Mayor and City Administrator.
Events
Event information will be provided in forthcoming updates as dates and details are finalized. 2-YEAR EVALUATION
AIR is nearing completion of the written evaluation reports. The OCI Office and Implementation Partners will begin a coordinated review of all materials this quarter. Findings will be presented at the March CIOC Meeting.
Evaluation Focus Areas:
• Economic Impact: Assessing value-added outcomes and return on community investment • Implementation Review: Evaluating Implementation Partners and overall OCI structure • Informing the Next 5-Year Guidelines: Identifying recommendations for refinement • Enhancing Results-Based Accountability (RBA): Strengthening measurement and practice-based insights
Children’s Initiative Oversight Commission
Subject: Accountability Officer Status Update
Date: January 22, 2026 Page 3
COMMUNITY BUILDING, WORKGROUPS & COLLABORATIVES
Implementation Partner Collaborative
Monthly convenings centered on core OCI priorities—planning, communication, and coordinated implementation across both funds.
IP Communications Workgroup
Monthly meetings are in development to support message alignment, transparency, and shared public communications.
IP Program Workgroup
Meets as needed for planning, budgeting, evaluation, and reporting. A subset of IP staff participates in targeted problem-solving and real-time iteration.
In Community,
Jennifer Cabán
Accountability Officer, Oakland Children’s
Initiative City Administrator’s Office
City of Oakland